Well, I’m not out for coffee for an entire month but I will be away on vacation starting today, returning July 6, 2009. I will not be posting during that time period but I will try my best to keep-up with comments though it will not be my first priority…

In the mean time, if you feel like a coffee break, you should check-out the new Adobe LiveCycle Café: It’s a really cool AIR app by Adobe that integrates all sorts of LiveCycle-related resources into one convenient dashboard. It even lets you tag content for offline use and store personal notes, online or offline.

You get a really nice News page:

A view of all LiveCycle-related blogs (showing mine in the image below):

(There’s even a tab that lets you switch between “Post Summary” and “Site” to see the article via the feed or the actual web page.)

Another really nice feature is the ability to search in one location across all Adobe LiveCycle resources. For instance, I searched for “assignNode” (a function to create data nodes in the Data DOM) and actually got a hit right in a LiveCycle reference document — very handy!

Enjoy the coffee!

The Adobe Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) has issued advance notification of pending Acrobat/Reader 7, 8 and 9 security updates to be released next Tuesday, June 9, 2009. This is the first in what will be regular, quarterly security updates as part of Adobe’s security initiatives.

Acrobat/Reader should be prompting you to install the update, as of next Tuesday, and since it covers critical security issues, you should definitely be applying it to your system.

Have you ever needed to create data nodes in the Data DOM on-the-fly? How about a need to parse XML obtained from a web service data connection in order to find a value for some property? If that’s the case, then you’ll find-out how to do it in this article.

Creating Data Nodes

In a similar article, John Brinkman showed how to create form variable nodes at runtime however what’s not obvious about data nodes is that you don’t create them using

a class name of your choice.

For example, say you wanted to create the following data node structure:

<custom>
    <message>Hello World!</message>
</custom>

Given the following syntax for the createNode() function (see page 367 in the LC Designer 8.2 Scripting Reference):

{model}.createNode(className [, name, namespace]);

you might try the following, using “custom” as the class name for the first group/container node <custom>:

var n = createNode("custom");

Doing the above would generate an error stating that “custom” is an invalid node type.

The trick here is that only specific XFA class names are allowed, such as “text”, “decimal”, “integer”, etc., as well as two special types for data nodes: “dataGroup” and “dataValue”. When you need a data node that will contain other data nodes, you use the “dataGroup” class. When you need a data node to which you will assign a value, you use the “dataValue” node.

The JavaScript code to create the above XML structure then becomes:

// <custom> data group to contain <message>
var c = xfa.datasets.createNode("dataGroup", "custom");
// <message> data value for "Hello World!"
var m = xfa.datasets.createNode("dataValue", "message");
// set value of data value node
m.value = "Hello World!";
// add <message> into <custom> data group node
c.nodes.append(m);
// print result to JavaScript Console (Ctrl + J in Acrobat)
console.println(c.saveXML("pretty"));

// output from above:

<custom>
    <message>Hello World!</message>
</custom>

Note that the createNode() function must be called on an object of type “model” and since we’re creating nodes in the Data DOM, we use the xfa.datasets object since it is a model object.

At this point, the <custom> node (and the nodes/values it contains) is not part of the Data DOM. To add it to the Data DOM so that it gets submitted with the rest of the form’s data, you would have to append it to a node inside the root subform (the top-most subform in the Hierarchy palette). For example, if your root subform’s name was “form1″, you would do the following to add the <custom> node to the form’s data:

xfa.datasets.data.form1.nodes.append(c);

This can be very useful. In fact, this technique is used in Correspondence Management letter template scripts to flag a selection list’s default selection as having been processed. Since the data merged into the list to print the letter based on the template may not match the default selection in the list, the scripts generate a special node directly in the Data DOM to indicate whether the list’s data value should be processed instead of its default selection (i.e. no need for a hidden checkbox field for each list, keeping the form/PDF file size down).

The “Custom Node Example” section in my sample form demonstrates the above technique.

Loading Data Nodes

Another use for creating data nodes is they give you the ability to load existing XML in order to parse it without having to modify the Data DOM. If you create a new, orphaned (un-parented) data group node, you can use its loadXML() function to load an XML string into it, thereby giving you a handy XML node structure for parsing.

One example use of this would be in a form that retrieves various settings from a web service data connection where the structure of the returned data is determined by the input parameters (i.e. you have a single data connection which you can use to retrieve various data). You can return the XML data as a string and load it into a new data group node in order to parse-out the value you’re looking for without ever touching the Data DOM.

Another example would be an extension of my URL Request article. In this case, you could pass some XML data into your form via the URL request if your PDF form was available on a website. Warning: This is a not a secure method to pass data to your form.

Clicking the following link will load some movie data into the “Movies loadXML() Example” section of my sample form:

CreateLoadDataNodes.pdf?data=%3Cmovies%3E%3Cmovie%3E%3Ctitle%3ENacho%20Libre%3C%2Ftitle%3E%3Ccost%3E21.00%3C%2Fcost%3E%3CactorName%3EJack%20Black%3C%2FactorName%3E%3CcatName%3EComedy%3C%2FcatName%3E%3C%2Fmovie%3E%3Cmovie%3E%3Ctitle%3EMI%3AI%3C%2Ftitle%3E%3Ccost%3E20.00%3C%2Fcost%3E%3CactorName%3ETom%20Cruise%3C%2FactorName%3E%3CcatName%3EAction%3C%2FcatName%3E%3C%2Fmovie%3E%3C%2Fmovies%3E

Finally, my sample form also has a handy “URI Encoding Tool” section which you can use to encode various strings to include in a website address (as above).

Samples

Download Sample [pdf]

Minimum Sample Requirements: I created this sample using Designer 8.2 and Acrobat 9 however it should work fine back to Acrobat 7.0.5.

There is also a great example on creating data nodes on page 438 of the LiveCycle Designer ES Scripting Reference for Designer 8.2 — an excellent XFA form scripting reference.

My friend John Brinkman has posted a really good list of handy form development and debugging tips. Check it out! These tips could save you a lot of time and effort. I use them all the time when I work on forms with Designer, Acrobat and LiveCycle Forms.

One other nice thing about console.println() for outputting debug information to the JavaScript Console in Acrobat is that these strings are also output to the Flash Log when you run form guides generated with LiveCycle ES Update 1 (8.2.1) using the Flash Debug Player. (The 3rd part of my MAX 2008 Tutorial series has details on how to set this up under the “Flash Log and Debug Players” section.)

Last Sunday I had the chance to participate in the premier Race Weekend of the Country: The Ottawa Race Weekend.

According to the pre-race announcer for the half marathon, about 37,000 runners from all over the world participated in the weekend’s races (2k, 5k, 10k, half, full) and over 100,000 spectators were expected to line the streets to watch and cheer during the events. That’s a big crowd!

I started training 5 days per week back on Feb 2, 2009. My goal was to complete the half marathon in 1:30:00. I was doing well during the first 10k, holding my 4:15 pace, however I started slowly fading afterward and finished with a respectable 1:36:54 official time. I learned a few things but I still had a great time and enjoyed the race! My official results are here.

Thumbs-up at Rideau and Sussex (about half way)

With my Finisher's Medal just outside Confederation Park

Updated: May 27, 2009

Adobe recently made available the 9.1.1 security patch. It is recommended that you install it to make sure you’re protected against the latest security issues.

This is a palette I haven’t used very much in the past however it contains a lot of useful tools for working on form layout. You can show it either by choosing “Window menu > Drawing Aids” or by double-clicking on one of the rulers.

I won’t go into details about the obvious, self-explanatory properties like “show grid” but there are some that deserve to be called-out since they do interesting things:

• Long Crosshairs: This is handy when you’re trying to align objects that are far apart and you don’t like using a lot of guide lines. Turn this on and you will have long crosshairs following your mouse around the canvas. Note that this is tied to visible rules so if only the vertical ruler is visible, you will only have a horizontal crosshair; if no rules are visible, you won’t have any crosshairs.
• Show Object Boundaries: Toggling this will show/hide the rectangle that’s displayed around every form object and choosing “Styles…” will give you a dialog where you can set colors for various object types.
• Units: This will set the units used in all palettes that have property values displayed as measurements. Set this to “Points” and all measurements will be in “pt” units. There are exceptions, however, like font size which is always displayed in points.
• Origin & Interval: Sets the origin and repeating interval for the grid, not the layout.
• Guideline Definitions: This is interesting because after adding guidelines (by dragging and dropping from the top left corner where the two rulers meet), you will always have a vertical and horizontal guideline but what if you only wanted the horizontal one? You can delete the associated vertical one here by removing it from the “Vertical” list.

Finally, there’s one last important detail to note: Almost all of these properties are form-specific which means you’ll have to set them for each new form you edit with the exception of “Show Object Boundaries” and associated style colors which are stored as an application setting and will affect all forms.

In order to have all forms use points and have particular initial guidelines, for example, you would have to edit the Designer Template file (TDS extension) which you use to create new forms with. By default, this is the Letter.tds file located in your “application settings” folder for Designer. On Vista it’s “%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Designer\{version}\EN\Templates\Blank” and on XP it should be “%USERPROFILE%\Adobe\Designer\{version}\EN\Templates\Blank”.

Did you know that you can specify the default data binding for new subforms in the “Tools menu > Options dialog > Data Binding panel”?

The default setting is “Normal” which means that all new subforms you insert from the Object Library with have their “Object palette > Binding tab > Default Binding property” set to “Normal” which means implicit binding using the subform’s name.

Setting this to “None” will result in all new subforms having a default binding of “None” which means they don’t participate in data binding by default. Since subforms are often needed purely for form layout, I find it’s safer to use this setting because I know inserting new subforms will not affect any bindings I have already setup in my form. (While it’s true that unnamed subforms don’t participate in data binding, I always name my subforms for clarity and scripting purposes so setting the binding to “None” ensures they don’t mess with data binding unless I want them to.)

The Adobe Forums have finally received a long-awaited update. Here are some of new feature highlights I was told about:

• Integration of Adobe ID for true single sign on to all Forums;
• Updated look and feel, more consistent with other forum systems;
• Email participation, including starting a new discussion and alerts; and
• RSS feeds for many parts of the forum (topics, users, announcements, etc.).

Rest assured, this does not change my blog mission, however if you have previously used the forums to search for other LiveCycle, Acrobat or Reader tips and tricks, it’ll make your life much easier!

The recent update to Acrobat/Reader 9.1 supports XFA 3.0. Unfortunately, the currently-shipping version of LiveCycle Designer (even with its update) won’t author/support more than XFA 2.8 until the next release. The comments for the XFA 3.0 spec indicate that “there will be releases [of LiveCycle Form Server and LiveCycle Designer] for XFA 3.1 and they will also handle 3.0.”

There are still some great things worth mentioning about XFA 3.0. In particular,

• new “inactive” value for the presence attribute which, when set on a container (e.g. subform), “prevents the container and its contents from processing calculations, validations, and events”;
• enhancements to events framework now permits event propagation upward to parent objects — this is great because you can now implement validation code on a subform for all of its children instead of having validation code in each child, for example;
• new validation events and global validation handling control — this should address a lot of the current issues with form validation.

It looks like John Brinkman will be detailing these new features, and perhaps others, soon.