An Approach for Totally Dynamic Forms Processing in Web-Based Applications

This paper presents an approach for dynamically generating and processing user input form variants from metadata stored in a database. Many web-based applications utilize a series of similar looking input forms as a basis for capturing information from users, such as for surveys, cataloging, etc. Typical approaches for form generation utilize static HTML pages or dynamic pages generated programmatically via scripts. Our approach generates totally dynamic forms (including page controls, presentation layout, etc.) using only metadata that has been previously defined in relational tables. This significantly reduces the amount of custom software that typically needs to be developed to generate and process form variants.