Re: [xml-dev] XForms to XHTML using XSLT

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>]

At 2008-10-10 11:19 +0200, COUTHURES Alain wrote:
>I just saw old threads about XForms to XHTML conversion using XSLT 
>and I think this could still be a good idea for client-side XForms 
>or for PHP only server-side XForms

For many years I've been doing XML->PHP for all of the forms on 
Crane's web site.  One investment in writing the XSLT to get the 
necessary server-side PHP to run the form and then I forgot all the 
PHP I learned because every form I need I just express in XML.

Here is an example form, and you wouldn't know that I wrote it in XML:

   http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/forms/interest.php

All field validation and retrying of the form is done in PHP.  And 
when bots started filling out my forms I only had to add the 
"staleness" and challenge question to my XSLT and instantly all of my 
forms were updated with the need for someone to think about one of 
the values to validate the form wasn't being filled out by a bot.

>and there are today opensource solutions which are performing this 
>conversion in Java.
>
>What would the main problems rewriting a conversion tool with XSLT ? 
>Effective full XSLT 1.0 support by browsers ? XForms specific CSS 
>rules to translate ?

For server-side PHP implementation of XForms, I don't think those 
questions matter ... although many years ago I used XSLT 1, if I had 
to do it today I would use XSLT 2 and the end result is just a PHP 
form that runs independent of the browser used to access the server.

I hope this helps.

. . . . . . . . . . . . Ken

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