What is XForms?
The design of the current web form cannot be separated from the destination or purpose of the form from the representation of the form, however XForms, composed of separate units that separately describe form behavior and style, which allows flexible expression selection, including classic XHTML forms, attached to XML form definition.
The following illustration shows how XForms Model defines a single independent XML form and how to handle a variety of standards or private user interfaces:
The XForms user interface provides standard sets for replacing the visual controls of the current XHTML form control, which can be used directly in XHTML and other XML documents (such as SVG). Other groups, such as Voice Browser Working Group, can also develop XForms user interfaces independently.
An important concept of XForms is that form collection data, called XML Instance Data, XForms Model describes the structure of Instance Data. Through Instance Data, like XML, form supports expanding structured exchange data, workflow, automatic fill, and pre-filled form application.
Finally, there must be an Instance Data channel connection data stream and XForms processor, so XForms Submit Protocol defines how XForms will send and receive data, including the ability to hang and recover forms.
The following graph summarizes the main structure of XForms:
