I have been hard at training for a half marathon since I last ran in the Ottawa Race Weekend (OK, I took a week off after that race, but don’t tell anyone!) I had been targeting the Fall Colours run since it’s a good course, not too crowded, the temperature is usually just perfect (starts-out around 9C/48F and warms-up to around 14C/57F) and the leafs have turned to gorgeous colours on Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.
This year, however, I’ll be attending the Adobe MAX 2009 Conference the week prior to that race so I decided to set my sights on the second annual Army Run. It would be dangerous to plan to run right after a business trip since I don’t know what shape I’ll be in when I return.
My goal is still to break 1 hour 30 minutes for my half marathon time. I usually don’t attempt to raise funds for the races I do but the Army Run is in support of injured soldiers and military families from the Canadian Army which I think deserves our support. If you would like to sponsor me for this event to help raise some funds (which go directly to the organizations, not myself), here’s the link:
Posted by Stefan Cameron on August 24th, 2009
Filed under
General
I regularly use the saveXML() method, available on all node class-based objects, as a way to debug my forms (think of it as a type of introspection technique). The method outputs a string representation of the XML content of the node in question, which helps when attempting to discover the underlying object structure without a debugger…
For example, say you have a simple form with a text field and a numeric field. The following statement will output the form’s data to the JavaScript Console in Acrobat:
console.println(xfa.datasets.data.saveXML());
The result, however, isn’t very readable:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xfa:data xmlns:xfa="http://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-data/1.0/"
><form1
><TextField1
>asdf</TextField1
><NumericField1
>1234</NumericField1
></form1
></xfa:data
>
Though I had been using saveXML() for quite some time, I hadn’t realized that it actually takes an optional parameter, a string with a value of “pretty”, that results in much nicer output.
console.println(xfa.datasets.data.saveXML('pretty'));
results in the following pretty/readable output:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xfa:data xmlns:xfa="http://www.xfa.org/schema/xfa-data/1.0/">
<form1>
<TextField1>asdf</TextField1>
<NumericField1>1234</NumericField1>
</form1>
</xfa:data>
Posted by Stefan Cameron on August 19th, 2009
Filed under
Debugging,
Scripting,
Tips
Steve, on the LC Designer Team, has posted a good introduction to LC Designer ES2‘s Action Builder feature. This feature is going to be very useful, especially if you’re not comfortable with writing scripts and need to get some basic but powerful logic to function properly. Actions will take care of it all for you so that you don’t have to write a line of code!
Check-out more posts on Actions and the Action Builder feature:
Aug 10, 2009 — Added links to more Action Builder posts from the LC Designer Team.
Aug 31, 2009 — Added links to more Action Builder posts from the LC Designer Team.
Posted by Stefan Cameron on August 6th, 2009
Filed under
Designer,
Scripting
In previous tutorials, I have shown how to connect an XFA form to a database and a web service. Next on the list is the XML Schema (XSD).
If you work in an enterprise setting, chances are you may have already had to deal with corporate data schemas that define how that data is structured. The goal, when connecting a form to a schema, is to ensure that the data consumed and output by the form adheres to a specific structure. Any fields bound to data nodes that aren’t inside the schema space are basically ignored at time of submission.
Continue reading…
Posted by Stefan Cameron on August 3rd, 2009
Filed under
Data Binding,
Designer,
FormCalc,
Instance Manager,
Tutorials,
XFA
The third service pack for LiveCycle ES Update 1 (updating to version 8.2.1.3) has just been released. This update, as with previous service packs, is only available to those who have a support agreement. If you do, you should contact Adobe in order to get access to the downloads.
There aren’t any major improvements to LC Designer in this update, aside from a few bug fixes. The really good stuff is coming soon with the pending release of LiveCycle ES2, presently in Beta.
Posted by Stefan Cameron on July 28th, 2009
Filed under
Designer,
LiveCycle
