Project 10.15
Data Input Forms
In this project, you will write a Java application that processes
XML files containing information about data input forms.
The Java application takes as command line input an XML file name/URL and
produces as output the following four files:
- An HTML file that contains code to display the data
input form on a browser. The HTML code must include Javascript to perform some
basic validation such as data type checking for text box input.
- An Oracle SQL or MySQL script file that contains create table statements
to create relational table(s) that can accept data submitted from
the data input form.
- A Java servlet or PhP source file containing code to process data
submitted by the user using the data input form. The program should
simply insert the data into the database table(s).
- A Java servlet or PhP source file that contains code to display contents of the
database in tabular form.
Data Input Forms
A data input form consists of one or more form elements that is capable
of accepting input from a user. We shall consider 7 types of form elements:
textbox, submit, reset, check box, radio buttons,
select list, and multiple select list. Each of these form elements except
for submit and reset has a datatype (integer, decimal, or string) associated
with it. If a datatype is not provided, string would be assumed as the default
data type.
If a data input form contains at least one multiselect form element or
a check box group of two or more check boxes,
one or more of the remaining (single valued) form elements must be classified as
key elements. This is to facilitate creating a separate relational table for
storing the multiple select values.
The data input form is described in XML. Some sample forms are shown below:
Some comments on the XML schema for data input forms:
- Every data input form must have a title element which must have
a caption sub-element. The id attribute of the root element is ignored.
- Following the title element, the data input form may have one or
more form elements which can be one of 7 form element types described earlier.
- Any number of break elements may be present between form elements
or between the different options in a check box group or radio button group.
- The textbox element must have at least
the name, caption, and maxlength sub-elements; the size sub-element
is optional.
- The checkboxes element must contain a name, caption, and checkboxgroup sub-elements.
Within the checkboxgroup element, we may have one or more checkbox element each with
a value and caption sub-element. The checkbox element may have an optional attribute
called status whose value is always "checked".
- The radiobutton element is similar to checkboxes.
- The select element has a name, caption, and options sub-elements.
The options element has one or more option sub-elements, each of which has a value and
caption sub-element.
- The multiselect element is similar to the select element except that it has an
additional sub-element, size, which indicates the size of the select window.
Semantic Checks
Your XML parser program should check for semantic errors such as
form element without a name or caption,
more than one form element having the same name, data type mis-match, etc. and report these.
No output is generated in this case.