InfoPath Dev

Ahhh.  I see now.  I was looking at it so much I missed the "my".  Thanks, Hilary, again.  You're a wiz.  It works like a charm now.

 Cheers!

Ah ha! I had the namespace wrong in my first reply - we want "my" not ns1. :)

Jinx - we figured it out at the same time - again, I had it wrong in my reply too, didn't even notice it till I compared the XPath side by side.

Hi Hilary,

 New problem: I've set the number of default instances to 25.  There are 9 questions in this particular XML file, so it (successfully) submits 9 questions and 16 blank items.  How do I set it to only submit the 9?

 Thanks again.

Submits where? Are you also submitting to a SharePoint list or something?

Yes, sorry, you can't read my mind?  :)

Using QRules SubmitToSharePointList; it's about the 6th project I've used it on and I love it.  However, I've got an XML data source that may have up to 25 questions in it (I'm using http://[server]/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List=[Guid]&XMLDATA=TRUE applied toa view of a list as my dataconnection). 

You can modify the repeating group in the mapping file to include an XPath filter - so if the repeating group is:

/my:UATForm/my:QuestionsGroup/my:Questions

You would change it to:

/my:UATForm/my:QuestionsGroup/my:Questions[my:Question != ""]

Make sense?

Yes, but that involves a static xml file, which this isn't.  

 I may just write a workflow that looks at the new item and deletes it forthwith if 2 particular columns are both blank. 

I must be confused. I thought the issue was with SubmitToSharePointList and that your blank questions were being written to the list. What I've suggested would be a change to your mapping that is used for that command that would prevent blank questions from being submitted.

Yep, got that, and I will add that to the static saved xml file if my dynamic XML-fetching experiment doesn't work as well as I hope. 

My blank questions from the questions list, that are being plugged into the form, are being written to the Responses list.  I was hoping to allow additional questions to be added to the questions list after user acceptance testing has commenced.  If I have a static xml file, I would have to edit that manually to add the new questions.  If I have a dynamic xml file, I can't know ahead of time how many instances of the Questions repeating group I'll need in the form.  I guess I can't have it both ways. 

I was hoping you'd have a magic method.

I am not explaining at all well.

I am simply trying to prevent you from submitting your blank questions in your main data source to your SharePoint List by changing the mapping file (that qRules uses for SubmitToSharePointList) to not include them. I'm not suggesting any modifications to the XML that provides your questions (which is, I think, what you are talking about when you say "static saved xml file").

However, since you are using qRules, instead of having 25 instances of the Questions node in your main data source by default, you could just use qRules Insert and add as many as you need.

Ohhhhh, duh.  I had the OTHER xml file in my head, not the mapping one, although you did say "mapping" several times.  Thanks for your patience.

 I'm not familiar with qRules Insert.  I'll investigate it.

 Thanks Hilary!