martijndevisser.com

FForm alpha released

Monday 15 December 2003  –  Filed under: Flash  –  1 Comment

As I wrote earlier, I created a simple flash based engine called FForm to parse an xml file into a Flash based form. Much like Macromedia’s FLEX, albeit much simpler and client side instead of server side. The form elements allow for very dynamic forms that react on user input by showing and hiding child elements. I am now releasing the first alpha version of FForm to the public to play with.

I had the following in mind while creating FForm:

• It had to be lightweight.
• I wanted it to be flexible and extensible.

The main idea behind FForm, is that you can specify (nested) form elements, which are shown or hidden based on user input. So, for example, a checkbox could have three input fields as it’s children. The input fields aren’t shown, until the user enables the checkbox. That way, you can easily create expanding and contracting forms, dynamically reacting on user input.

The following documentation is currently available:

• FForm class (includes xml specification)
• FFormElement (component base class)
• FFormCheckBox (checkbox component)
• FFormRadioButton (radiobutton component)
• FFormLabel (non-editable text labels)
• FFormInput (basic input field component)

As you can see, I’ve created four components for use with FForm, but you can also add your own components. Just use the base class I provided, or create your own components. The only important thing is that your component implements a getter / setter pair to manipulate the ‘.value’ property of the component through the FForm engine.

I won’t go into too much detail for now, just checkout the sample, download the source files (including documentation), and, most importantly, let me know what you think of it. Improvements, additions and comments are welcome!

This example is less than 17kb and includes the engine itself, 4 components and an embedded font (FFF Harmony).

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