Learning from existing components

Finding existing components

A good thing to do is to look at existing components:

  • If you are working with the Orbeon Forms sources, they are located under:
  • If you are working with a binary distribution:
    • unzip orbeon-resources-private.jar
    • the components are under the xbl directory

The "meat" of most components is in files ending with the .xbl extension.

Creating your own component

  • create a new xbl directory under your RESOURCES directory
  • create a directory with your company or project name (e.g. acme; Orbeon uses orbeon)
  • create directory with your new component name (e.g. cool-stuff)
  • create a new XBL file with the same name in that directory, e.g. cool-stuff.xbl
  • so you should have: xbl/acme/cool-stuff/cool-stuff.xbl

Then:

  • copy into your XBL file the content of a simple existing component, like xbl/orbeon/tutorial-simple/tutorial-simple.xbl
  • modify the binding rule (fr|tutorial-simple) into something that matches your component name (fr|cool-stuff)
  • within an XForms page
    • declare xmlns:fr="http://orbeon.org/oxf/xml/form-runner"
    • use the control with something like: <fr:cool-stuff ref="my-node">
    • when running your XForms page, you should see an upload field appear!

NOTE: In your own components, you should not use the fr: namespace, but instead you should use your own namespace to avoid naming conflicts.