Serialising XML Schema to HTML form and getting it back as XML instance

[Lech Rzedzicki <xchaotic@gmail.com>]

Hi all.

We have a XML schema that we would like to use to:

1. generate HTML form/XForm/ whatever works bests.

2. User fills in the form fields in a browser, with as much validation possible client side (probably some JS library).

3. The form is sent back to the server, ideally as XML instance straight away or converted server side so that it can be validated against the schema and stored.

What's the current state of the art in this?

It's a greenfield project so we're free to use whatever we want, but it looks like XForms are still not natively supported in the browsers so I think not much has changes in recent years and we'll have to generate HTML Forms from the schema.

It looks equally backwards when sending/POSTing the data - it looks like the data will be sent using the usual HTTP headers and then we have to worry how we convert it back into XML for validation, right?

Any thoughts on how to do it as automatically and pain free as possible, would be very welcome.

Lech