XForms/Search Amazon

Motivation

Here is an example web service provided by Amazon. It also uses the custom control to bind images from the output to the screen.

Screen Image

Link to XForms Application

Load Form

Sample Program

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
   xmlns:xf="http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms"
   xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema-instance"
   xmlns:ev="http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events">
<head>
   <title>Searching Amazon</title>
   <xf:model id="mQuery">

         <xf:instance id="iQuery">
            <instanceData xmlns="">
               <t>webservices-20</t>
               <!-- please get your own key for any production work -->
               <dev-t>D1723OX2631XW0</dev-t>
               <KeywordSearch>xforms</KeywordSearch>
               <mode>books</mode>
               <type>lite</type>
               <page>1</page>
               <f>xml</f>
            </instanceData>
         </xf:instance>

         <xf:instance id="iResults">
            <instanceData xmlns=""/>
         </xf:instance>

         <xf:bind id="bndResults" nodeset="instance('iResults')/Details"/>

         <xf:submission
          id="subAmazonQuery"
          action="http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3"
          method="get"
          separator="&amp;"
          ref="instance('iQuery')"
          replace="instance"
          instance="iResults"
          omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>

         <xf:submission
          id="subTestAmazonQuery"
          action="http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3"
          method="get"
          separator="&amp;"
          ref="instance('iQuery')"
          replace="all"/>
      </xf:model>

      <!--Mozilla XForms Custom Control for binding images from results -->
    <bindings id="xformsBindings"
         xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/xbl"
         xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
      <binding id="output-image"
          extends="chrome://xforms/content/xforms.xml#xformswidget-base">
         <content>
           <html:div>
             <html:img anonid="content" style="margin-right: 5px;"/>
           </html:div>
         </content>
         <implementation implements="nsIXFormsUIWidget">
            <method name="refresh">
                <body>
                  var img = document.getAnonymousElementByAttribute(this, "anonid", "content");
                  img.setAttribute("src", this.stringValue);
                  return true;
                </body>
           </method>
         </implementation>
      </binding>
    </bindings>
    <style type="text/css">
      @namespace xf url(http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms);
      body {
         font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif;
      }
      <!-- Bind the custom control to output with class="image" -->
      xf|output.image {
        -moz-binding: url('#output-image');
      }
      </style>
   </head>
   <body>
   <h1>Search Amazon With XForms Web Service</h1>
           <xf:input ref="KeywordSearch">
              <xf:label>Search string: </xf:label>
           </xf:input>
           <hr/>
           <xf:submit submission="subAmazonQuery">
              <xf:label>Search Amazon</xf:label>
           </xf:submit>
           <xf:submit submission="subTestAmazonQuery">
              <xf:label>Show results as XML</xf:label>
           </xf:submit>
           <xf:repeat bind="bndResults">
              <xf:output class="image" value="ImageUrlSmall"/>
              <xf:trigger appearance="minimal" style="cursor: hand;">
                  <xf:output ref="ProductName"><xf:label>Title: </xf:label></xf:output>
                  <br/>
                  <xf:output ref="Authors/Author"><xf:label>Author: </xf:label></xf:output>
                 <xf:load ev:event="DOMActivate" ref="@url" show="new"/>
              </xf:trigger>
              <br/>
              <hr/>
           </xf:repeat>
   </body>
</html>

Discussion

Note: If you get the following error:

XML Parsing Error: not well-formed
Line Number 33, Column 23:
          separator="&"

You will have to remember to escape the ampersand before after you copy and paste this example into your text editor. You can get around this by doing a copy from the edit panel or just putting the following into the separator field:

separator="&amp;"

References

This program was based on an example provided by formsPlayer [1].

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