Form Metadata

Some of the fields that appear on a rendered form are declared in the form spec in an element called FormMetaData. FormMetaData comes from the bb_appfx_commontypes namespace and it is used in multiple specs. When you create a new Add Data Form with the SDK wizard, the stubbed out FormMetaData section looks like this:

  <common:FormMetaData>
    <common:FormFields>
      <common:FormField FieldID="FIELD1"
                        Caption="Field 1"
                        DataType="String"
                        MaxLength="10" />
      <common:FormField FieldID="FIELD2"
                        Caption="Field 2"
                        DataType="String"
                        MaxLength="20" />
      <common:FormField FieldID="FIELD3"
                        Caption="Field 3"
                        DataType="String" />
    </common:FormFields>
  </common:FormMetaData>

There are three fields in this example, each of DataTypeString. With stored procedure data forms, the fields correspond to parameters on the stored procedure. With CLR data forms, the fields correspond to public fields on the class. Each of the field definitions are contained in a FormFields element. The FormField element is discussed in the next section.

In addition to FormFields, FormMetaData can contain FieldGroups, Tabs, UIFields, UIActions, UIFields, FormUIComponent, and WebUIComponent.