Chapter 4, Exchanging Data Between an External Application
and a Basic XFA Form
XFA Specification
Creating, Updating, and Unloading a Basic XFA Data DOM
122
section (and in the corresponding sections within the "“Extended
each
excludes more content from the document range. The order that the data loader applies the rules is as
follows:
1.
“XML Logical Structures”:
Constrain the document range to a limited set of XML logical structures.
2.
“Start Element”:
Additionally constrain the document range to the document content within a
specified element.
3.
“Namespaces”:
Additionally constrain the document range to a set of content belonging to a set of
XML namespaces.
4.
“Record Elements”:
Partition the document range into records enclosed within specified elements.
XML Logical Structures
An XML data document is comprised of a number of physical and logical structures (see the XML
specification [XML] for more information on logical and physical structures).
The document range is constrained to a range of document content not greater than the content that
corresponds to the following logical structures:
●
●
●
●
●
elements with character data
elements with element content
elements with mixed content
empty elements
attributes
This means that XML processing instructions, for example, are not included in the document range.
Start Element
The notion of a
start element
represents the element where the XFA data handling processing begins, and
consequently the end of the element determines where processing ends; the start element is a way to
specify that a particular element within the XML data document actually represents the root of the
document.
By default the start element corresponds to the root element (also known as the document element) of
the XML data document (see section 2.1 "Well-Formed XML Documents" of the XML specification [XML] for
more information on the root element). Therefore, the data loader by default maps the content of the
document beginning with the root element inclusively.
The document range is constrained to a range of document content not greater than that specified by the
start element.
Consider the following XML data document:
<order>
<number>1</number>
<shipto>
<reference><customer>c001</customer></reference>
</shipto>
<contact>Tim Bell</contact>
<date><day>14</day><month>11</month>
<year>1998</year></date>