Using frevvo
From Frevvodocs
If you have upgraded to Live Forms v2 please see the v2.x documentation.
Contents |
Using frevvo
The first step is to access the frevvo application in your browser at http://www.frevvo.com and login to the frevvo Live Forms™ Designer. Once you have logged in, you will see the applications page. Here the frevvo header has links to applications and themes. Applications organize your forms, schemas, and documents. Themes customize the look & feel of your forms.
Applications
A frevvo application enables you to conveniently group forms, schemas and documents together and work with them as a coherent unit. Applications are portable. You can download applications and then upload them to other users or other frevvo servers.
The Applications page lists the Applications that you have created. On this page, you can
- Click the
icon to create a new application
- Click the
icon to upload an application file
- Click the
icon to work with an application
- Click the
icon to delete an existing application
- Click the
icon to download an existing application
Also when you hover over any application a tool tip will display the appliication's description.
New Application
Create a new application by clicking on the 
icon. Your new application is given a randomly generated name. You can edit the name via the application's properties page inside the application.
Application Properties
Click the 
icon next to an application's name to work with it. You will be taken to the Forms page for that application. In the navigation menu on the upper right hand side, click the properties link. On this page, you can update the name and description for your application. You can also choose a Theme for your application. Also you can specify a base Url for your form's Form Action and Doc Action properties.
Deleting an Application
Click the 
icon next to an application's name to delete it. Confirm your choice in the dialog that pops up and the application will be immediately removed. This is an irreversible process so make sure you do not need the application before you delete it. You can always download the application and save it before you delete it.
Downloading an Application
Click the 
icon next to an application's name to download it. This will download a zip file to your local disk. Save the file and you can upload it back to a frevvo server at a later time.
Uploading an Application
Click the 
icon at the top of the Applications page. Choose a valid zip file (it must be a zip file that was downloaded earlier using the application download feature above) and click Upload. The application is uploaded and immediately appears in your list of applications.
Schemas
frevvo is an XML schema-aware application. One of frevvo's most powerful features is its ability to automatically generate a form from an XML schema. The form will generate XML instance documents that conform to the schema. frevvo will automatically validate the document and ensure that it is valid with respect to the schema. A frevvo form can also represent multiple documents from multiple schemas. Such a form will generate a set of XML documents, each of which is validated against its schema. In addition, you can also create and use frevvo forms from-scratch using the palette and mix from-schema as well as from-scratch controls in your form. This is a very powerful and flexible mechanism for creating forms.
You must first upload your XML schema (XSD file) into one of your frevvo applications. Once the schema is uploaded, it is available to all forms in that application. Note that schemas cannot be shared across applications. If you want to use a schema in multiple applications, you will have to upload it separately to each application. The reason for this is to ensure that each application is a completely self-contained and portable entity.
To upload a schema, click on any application to work with it. In the navigation menu on the upper right hand side, click the schemas link. You will be taken to the Schemas page for that application. This page lists the schemas that you have uploaded to this application. On this page you can
- Click the icon to update an existing schema
- Click the icon to add a new schema
- Click the icon to delete an existing schema
New Schema
Add a new schema by clicking on the icon. On the resulting form, give your schema a name and description. They are both optional (the file name is used as the default) but it is highly recommended that you give the schema a name and description that are meaningful to you. Locate a valid XML schema file on disk and click the Upload button. The schema is uploaded and immediately appears in your list of schemas. If you attempt to upload an invalid XML schema file, frevvo will warn you and attempt to provide a list of errors in the schema.
You may add as many schemas as you require.
Deleting a Schema
Click the icon next to a schema's name to delete it. Confirm your choice in the dialog that pops up and the schema will be immediately removed. Any forms that use this schema will become invalid.
Types in use within forms, which came from a deleted schema, are not automatically removed from your forms. Therefore when you delete a schema from your application you should also edit each form that used element types from that schema and delete those types from the form's Types panel. You will likely also want to remove any controls added to your form from those schema elements. Any controls that you choose not to delete from your form, which came from those delete types, will then correctly become part of the from-scratch schema. You can download the form's from-scratch schema to verify this.
Updating a Schema
Click the icon next to a schema to update it. This opens the schema update panel where you modify the name and description of your schema. You can also update the existing schema with a new version. After updating a schema, frevvo automatically updates the schema and types in the form designer.
Simple Changes
Many of the simple schema changes you can make will be automatically updated to your form by frevvo. For example if the element was an xsd:string and you update the schema to change it to an xsd:integer, frevvo will automatically begin validating inputs to the corresponding form field to ensure that they are valid integers. No actions are required by you after the update. frevvo handles them for you automatically.
Another example is changing a schema element from required (minOccurs="1") to optional (minOccurs="0") or vice versa. frevvo will atomatically update the form to make the corresponding field required vs. option.
There are several considerations to note when making more complex schema changes to a schema already in use by your forms. They are discussed in the sections below.
Complex Changes
Certain schema changes cannot automatically update the associated form controls. Instead frevvo's form designer flags these controls as no longer bound to the schema. When controls are bound to a schema type they appear with a light green border otherwise they appear with a brown border. When a form is saved by clicking on the commit button in the form designer all unbound controls (those with brown borders) get added to frevvo's schema for this form that can be displayed via the schema 
icon next to each form in the form list.
IMPORTANT: These changes require you to take action on your forms. At a minimum you must edit and save your form. For example, if the schema has elements that were deleted, the fields will remain on your form. This may or may not be what you desire. If it is, you still need to edit and re-save your form to confirm this change. If you do not, the controls will remain on the form, but the data entered into these controls will not be submitted when a users fills in the form and clicks the submit button.
The following schema changes cause from schema controls to become unbound:
- Changing the name of an element
- Changing the type from a simple type to a complex type and vice versa.
- Moving the element from parent X to parent Y.
- Deleting an element
The control color change in the form designer can guide you to the controls that you need to remove or update in your form when your schema changes.
Changing minOccurs
If you change an element from a single instance (minOccurs "0" or "1") to potentially multiple occurrences (ex: minOccurs="2" maxOccurs="4") the form will not automatically update to replace the single control with a repeat control.
To update your form to reflect the schema change, edit the form in the designer, delete the corresponding single occurrence control from the form. And then from the types panel add the new multiple occurrence control to the form and drag/drop that new control to your desired location on the form. frevvo will now correctly generate a repeating control on your form.
Documents
When a form is submitted, it generates a set of XML instance documents (the set may contain just one document). These document sets are saved in frevvo’s document repository. Documents are stored by form. So to see a document for a specific form, first navigate into the application containing that form. Then click on the documents 
icon next to a form. This navigates to the documents page that list all documents submitted. Click on the 
icon next to any document to view its contents. And click on the icon to delete it. Also you can download a zip file containing the XML instance documents in a particular document set by clicking on the icon.
Document sets are assigned a unique URI and may be accessed using that URI. The URI is guaranteed to exist and remain valid until the document set is deleted.
| URI | Method | Description |
|---|---|---|
| .../formtype/{formtype.id}/docset | GET | List of document sets for this form. |
| .../formtype/{formtype.id}/docset | DELETE | Delete all document sets for this form. |
| .../formtype/{formtype.id}/docset/{docset.id}?output.type=uri-list | GET | Get a list of URIs for the documents in the document set. |
| .../formtype/{formtype.id}/docset/{docset.id} | DELETE | Delete the document set. |
| .../formtype/{formtype.id}/docset/{docset.id}/document/{document.id} | GET | Get a document (XML) |
