Default values

For the latest default values of general properties, see properties-base.xml.

URL rewriting

oxf.url-rewriting.service.base-uri

Usually Orbeon Forms uses the host, port, and context name as seen by the browser, such as:

http://www.mycompany.com/orbeon

to infer how to reach itself when calling some service URLs (see below for which URLs apply depending on the Orbeon Forms version). But in some cases, Orbeon Forms cannot reach to itself this way and an explicit base URL must be specified with this property.

Such cases include:

• accessing the server through different host names (like https://foo/orbeon and https://bar/orbeon reaching the same Orbeon Forms instance)

• accessing the embedded eXist database (for demo purposes) when the request goes through a reverse proxy

When you are in such configurations, please make sure to set oxf.url-rewriting.service.base-uri to point to the local servlet container instance, for example:

<property
    as="xs:anyURI"  
    name="oxf.url-rewriting.service.base-uri"              
    value="http://localhost:8080/orbeon"/>

Orbeon Forms 4.7 and newer

Since Orbeon Forms 4.7, this property is only used for the following:

• access to the embedded eXist database

• access to custom services located in the Orbeon web app (there are none by default)

You don't need to set this property if:

• you do not use the embedded eXist or custom services

• or you use the embedded eXist database or a custom service and

  • you are running your servlet container on a local computer for testing or deployment

  • or your external server name and port are accessible from the servlet container

When things don't work out of the box, typically when the network setup contains a front-end web server and/or prevents a network connection from the servlet container to itself, setting it to the following is usually enough:

<property
    as="xs:anyURI"
    name="oxf.url-rewriting.service.base-uri"
    value="http://localhost:8080/orbeon"/>

Make sure to adjust the port and prefix as needed.

Orbeon Forms 4.6.x and earlier

Up to and including Orbeon Forms 4.6.x, this property was used for all service calls, including calls to internal services used by Form Runner and Form Builder, such as loading i18n resources and accessing the persistence implementation.

With 4.6.x and earlier, you don't need to set this property if:

• you are running your servlet container on a local computer for testing or deployment

• or your external server name and port are accessible from the servlet container

When things don't work out of the box, typically when the network setup contains a front-end web server and/or prevents a network connection from the servlet container to itself, setting it to the following is usually enough:

<property
    as="xs:anyURI"
    name="oxf.url-rewriting.service.base-uri"
    value="http://localhost:8080/orbeon"/>

Make sure to adjust the port and prefix as needed.

Encryption properties

oxf.crypto.password

This property is used to create a private key used for encryption. It is recommended to change the default value of the password, even though a random seed is used.

<property
  as="xs:string"
  name="oxf.crypto.password"
  value="CHANGE THIS PASSWORD"/>

Orbeon forms uses encryption in a few cases, including:

• to send confidential XForms events to the browser

• for the client state mode of the XForms engine (which is not the default)

NOTE: If the backwards compatibility property oxf.xforms.password is defined, then it is used first.

oxf.crypto.key-length

This property specifies the length of the AES encryption key. The default is 128 bits.

<property
  as="xs:integer"
  name="oxf.crypto.key-length"
  value="128"/>

Higher strength encryption is usually not enabled by default in the JVM. See Java Cryptography Extension (JCE) Unlimited Strength Jurisdiction Policy Files. When higher strength encryption is available, this value can be changed to 256, for example.

oxf.crypto.hash-algorithm

This property specifies the default hash algorithm. The default is SHA1. Higher strength encryption is usually not enabled by default in the JVM.

<property
  as="xs:string"
  name="oxf.crypto.hash-algorithm"
  value="SHA1"/

Higher strength encryption is usually not enabled by default in the JVM. See Java Cryptography Extension (JCE) Unlimited Strength Jurisdiction Policy Files. When higher strength encryption is available, this value can be changed to 256, for example.

Orbeon forms uses hash algorithms in at least the following cases:

• to encode random identifiers, such as document ids in Form Runner

• for internal caching purposes

• XForms

  • keys for client-side scripts

  • keys for aggregated JavaScript and CSS resources

  • keys for dynamic xf:output resources

  • HMAC for server-side uploaded files

Global properties

oxf.cache.size

Orbeon Forms uses an efficient caching system. Orbeon Forms automatically determines what can be cached and when to expire objects. The cache has a default size of 200, meaning that it can hold 200 objects. This size is reasonable for most applications. A bigger cache tends to make the application faster, but it uses more memory. To tune the cache size, see the suggestions in the Performance and Tuning section.

oxf.cache.xpath.size

This property configures the maximum number of compiled XPath expressions to keep in the XPath cache. To tune the cache size, see the suggestions in the Performance and Tuning section.

NOTE: A profiler run shows that 2000 cache entries takes, for fairly typical XPath expressions, about 5 MB of memory.

Showing the Orbeon Forms version number

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 4.6.1]

This property controls whether Orbeon Forms outputs its version number to the client web browser:

• at the bottom of pages, in particular with Form Runner

• in the <xh:meta name="generator" content="…"> element

• in combined JavaScript and CSS resource files built by the XForms engine

<property
  as="xs:boolean"
  name="oxf.show-version"
  value="false"/>

Default:

• prod mode: false

• dev mode: true

XSLT output location mode

During development, the following XSLT transformer configuration helps with line number errors. The following values are allowed:

• none: no XSLT output line number information provided. This is recommended for deployment.

• dumb: minimal XSLT output line number information provided.

• smart: maximal XSLT output line number information provided. This is recommended for development.

<property
    as="xs:string"
    processor-name="oxf:builtin-saxon"
    name="location-mode"
    value="none"/>
​
<property
    as="xs:string"
    processor-name="oxf:unsafe-builtin-saxon"
    name="location-mode"
    value="none"/>

Default:

• prod mode: none

• dev mode: smart

HTTP Server

Errors and exceptions

The following property specifies whether the server is allowed to send detailed error and exceptions messages to the browser:

<property
    as="xs:boolean"
    name="oxf.http.exceptions"
    value="false"/>

Default:

• prod mode: exceptions are not sent to the browser

• dev mode: exceptions are sent to the browser

HTTP Client

Proxy setup

To configure an HTTP proxy to be used for all the HTTP connections established by Orbeon Forms, add the following two properties:

<property
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.http.proxy.host"
    value="localhost"/>
​
<property
    as="xs:integer"
    name="oxf.http.proxy.port"
    value="8090"/>
​
<property
    as="xs:boolean"
    name="oxf.http.proxy.use-ssl"
    value="false"/>
​
<property
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.http.proxy.exclude"
    value=""/>
​
<property
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.http.proxy.username"
    value=""/>
​
<property
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.http.proxy.password"
    value=""/>
​
<property
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.http.proxy.ntlm.host"
    value=""/>
​
<property
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.http.proxy.ntlm.domain"
    value=""/>

By default, the host and port properties are commented and Orbeon Forms doesn't use a proxy. Some of the use cases where you will want to define a proxy include:

• Your network setup requires you to go through a proxy.

• You would like see what goes through HTTP by using a tool that acts as an HTTP proxy, such as Charles.

To connect to the proxy over HTTPS, instead of HTTP which is the default, set the oxf.http.proxy.use-ssl property to true.

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 4.6]

You can exclude host names from the proxy using the oxf.http.proxy.exclude property, which contains a space-delimited list of hostnames.

SSL hostname verifier

When using HTTPS, you can specify how the hostname of the server is checked against the hostname in its certificate. You do so with the following property:

<property
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.http.ssl.hostname-verifier"
    value="strict"/>

The possible values are:

• strict — (the default) See StrictHostnameVerifier.

• browser-compatible — See BrowserCompatHostnameVerifier.

• allow-all — See AllowAllHostnameVerifier.

Typically, you'll leave this property to its default value (strict). However, you might need to set it to allow-all to be able to connect to a server with a self-signed certificate if the cn in the certificate doesn't match the hostname you're using to connect to that server.

SSL key store

When using HTTPS, you can specify which key store (or trust store) to use to verify the server you are connecting to. The following properties are relevant:

<property
    as="xs:anyURI"
    name="oxf.http.ssl.keystore.uri"
    value="oxf:/config/my.keystore"/>
​
<property
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.http.ssl.keystore.password"
    value="changeit"/>

• oxf.http.ssl.keystore.uri

  • specifies the URL of the key store file

  • this can use the file: or oxf: protocols

  • if this property is blank, the default JSSE algorithm to find a trust store applies (see the JSSE Reference Guide)

• oxf.http.ssl.keystore.password

  • specifies the password needed to access the key store file

This can be useful for using self-signed certificates:

• setup your servlet container (usually via a connector configuration) to point to a key store containing your certificate

• setup the oxf.http.ssl.keystore.* properties to point to that same key store

This enables a secure connection between Orbeon Forms and the servlet container.

Headers forwarding

When Orbeon Forms performs XForms submissions, or retrieves documents in XPL over HTTP, it has the ability to forward incoming HTTP headers. For example, if you want to forward the Authorization header to your services:

<property
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.http.forward-headers"
    value="Authorization"/>

WARNING: For security reasons, you should be careful with header forwarding, as this might cause non trusted services to receive client headers.

Cookies forwarding

Similar to general headers forwarding, cookies can be forwarded. By default, the property is as follows:

<property
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.http.forward-cookies"
    value=""/>

If you need to forward, say, JSESSIONID and JSESSIONIDSSO to services, set this in properties-local.xml:

<property
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.http.forward-cookies"
    value="JSESSIONID JSESSIONIDSSO"/>

When a username for HTTP Basic authentication is specified, cookies are not forwarded. The first cookie in the list, typically JSESSIONID, is interpreted by Orbeon Forms to be the session cookie. If the value of the session cookie doesn't match the current session, say because the provided JSESSIONID has expired or is invalid, then the value of the cookie from the incoming request isn't forwarded. Instead, in that case, the new value of the session cookie is:

• [UP TO Orbeon Forms 2016.3] The session id.

• [SINCE Orbeon Forms 2017.1] The concatenation of the following 3 values:

  1. The value of the oxf.http.forward-cookies.session.prefix property

  2. The session id

  3. The value of the oxf.http.forward-cookies.session.suffix property

By default, the value of the prefix and suffix properties is empty, as shown below, which works well with application servers like Tomcat that set the JSESSIONID directly to the session id.

<property 
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.http.forward-cookies.session.prefix"         
    value=""/>
<property
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.http.forward-cookies.session.suffix"
    value=""/>

On the other hand, some application servers, add a prefix and suffix to the session id. For instance, WebSphere uses the cache id as prefix, and the colon character (:) followed by the clone id as suffix. So, on WebSphere, assuming that in your situation the cache id is always 0000, and the client id (found in WebSphere's plugin-cfg.xml) is 123, you will want to set those properties as shown below. Note how the value of the client id follows the colon character in the value of the suffix property.

<property 
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.http.forward-cookies.session.prefix"         
    value="0000"/>
<property
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.http.forward-cookies.session.suffix"
    value=":123"/>

WARNING: For security reasons, you should be careful with cookies forwarding, as this might cause non trusted services to receive client cookies.

Stale checking

This property is tied to the HttpClient stale checking:

Defines whether stale connection check is to be used. Disabling stale connection check may result in slight performance improvement at the risk of getting an I/O error when executing a request over a connection that has been closed at the server side.

By default, Orbeon checks for stale HTTP connections. You can disabling stale connection checking by setting the following property to false (it is true by default):

<property
    as="xs:boolean"
    name="oxf.http.stale-checking-enabled"
    value="false"/>

Socket timeout

This property is tied to the HttpClient SO timeout:

Sets the default socket timeout (SO_TIMEOUT) in milliseconds which is the timeout for waiting for data. A timeout value of zero is interpreted as an infinite timeout.

By default, Orbeon doesn't set a timeout with HttpClient. Setting a timeout can be potentially dangerous as it can lead to service calls that take longer to run than the timeout you specified to fail in a way that can be unpredictable, as it is possible for your services to sometimes return before the timeout and sometimes after. If, nevertheless, you need to set a timeout, you can do so by adding the following property, e.g. here setting a timeout at 1 minute:

<property
    as="xs:integer"
    name="oxf.http.so-timeout"
    value="60000"/>

NOTE: These two headers are computed values and it is only possible to override them with constant values by using the properties above. In general we don't recommend overriding these headers by using the properties above.

Request chunking

<property
    as="xs:boolean"
    name="oxf.http.chunk-requests"
    value="false"/>

Expired and idle connections

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2019.1]

Since the HTTP client uses connection pooling, some connections can be come stale, which can cause errors at inopportune times. Enabling expired and idle connections checking can help reduce this issue.

The oxf.http.expired-connections-polling-delay property sets the expired connection checking polling delay. The default is 5,000 milliseconds (5 seconds).

<property 
    as="xs:integer" 
    name="oxf.http.expired-connections-polling-delay"      
    value="5000"/>

The oxf.http.idle-connections-delay property sets the idle connection time to live. The default is 30,000 milliseconds (30 seconds).

<property 
    as="xs:integer" 
    name="oxf.http.idle-connections-delay"
    value="30000"/>

If oxf.http.expired-connections-polling-delay is commented out or not present, neither checks are performed.

If oxf.http.idle-connections-delay is commented out or not present, but oxf.http.expired-connections-polling-delay is present, then only the check for expired connections takes place.

Keeping expired and idle connections checking enabled can improve the reliability of connections to remote servers.

Epilogue and theme properties

oxf.epilogue.theme

This can be overwritten for a given app by placing a file theme.xsl inside the app directory.

oxf.epilogue.theme.embeddable

This can be overwritten for a given app by placing a file theme-embeddable.xslinside the app directory.

oxf.epilogue.theme.renderer

oxf.epilogue.theme.error

oxf.epilogue.use-theme

oxf.epilogue.output-xhtml

oxf.epilogue.renderer-rewrite

oxf.epilogue.process-svg

Email processor properties

Global SMTP host

Configure the SMTP host for all email processors. This global property can be overridden by local processor configurations.

<property
    as="xs:string"
    processor-name="oxf:email"
    name="smtp-host"
    value="mail.example.org"/>

Global SMTP port

Configure the SMTP port for all email processors. This global property can be overridden by local processor configurations.

<property
    as="xs:string"
    processor-name="oxf:email"
    name="smtp-port"
    value="25"/>

Global SMTP username

Configure the SMTP username for all email processors. This global property can be overridden by local processor configurations.

<property
    as="xs:string"
    processor-name="oxf:email"
    name="username"
    value="john"/>

Global SMTP password

Configure the SMTP password for all email processors. This global property can be overridden by local processor configurations.

<property
    as="xs:string"
    processor-name="oxf:email"
    name="password"
    value="secret"/>

Global SMTP encryption

Configure the SMTP encryption for all email processors. This global property can be overridden by local processor configurations.

<property
    as="xs:string"
    processor-name="oxf:email"
    name="encryption"
    value="tls"/>

Test SMTP host

Configure a test SMTP host for all email processors. This global property when specified overrides all the other SMTP host configurations for all email processors, whether in the processor configuration or using the smtp-host property.

<property
    as="xs:string"
    processor-name="oxf:email"
    name="test-to"
    value="joe@example.org"/>

This property can easily be commented out for deployment, or placed in properties-local-dev.xml (see also Run Modes).

Test recipient

Configure a test recipient email address for all email processors. This global property when specified overrides all the other SMTP recipient configurations for all email processors.

<property
    as="xs:string"
    processor-name="oxf:email"
    name="test-to"
    value="joe@example.org"/>

This property can easily be commented out for deployment, or placed in properties-local-dev.xml (see also Run Modes).

Rarely used properties

oxf.log4j-config

Orbeon Forms uses the log4j logging framework. In Orbeon Forms, log4j is configured with an XML file. Here is the default Orbeon Forms log4j configuration.

If this property is not set, the log4j initialization is skipped. This is useful if another subsystem of your application has already initialized log4j prior to the loading of Orbeon Forms.

NOTE: You don't usually need to modify this property.

oxf.pipeline.processors

NOTE: You don't usually need to modify this property.

oxf.validation.processor

Many processors validate their configuration input with a schema. This validation is automatic and allows meaningful error reporting. To potentially improve the performance of the application, validation can be disabled in production environments.

NOTE: It is strongly discouraged to disable validation, as validation can highly contribute to the robustness of the application.

oxf.validation.user

User-defined validation is activated in the XML Pipeline Definition Language with the attributes schema-href and schema-uri. To potentially improve the performance of the application, validation can be disabled in production environments.

NOTE: It is strongly discouraged to disable validation, as validation can highly contribute to the robustness of the application.

sax.inspection

SAX is the underlying mechanism in Orbeon Forms by which processors receive and generate XML data. Given only the constraints of the SAX API, it is possible for a processor to generate an invalid sequence of SAX events. Another processor that receives that invalid sequence of events may or may not be able to deal with it without throwing an exception. Some processors try to process invalid SAX events, while others throw exceptions. This means that when a processor generating an invalid sequence of SAX events is used in a pipeline, the problem might go unnoticed, or it might cause some other processor downstream to throw an exception.

To deal more efficiently with those cases, the sax.inspection property can be set to true. When it is set to true, the pipeline engine checks the outputs of every processor at runtime and makes sure that valid SAX events are generated. When an error is detected, an exception is thrown right away, with information about the processor that generated the invalid SAX events.

There is a performance penalty for enabling SAX events inspection. So this property should not be enabled on a production system.

NOTE: You don't usually need to enable this property.