I have written a simple process which highlights the steps needed to pre populate a drop down list in a PDF form. The link below takes you to a PDF document which has the custom component,process xml,xdp used for rendering.
pre-populate-drop-down-list
Let me know if you need any help/clarifications on the process
LiveCycle LifeLine Weblog 
Girish,
Could you tell me two things:
1. In live cycle , how to bind the xml as input data for a particular form. I created a .xml, .dtd, .xsd files for a form. Tried to use”New Data Connection ” menu, But the fields are not getting populated.
2. What is the best way to bind the xml files with the forms without intervension of the user or admin. So if you have 100 forms, you create 100 xml data files and those should be picked up dynamically by the form when run.
I would appreciate your help . Thanks and Regards.
Girish,
Is there any other way to process the XML document returned by the Query Multiple Rows service – i.e. is there no way to directly bind the XML document to a table on the form, or more simply to store the XML document in a text field on the form and then parse the XML in the form load event?
Hi Jeff
Do you want to populate the drop down list after the
user has opened the form in workspace?
thanks
girish
In this case it’s a report that I’m trying to create and not a drop down list (there are some conceptual similarities which is why I’m looking at your code). What I’ve managed to do so far is run a DB Query from within the workflow (after the user submits and initial query form) and to store the results of the query in a form text field before assigning the form back to the creator. The only problem so far is that when I assign the XML document to the text field, all of the elements get removed – I end up with just the raw data from the query result appended together in one huge long string. Ideally I’d like to get the XML document as a string which I could then parse in the form load (once its assinged back to the user). Is there some way to prevent the tags getting removed?
Just to clarify the above, when I test my query in Workbench I get an XML document back with data like:
name=”Jeff”
title=”Analyst”
…
But what I get back in my form is JeffAnalyst… i.e. all the tags are eliminated.
I am pre-populating my dropdownlist on initialize as so:
// add names and email addresses to the “To” dropdown list
var recipientList = new Array(new Array(”John”, “john@asdf.com”), new Array(”Lisa”, “lisa@asdf.com”),
new Array(”Paul”, “paul@adsf.com”), new Array(”Steve”, “steve@adsf.com”), new Array(”Tracy”, “tracy@asdf.com”));
DropDownList1.clearItems();
for (var i = 0; i < recipientList.length; i++)
{
DropDownList1.addItem(recipientList[i][0], recipientList[i][1]);
}
From this example, How can I retrieve the email id from the unseen 2nd column of Dropdroplist for item selected.
Thanks for any help.
What’s the password on the XDP? I can’t open it in Designer.
Thanks,
Alain.
Please disregard the last comment … thanks!
Girish,
This is an awesome example. I am unable to save the simpleutilities.jar file from your pdf.
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
John