InfoPath Dev

I have an InfoPath Form template that I have been working on where I want to use a dynamci URL in the data connection wizard.  

For example, I have a data connection that is receiving the items in a SharePoint list and populating those items in a drop down in the IP form.  I have done this by using the data connection wizard, and then typing in the URL of the list to create the connection.  However, what I am trying to do is to use a URL that is located in a field on the IP form as the URL for the data connection. 

 Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 

Hi MCorban and welcome,

Two options:

1. Write some code that reads the field with the URL and creates the data connection - this is like $50-75 worth of consulting (~20-30 minutes for us). You might be able to spend an hour or two doing it yourself. Go to Qdabra.com->Products->Support, if you want us to do it and then send us your XSN.
2. Use a Web Service that takes the URL as a parameter (similar to #1 but not in the form so more than one form template can use it). We provide a free Web Service trial that you can use called WSSP to try this. Go to Qdabra.com->Products and you can download it. Lots of documentation too.

That's all I can think of. You could look at UDC files but those are for deployment independence, not for doing dynamic changes based on form data. You could also look at storing the URL in an XML file (as a separate submit and read), but this will require code anyway to create the connection, so same as #1.

Hi Patrick

Thanks for the info.  I have been reading over the information for WSSP on your website.  Could you let me know if the following could be done with this product. 

 1. Use a particular view from a document library to collapses the folder structure to populate a drop down list.  I can do this using XML but it only works with SP lists. 

2. Query a Sharepoint List or Doc Library but pass a parameter based on a value on the form. 

3. Submit the IP form to a certain folder in a forms library based on the value of a field.

If you could also let me know of any of features that this product does that would be appreciated. 

 Thanks

Hi Matthew,

1. When setting up a data connection to a SharePoint list, InfoPath uses the default.aspx view. If that view is limited to only display the first 100 items, that's all it will download. Obviously, you can't dynamically send a parameter to SharePoint to have it filter the view and provide a custom view when you go to query it. That's what WSSP does. It takes a parameter, calls SharePoint methods and returns a filtered list of items.

2. I think I answered this as part of #1. Basically, if there was a way to do this, we wouldn't have created WSSP. :) You can query all items in the ShP List/Library and then filter client side. No Web service or code required for that, but if you have a lot of data, the performance will be terrible and it won't scale. Once again, that's why we created WSSP.

3. Our DBXL Web Service Suite allows conditional submit to SharePoint library based on value in the form. You can have multiple form libraries (for example, for geographically disperse sites) and conditionally copy to those sites based on value in the form. Without DBXL, you could do this by writing code in your InfoPath form but you'd have to hardcode the SharePoint forms libraries and for each XSN form template, you'd have to copy the same code. Better to do it in the middle-tier, i.e. a web service. That's why we added that feature to DBXL v2.3 last year... :)

Lots and lots of features. You can go to our Qdabra.com site and click on Products and read more.