Newbie Questions

Re: Repeating Section that pulls from SharePoint and also accepts user input

Hilary Stoupa — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 12:02:06 GMT

Hi:

Most controls on a form are bound to data source fields, whether in the main data source or in a secondary data source. Buttons, expression boxes and hyperlinks are exceptions...

But it isn't like Windows Form development -- you can't really programatically create a control. If, for example, you have a repeating table on a form that is bound to a repeating group called "Tasks", if you programatically add nodes to the Tasks group, your table will have more rows on your form.

If the questions you want are on SharePoint, you may want to copy the data from your SharePoint data source into your main data source (I'll quickly suggest you give qRules a try -- then you wouldn't have to write any code at all). That way your questions and answers are stored in the form's XML when it is saved.

Here are some other resources that may help you:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa946563(VS.80).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa945227(VS.80).aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2007/03/09/infopath-2007-training-labs.aspx

Re: Repeating Section that pulls from SharePoint and also accepts user input

rZ3A8zj8neCW3K — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:51:53 GMT

So I did some more searching and it appears as though I can add controls to a page, but they need to be "backed" by the InfoPath schema. As i understand this as long as the information exists somewhere (SharePoint data connection, XML, etc) you can create a control programatically.

Are there any resources you know of to help me out?

How do I programatically traverse the repeating group nodes? My thinking is:

I create an XML document that has one node for every answer
I create a repeating group on the page
Programatically I traverse through all the answers, in one instance of the repeating group I add teh text boxes for all my questions (read only)
Once the question information is in this instance of the repeating group, I can then add the YES / NO control which is tried to my XML document.

My issue is finding code examples, or a good API. This is the major hurdle with InfoPath developement for me. Some languages, like Java, a 5 minute google gives you infinite information :(

I have included an image of my form for your reference. Everything here works (e.g. pulling info off SP)

http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/9919/exformrz3a8zj8necw3k.png

Re: Repeating Section that pulls from SharePoint and also accepts user input

rZ3A8zj8neCW3K — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:47:57 GMT

It appears as though what I want to do isn't entirely possible. I was attempting this the other day and, although a learned a lot about the c# side of InfoPath, I stumbled upon this:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointinfopath/thread/b98a39e2-d0ce-458a-93bf-66e7f991b9bb

It claims that it is not possible (or next to impossible) to dynamically add controls to the page programmatically (e.g. a text field, or radio button)

How valid is their claim?

Re: Repeating Section that pulls from SharePoint and also accepts user input

rZ3A8zj8neCW3K — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:56:50 GMT

Thanks for the help, my issue that I am having is not with submitting data to the SharePoint, or pulling data off the SharePoint.

My problem is associating input controls with a question.

Each "repeating section" is effectively one row in the SharePoint list. I get pieces of data (e.g. Question #, Question Title, Question Body) and map them to fields in the form (text fields for all three questions). In that repeating section I now want to have a drop-down, or radio buttons, so the user can select either YES or NO to answer that particular question.

My problem is adding those buttons to the repeating section, it continually says I can't add a singleton field into a repeating section, but any attempt to map that input field to a repeating table or value does not function as I would like it to.

Is my only recourse to pull all of the nodes off the SharePoint site (in code), and construct a form manually?

Re: Repeating Section that pulls from SharePoint and also accepts user input

Patrick Halstead — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:49:22 GMT

Hi rZ3A8zj8neCW3K,

We get asked this question a lot in many different forms and it's why we have developed the qRules library (free trial now available - see ads on top and bottom). qRules 2.1 supports pushing data to SharePoint lists from an InfoPath form. You can also use it to pull data from a SharePoint list and copy the contents to your main data source.

The other approach would be to use SQL. We have developed many data-driven survey solutions that leverage SQL to pull questions in and push answers out. Versioning is key in those solutions. At any rate, if you have access to SQL, you should use it. SharePoint lists have limitations.

Happy trails!

Repeating Section that pulls from SharePoint and also accepts user input

rZ3A8zj8neCW3K — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:31:37 GMT

Hello,

Here is my problem:

I have a list in sharepoint that has X many items. In InfoPath I want to generate a dynamic row that pulls down all those items from the SharePoint list and populates the text values for each row into a repeating section. An example is below in text:

Question #: 1.0
Question: Is your favourite colour blue?
Answer: [Yes] [No]

Question #: 1.1
Question: Is the sky blue?
Answer: [Yes] [No]

so the question # and question are pulled off SharePoint.

I am unable to bind the drop-down, or radio buttons, that I attempt to use for the YES/NO portion. I cannot bind user input inside of a repeating section to another repeating table.

Eventually what I want to do is have a master table I generate, when a user fills a form out and hits submit it pushes this information to the table:

Form Version, Question 1 answer, Question 2 answer... if a column for a question doesnt exist it's created, and the form version helps track what the questions are

I can't capture this user input... I'm comfortable coding but I need some direction first. I've done the second part (submitting answers to a List) with the exception of checking to see if a column exists and if not creating it.

Thanks for the help, I've looked around here and on google, I've posted elsewhere but a lot of the questions here seem advanced so hopefully what I've asked makes sense and there's an easy fix!