Understanding dynamic content in forms

GoLive lets you bind any of the form fields to a content source field so that when the form is displayed, a value or values from a particular record in the content source will be displayed. In addition, you can define a form action to be performed when a Submit button is clicked on the form. This action may create a new record in a database, update one or more existing records, create a blank form to be filled in, or perform some other action.

Building Web applications that include forms and form actions requires you to design the flow of the application; that is, what pages the user will use in order to accomplish a task. For example, an e-commerce Web site may require a user to select items to purchase, go to a check-out page and fill in order information, go to a payment page and fill in more information, and finally go to a confirmation page to complete the order. Each of these pages may have form, form elements, and buttons with form actions.

Each form action can succeed or fail. GoLive lets you specify a different page as the successor page depending on whether the form action succeeds or fails. If the action fails, the content source may return error information that can be used on the page to show, for example, which form fields have illegal values. Not all content sources return error information. The Adobe Custom Merchant content sources do return error information. The basic database content sources do not return error information. Custom content sources can be defined, and these can be implemented to return error information.

You can use the Diagram feature of GoLive to help design the site and flow of the application. This will help you graphically visualize the paths a viewer may take in using the pages of your site. (See About design diagrams.)