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Form metadata API

Service endpoint

HTTP GET to the following path:
/fr/service/persistence/form

Purpose

This is the API used, in particular, by the Form Runner Home page, accessible to users on /fr/. The Form Runner home page lists all the published forms the user has access to, and for each one it provides a link to create a new instance of that form, and to the summary page for that form. Either one of those links might be missing, depending on the user's permissions.

API

Request

Basics

You get the list of all the published forms with a GET on:
/fr/service/persistence/form
This, in turn, calls the corresponding API for each persistence API implementation defined in the properties as active, since different forms can be published on different persistence implementations. For example, this might call MySQL implementation doing a GET on:
/fr/service/mysql/form
Then it might call the eXist implementation with another GET on:
/fr/service/exist/form
Finally it aggregates the results returned by each implementation.

Restricting by app/form name

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 4.3]
Optionally, an app name or both an app name and form name can be specified on the URL. In that case, the API only returns information about published forms in that specific app, or that specific app and form is returned.
  • When an app specified, the URL looks like: /fr/service/persistence/form/[APP_NAME]
  • When both an app and form name are specified, the URL looks like: /fr/service/persistence/form/[APP_NAME]/[FORM_NAME]

Returning all form definition versions

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2016.2]
Optionally, you can pass the URL parameter all-versions:
  • when set to true
    • All form definition versions are returned.
  • when omitted or set to false
    • Only the form definition with the highest published version number is returned.

Returning all form definitions

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2019.1, 2018.2.1, 2018.1.4, 2017.2.3]
Optionally, you can pass the URL parameter all-forms:
  • when set to true
    • all forms are returned without checking for permissions or other criteria
  • when omitted or set to false (which was the behavior before all-forms was supported)
    • Only forms to which the user has "access" are returned.
    • If the user has access as per form-builder-permissions.xml, then all form definitions are returned.
      • [SINCE Orbeon Forms 2022.1], this logic is ignored if ignore-admin-permissions is set to true.
    • Otherwise:
      • library form definitions are excluded
      • forms which have permissions defined and for which the user has no permissions at all are excluded
      • unavailable form definitions are excluded

Filtering by date

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2021.1]
Optionally, you can pass the URL parameter modified-since:
  • this must be an ISO date/time
  • when passed, only form definitions which have been modified since the given date are returned
For example:
/fr/service/persistence/form?modified-since=2021-09-09T04:56:42.257Z

Ignoring admin permissions

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2022.1]
Optionally, you can pass the URL parameter ignore-admin-permissions:
  • when set to true
    • Even if the user has access to the form as per form-builder-permissions.xml, the forms are filtered as documented.
  • when omitted or set to false (the default)
    • The behavior is the same as before this parameter was supported.
If the all-forms parameter is set to true, then this parameter is ignored, and all forms are returned without checking for permissions or other criteria as documented.

Response

Response format

Each <form> element contains:
  • <application-name>
  • <form-name>
  • All the elements inside the form metadata instance of the corresponding form definition
    • This can be retrieved with the following XPath expression: /xh:html/xh:head/xf:model/xf:instance[@id = 'fr-form-metadata']/metadata/*
    • [SINCE Orbeon Forms 2016.1]
      • The <description> and <migration> elements are excluded.
  • <last-modified-time>
    • [SINCE Orbeon Forms 4.4]
    • [UNTIL Orbeon Forms 4.10.x]
      • last modification date/time for the app/form combination
    • [SINCE Orbeon Forms 2016.1]
      • last modification date/time for the app/form/version combination
  • <form-version>
    • [SINCE Orbeon Forms 2016.1]
    • contains the version number of the given <form>
    • NOTE: This is only returned when using a relational database, as the implementation of the persistence API for eXist doesn't support versioning yet.
  • <available>
    • set to false when the form definition is marked as not available

Latest published version

The document returned by this API looks like this:
<forms>
<form operations="*">
<application-name>orbeon</application-name>
<form-name>bookshelf</form-name>
<title xml:lang="en">Orbeon Forms Bookshelf</title>
<title xml:lang="fr">Orbeon Forms Bookshelf</title>
<last-modified-time>2014-06-04T11:21:33.043-07:00</last-modified-time>
<form-version>1</form-version>
</form>
<form operations="*">
<application-name>orbeon</application-name>
<form-name>w9</form-name>
<title xml:lang="en">Request for Taxpayer Identification Number and Certification</title>
<last-modified-time>2014-06-04T11:21:34.051-07:00</last-modified-time>
<form-version>3</form-version>
</form>
<form operations="create read update">
<application-name>acme</application-name>
<form-name>order</form-name>
<title xml:lang="en">ACME Order Form</title>
<title xml:lang="fr">Formulaire de commande ACME</title>
<permissions>
<permission operations="delete">
<group-member/>
</permission>
<permission operations="delete">
<owner/>
</permission>
<permission operations="create read update"/>
</permissions>
<last-modified-time>2014-08-21T16:52:24.429-07:00</last-modified-time>
<form-version>2</form-version>
</form>
</forms>

All versions

The document returned by this API looks like this, here for the acme/order form:
<forms>
<form operations="admin *">
<application-name>acme</application-name>
<form-name>order</form-name>
<last-modified-time>2018-11-02T21:52:46.173Z</last-modified-time>
<form-version>1</form-version>
<title xml:lang="en">Contact</title>
<title xml:lang="fr">Contact</title>
</form>
<form operations="admin *">
<application-name>acme</application-name>
<form-name>order</form-name>
<last-modified-time>2018-11-02T21:54:22.481Z</last-modified-time>
<form-version>2</form-version>
<title xml:lang="en">Contact</title>
<title xml:lang="fr">Contact</title>
</form>
<form operations="admin *">
<application-name>acme</application-name>
<form-name>order</form-name>
<last-modified-time>2018-12-05T23:31:33.320Z</last-modified-time>
<form-version>3</form-version>
<title xml:lang="en">Contact</title>
<title xml:lang="fr">Contact</title>
</form>
<form operations="admin *">
<application-name>acme</application-name>
<form-name>order</form-name>
<last-modified-time>2018-12-13T00:12:11.650Z</last-modified-time>
<form-version>4</form-version>
<title xml:lang="en">Contact</title>
<title xml:lang="fr">Contact</title>
</form>
<form operations="admin *">
<application-name>acme</application-name>
<form-name>order</form-name>
<last-modified-time>2018-12-20T19:30:10.435Z</last-modified-time>
<form-version>5</form-version>
<title xml:lang="en">Contact</title>
<title xml:lang="fr">Contact</title>
<available>false</available>
</form>
</forms>
Note that the versions do not have to be in order and some versions can be missing.
Here note that version 5 is marked as not available with:
<available>false</available>

See also

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