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FormsAssistant v1.7.2 released

Posted by admin on October 15, 2008 in forms, news

I have just uploaded a minor upgrade to FormsAssistant. This version solves a problem that has been recently been brought to our attention; FormsAssistant would give an error if entering an empty string as the value of any field. The new version does not cause an error. As usual, you can get the latest version on the download page.

Why would you like to use an empty string?

Even though this was an easy to spot bug on FormsAssistant, we never encountered this error. Why? Because our forms always require all fields to be filled in. When we include a field in one of our forms, the field is meant to be filled in with some relevant information. But of course, your needs might be different. The user that has reported the error to us has given not one, but two different scenarios in which you might want to leave a field empty:

1. Optional fields: The most obvious case is when fields correspond to different options which might or might not be present in the final document. Consider for example a form used to construct an insurance contract. The insurance can cover many different items, but not all items will be covered in all cases. Hence, some “options” will not be filled in each particular contract.
2. Conditional fields: A field will only be used if another one has been already been used. Using the same insurance example, if the insurance includes some item, then there is an option that should be filled-in.

Using optional fields in FormsAssistant

The first case, optional fields, is perfectly covered with the current implementation of FormsAssistant. Simply leave empty the options that are not needed. A template with options, therefore will include some fields like these:

• [Option 1]
• [Option 2]
• [Option 3]

Using conditional fields in FormsAssistant

The use of conditional fields is a different kind of animal. There is one field, [Condition] that should trigger a different set of fields depending on the value entered for the [Condition] field. In its current implementation, FormsAssistant can manage the task, constructing the conditional part of the form template in the following manner (again using the insurance example): [Condition] [OptionA 1|Use if condition is "Car"][OptionB 1|Use if condition is "House"][OptionC 1|Use if condition is "Business"] [OptionA 2|Use if condition is "Car"][OptionB 2|Use if condition is "House"][OptionC 2|Use if condition is "Business"] I agree that this approach requires form templates harder to maintain and prone to errors when filling in the form. For that reason, I have added to the features list of FormsAssistant 2 a better treatment of conditional fields.