Detailed behavior

See also:

• XForms Error Handling

Philosophy of error handling

• Upon initial page load:

  • It is acceptable if not desirable to immediately show a static error, as the user hasn't yet interacted with the page.

  • For dynamic XForms, it is better not to show an error immediately (case of Form Builder and xxf:dynamic).

• Upon subsequent interactions:

  • The XForms engine attempts to recover from errors occurring with XPath expressions, bindings, and actions.

How the XForms engine recovers from errors

1. For control bindings, model bindings, values, variables

   • Upon XPath errors, a default value is chosen:

     • the empty sequence for bindings and variable values

     • the empty string for string values

   • Upon binding errors with the bind attribute

     • the binding resolves to the empty sequence

   • Upon binding errors with the model attribute

     • the model doesn't change, as if the model attribute was missing

2. For XPath MIP values

   • Upon XPath errors for calculate and xxforms:default

     • the destination value is set to blank

     • if xxforms:expose-xpath-types="true" and there is an error accessing a typed value

       • the error is logged at debug level

     • else if xxforms:expose-xpath-types="false" or there is any other dynamic error

       • xxforms-xpath-error is dispatched to the model

   • Upon XPath errors for other MIPs

     • the MIP is not modified, as if the attribute specifying the property was missing

     • xxforms-xpath-error is dispatched to the model

   • Upon binding errors with complex or readonly content (calculate or xxforms:default only)

     • the instance value is not modified

     • xxforms-binding-error is dispatched to the model

3. For the submission instance and xxforms:instance attributes

   • Upon incorrect instance id

     • xforms-submit-error is dispatched (as in the case of a target error with the targetref attribute)

   • Upon binding errors with complex or readonly content

     • xforms-submit-error is dispatched

4. For actions

   • Any error taking place during action processing stops the outermost action handler, including:

     • XPath errors

     • binding errors with the bind or model attribute

     • binding errors with complex or readonly content

     • missing attributes or unsupported attribute values on action elements

   • xxforms-action-error event is dispatched to observer of the action

   • NOTE: Some actions silently ignore some error conditions, including:

     • <setvalue> pointing to an empty sequence or to an atomic item (such as a string) instead of a node

     • <delete> with an empty sequence or an empty overridden context

     • <insert> with an empty or non-element insert context, an empty overridden context, or an empty origin

     • actions with AVTs evaluating to the empty sequence

   • <dispatch>, <send>, <setfocus>, <setindex>, <toggle> when the target element is not found

In all cases except typed value access XPath errors on MIPs:

• errors are logged at debug level [warning level until Orbeon Forms 4.8]

• errors are added to a list of errors to send to the client

• the client shows an error dialog which the user can discard (when enabled via properties)

In the case of typed value access XPath errors on MIPs:

• errors are logged at debug level

Events dispatched

The xxforms-xpath-error event is dispatched:

• to the model, upon encountering an XPath error during processing of an XPath model item property (MIP)

The xxforms-binding-error event is dispatched:

• to the model, if a calculate or xxforms:default MIP points to complex or readonly content

• to the control, if an attempt to store an external value (control value, filename, metadata or size) on a control to a node with complex or readonly content takes place

  NOTE: This should ideally not occur as the value control binding should not point to complex content, and readonly is disallowed.

The xxforms-action-error event is dispatched:

• to the observer of the action, upon encountering an error during processing of an action

• this includes: controls, model, instance, and submission

NOTE: The fatal, non-cancelable XForms xforms-compute-exception and xforms-binding-exception are no longer dispatched by Orbeon Forms.

Reference: kinds of errors that can occur

• XForms errors

  • static XPath errors

    • some are detected during the static analysis phase (PE)

    • some expressions are not analyzed during static analysis of the page, and so can occur at runtime

  • dynamic XPath errors

  • binding errors with the bind or model attributes, e.g.: bind="foobar" where id foobar doesn't exist

    • some are detected during the static analysis phase

    • some are not analyzed during static analysis of the page, and so can occur at runtime

  • binding errors with complex or readonly content

    • XForms disallows setting the value of an element with complex content

    • XForms disallows setting the value of a readonly element or attribute

• errors outside of XForms, for example:

  • in the XPL (XML pipeline) engine

  • in the controller

• other server errors:

  • major errors such as the server running out of resources

  • server bugs!