xdp2xsd

Solving the problem of creating schemas for your LiveCycle business forms

"xdp to xsd" is a node.js command line utility that converts xdp (Adobe XFA forms) to xsd (xml schema).

Usage

$ node xdp2xsd business_form.xdp > business_form.xsd

Current limitations (see Issues...)

• Every field transforms into xsd:String
• No support for fragments with local overrides of forms/subforms
• xsd is generated inline, i.e. no types/references. I find this more readable, meaning I won't fix it.
• No master page fields yet
• No support for explicit bindings (ref="...")

There's also an option found in the top of xdp.js: STRICT_BINDING [false]: Say you have a LiveCycle process that accepts xml data, which will eventually be merged with an xdp business form. As a consumer of that service, you probably expect being able to skip certain fields (or entire subforms for that matter) and settle for data binding of the sloppier kind.

A note on forms using fragments: make sure you apply unambiguous naming to fragments, or you will have a form repository maintenance nightmare once you start adding, removing or reordering fragments in the fragment file. (If you keep it to one fragment per fragment file, this shouldn't be an issue.) xdp2xsd does support fragment "array" references like 'form.customer_fragment[3]', but I encourage you to avoid this naming convention.

xdp2xsd uses log4js, hence you should find a xdp2xsd.log in the root directory. A tip is to do:

`$ tail -f xdp2xsd.log'

in a separate term during the conversion.

To-do

Other than the issue section:

• Clean up
• Write tests

Written by Christian Lagerkvist.

License

MIT