xforms:submission with GET but no parameters

All,

Under "11.1 The xforms-submit Event", I read that:

   "A node from the instance data is selected, based on attributes on
   the submission element. The indicated node and all nodes for which
   it is an ancestor are considered for the remainder of the submit
   process. Any node which is considered not relevant as defined in
   6.1.4 The relevant Property is removed."

So it looks like there is an absolute requirement, for a submission,
to select a node in an instance (the spec doesn't say what happens if
the single-node binding points to a non-existing node). This is done
through either @ref or @bind on the xforms:submission element (and I
assume that if both are missing we get the root element of the first
instance).

But there are cases where you don't want to actually submit any
instance data in a submission when using the GET method.

For example, I may simply want to perform an instance replacement by
loading the URL located in the @action attribute.

Also, with XForms 1.1, it will be possible to dynamically update the
submission action, and with REST, you will often use this to build
URLs that only consist of a path, such as:

   http://example.org/bookmarks/ebruchez.

The way I have been working around this is to use a dummy instance and
to say @ref="instance('dummy')". But this is ugly and non-intuitive:

   <xforms:instance id="dummy">
     <dummy/>
   </xforms:instance>

   <xforms:submission id="update-bookmarks"
     ref="instance('dummy')"
     method="get" action="/bookmarks/ebruchez}"
     replace="instance" instance="bookmarks"/>

So did I miss something, or do we in fact have to use such a
workaround when using GET to create a URL that does not have any
request parameters?

If I am right, then I think we should address this soon.

-Erik

-- 
Orbeon - XForms Everywhere:
http://www.orbeon.com/blog/

Received on Tuesday, 27 June 2006 12:27:53 UTC