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Submitting to 'this' document library

  • Article

Have you ever needed to develop an InfoPath form template that submits back to a SharePoint document library but you did not initially know the server or library name when developing the form? Or have a scenario where your InfoPath form template could be published (or added as a content type) to multiple SharePoint document libraries and you need the submit location to be dynamic? Well read on to find out how you can do this!

When you create an InfoPath form template that needs to be able to submit to a SharePoint document library, you need to specify that connection in the initial design of the form template. However, at run time you can use managed code to determine the server and library name where the form was launched and then modify the “FolderUrl” property of the submit data connection so the form is submitted to the appropriate library.

So let’s get started setting up this sample. The C# walkthrough below uses the new InfoPath 2007 managed object model; below, you will find attached the same logic implemented in InfoPath 2003 managed object model and in InfoPath 2003 JScript.

Step 1: Create a sample InfoPath Form Template

Create a browser-compatible form template as following:

  1. Add 3 text box controls, all with a data type of text, named as follows: strFormURL, strLocation and strFolderName
  2. Add a “Submit” data connection named “Main submit”:
    • Set the document library name to a dummy SharePoint document library (i.e. http://server/dummyLib)
    • Use the concat function to concatenate the strFolderName field and _Test for the File Name property: concat(my:strFolderName, "_Test")
    • Enable the Allow overwrite if file exists property
  3. Set the Security Level of the form to Full Trust and sign the form template with a digital certificate
  4. Enable the Submit functionality (Tools | Submit Options) and choose the “Perform custom action using code” option

Now that we have the form, controls and submit functionality, let’s add the code to make this process work:

 

Step 2: Add the code

  • Click the Edit Code button on the Submit Options dialog
  • Create the following FormState Dictionary object – this will be used to store the form’s location when the form is initially opened:

private object _strUri
{
   get { return FormState["_strUri"];
   set { FormState["_strUri"] = value; }
}

 

  • Add the following code to the Forms Loading event:

     

// Get the Uri (or SaveLocation in a browser form) of where
// the form was opened.
// See if the form was opened in the browser

Boolean OpenedInBrowser = Application.Environment.IsBrowser; 

// If so, we will get the "SaveLocation" from the InputParameters

if (OpenedInBrowser)
   _strUri = e.InputParameters["SaveLocation"].ToString();
else  

   //If it was opened in the client, we will get the Uri
   _strUri = this.Template.Uri.ToString();

 

// Populate the fields on the form - keep in mind, this

// not necessary - this is simply to see the results

PopulateLibInfo(OpenedInBrowser);

 

  • Add the following procedure to the Forms class:

     

private void PopulateLibInfo(Boolean OpenedInBrowser)

{

// Create a Navigator object for the main DOM
XPathNavigator xnDoc = this.MainDataSource.CreateNavigator();

 

// Create Navigator objects for each field

XPathNavigator xnFormURL = xnDoc.SelectSingleNode("my:myFields/my:strFormURL", this.NamespaceManager);
XPathNavigator xnLocation = xnDoc.SelectSingleNode("my:myFields/my:strLocation", this.NamespaceManager);

XPathNavigator xnFolderName = xnDoc.SelectSingleNode("my:myFields/my:strFolderName", this.NamespaceManager);

// Get the Uri stored in the FormState Dictionary variable

string strUri = _strUri.ToString();

// Create a variable to store the path (URL) to the document library

string strPath = "";

if (OpenedInBrowser == true) {

   //If we are open in the browser, the strUri value is just

   //the server name and library - so we just need to get

   //the URL without the last "/"

   strPath = strUri.Substring(0, strUri.LastIndexOf("/"));

} else {

   // Parse just the path to the document library -

   // this would return something like this:

   //  http://server/library

   strPath = strUri.Substring(0, strUri.IndexOf("Forms") - 1);
}

// Now, parse the URL to where the document library resides;

// this would return something like:

// http://server or http://server/site
string strLoc = strPath.Substring(0, strPath.LastIndexOf("/"));

// Lastly, parse the URL to return just the document library name -

// in this case,we are looking for the last "/" character

// knowing that what comes after this is the document library name

string strFolder = strPath.Substring(strPath.LastIndexOf("/") + 1);

// Populate the fields on the form – we will use these

// values in the Submit process

xnFormURL.SetValue(strUri);

xnLocation.SetValue(strLoc);

xnFolderName.SetValue(strFolder);
}

 

  • Add the following code to the form’s Submit event:

// Create a Navigator object for the main DOM
XPathNavigator xnDoc = this.MainDataSource.CreateNavigator();

// Create Navigator objects for the fields we will

// use to modify the FolderUrl

XPathNavigator xnLocation = xnDoc.SelectSingleNode("my:myFields/my:strLocation", this.NamespaceManager);
XPathNavigator xnFolderName = xnDoc.SelectSingleNode("my:myFields/my:strFolderName", this.NamespaceManager);

// Get a reference to the submit data connection

FileSubmitConnection fc = (FileSubmitConnection)this.DataConnections["Main submit"];

 

// Modify the URL we want to submit to by concatenating the

// xnLocation and xnFolderName values

fc.FolderUrl = xnLocation.Value + "/" + xnFolderName.Value;

// Execute the submit connection

try

{

   fc.Execute();

   e.CancelableArgs.Cancel = false;

}

catch (Exception ex)

{

   e.CancelableArgs.Cancel = true;
}

  • Build and save the project
  • Publish and test

And that is it! You now have an InfoPath form template that will submit to whatever document library the form was opened from so you do not need to know this information when designing the template.

 

Scott Heim

Support Engineer

submitToThisLibrary.zip

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 13, 2006
    First of all I would like to say THANK YOU to everyone who came to my sessions last week! I had a wonderful...

  • Anonymous
    November 15, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 17, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 17, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 17, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 17, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 17, 2006
    Ah - 2003...that's a bit different. Do you need to use this form or can you start over with a new form? Either way, you will need to use the Visual Studio Tools for Office InfoPath Toolkit (in conjunction with Visual Studio) to create a managed code solution. If you don't have Visual Studio then the only code options available are JScript and VBScript and you will need to convert the C# code to JScript. Scott

  • Anonymous
    November 17, 2006
    I was just testing your approach to see how it would work in a dummy form before I tried to implement it in an existing form. I do have VS 2003 with the toolkit. Would it be worthwhile to get VS 2005 if this is the only coding that I'm doing? Dean

  • Anonymous
    November 21, 2006
    Hi Dean, Certainly there are some benefits to moving to VS2005 but although I have not tried it, theoretically the same basic process/code should work using the managed code option with VS2003. Scott

  • Anonymous
    November 21, 2006
    Scott, is this supposed to work with IP 2003 or 2007? I keep getting compile errors in 2003. Dean

  • Anonymous
    November 21, 2006
    Hey Dean, Although that code is C#, it is specific to the new object model in 2007. To get this to work in 2003, you will need to convert that code to the 2003 object model. Scott

  • Anonymous
    November 22, 2006
    By popular demand, Scott converted the code used in this article into the InfoPath 2003 managed object model (in C#) and into JScript. You can download the full listing in the attachments section above. Alex

  • Anonymous
    November 27, 2006
    Thanks for making the conversions Scott, I'm getting closer to getting this to work, but I don't have a Digital Certificate. Is there any workaround available? Dean

  • Anonymous
    November 27, 2006
    Hi Dean, Glad you hear you are making headway! For testing purposes, you can create a "self-cert" (basically a certificate that does not have a chain of trust, hence it is only valid on the machine in which it was created) by choosing the Create Certificate button in Tools | Form Options | Security and Trust category. Scott

  • Anonymous
    January 09, 2007
    Hi, When I add the code strUri = thisXDocument.Solution.URI; to get the url I get a uniform resource identifier (urn:eLNDTX:Innx). Am I missing something ? Why don't I get a url ?? Marc

  • Anonymous
    January 09, 2007
    Hi Marc, How are you testing? Did you deploy the form to your SharePoint site? Also - did you "install" this form on the the client machine? Scott

  • Anonymous
    January 09, 2007
    Hi Scott, Yes, I deployed to a sharepoint site and installed this form on my client machine on the development environment. In production I have a certificate so that I don't have to install the form on the client machines. I attached VS to the infopath process, put a break in the on load and filled out a new form and inspected the contents of the variable. Thanks for your input, Marc

  • Anonymous
    January 09, 2007
    Hi Marc, When you install a form template, then the code that I supplied as a sample is returning the correct data: it is the Uri of the installed form - not from the SharePoint doc lib. I would suspect that is most cases, if you deploy a form template to SharePoint, you will not be "installing" it to the client machines. (Hence, I did not test for this scenario.) If you needed to install the template on your dev machine just for testing purposes then you can simply create a "self-cert" and use this instead. In short - to test the sample code, you will need to uninstall your form. Let me know if this works for you! Scott

  • Anonymous
    January 10, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 11, 2007
    Hi Marc, I am a bit confused I think: are you using InfoPath 2003 or 2007? (You mentioned certificate support from 2003.) Also - you set the secuity level of the form template to Full Trust - correct? Scott

  • Anonymous
    January 11, 2007
    Scott, I'm using Infopath 2003 with C# code for the form. The security level is full-trust (managed code). THat's the reason why I install the form on my development machine. I production, there is a certificate. Marc

  • Anonymous
    January 11, 2007
    Hi Marc, Thank you for the clarification. When you launch the InfoPath form from your SharePoint library, do you see a security prompt with options to Open , Trust this Publisher, etc.? I do all of my testing with a Self-Cert and this process works for; however, I do see this prompt when I launch the form. I choose Open (not Always Trust) and the submit works as well. If you do not see this prompt, try this for me:

  • Open your XSN in Design View
  • From the Tools menu choose Form Options
  • Select the Security tab
  • Click the Create Certificate button to create a new certificate
  • Select this new cert as the cert to sign the XSN
  • Re-publish and test Scott

  • Anonymous
    January 14, 2007
    Scott, Yes I see the form. I click the always trust and then yes. I tried first with the "create certificate" in Infopath. Deployed and tested. WORKS I tried again with the other certificate. Deployed and tested. It WORKS also. Gues I've done something wrong last week ... Thanks for your support, Marc

  • Anonymous
    January 14, 2007
    Thanks for letting me know Marc - I am certainly glad you were able to get this working! Scott

  • Anonymous
    January 15, 2007
    Hi Scott, Thank you for posting this - I have been looking for such a solution for a LONG time. This solves one of my two problems. The second problem is related: Is it possible to have a receive location that is dynamic? I have an InfoPath 2007 form which receives data from a SharePoint list (to populate a drop down) and would like the server name part of the url to be dynamic. I have tried doing this using the following code: SharepointListQueryConnection mylist = (SharepointListQueryConnection)this.DataConnections["mylist"]; mylist.SiteUrl = new Uri("http://otherserver/TheList"); but the SiteUrl property is read-only. Is there any way to do this?

  • Anonymous
    January 18, 2007
    Hi, Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this. Unfortunately, I don't see a way to accomplish this as there are no methods to update these values. Scott

  • Anonymous
    January 18, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 19, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 05, 2007
    First of all I would like to say THANK YOU to everyone who came to my sessions last week! I had a wonderful

  • Anonymous
    May 15, 2007
    One scenario that I have had trouble with is if you publish the form as a content type on the site collection. In that situation, the form is published under the site collection url, not the form library url. I set a document library under that site collection to manage content types and I select the content type to be the one that was published using infopath. When I click new on the document library and select that content type, it opens the form in the infopath client. However, I'm unable to capture the form library url that I was in.   How can I capture that url so that I can use it to change the path of the submit dynamically?

  • Anonymous
    May 16, 2007
    Hi shirinp, Unfortunately I have not found a way around this...other than displaying the form in the browser instead of the client. This should allow you to capture the form library URL. If you must open it in the client and have it published as a site content type, I know of no way to capture this information. Scott

  • Anonymous
    June 06, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    June 06, 2007
    Hi zullu, Where did you publish the form and how are you trying to open it? Scott

  • Anonymous
    June 07, 2007
    shirinp, Just so you know, you are not alone regarding this problem... I also tried passing a parameter indicating the location, but wss doesn't allow parms to be set for a content type.  Unless Scott has an idea for this.

  • Anonymous
    June 07, 2007
    I get prompted for the file name.  How do I set this in code?

  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2007
    Hi BobC, You would typically use a field in the data source to store the name of the submitted form. So you can either set this using a Rule or use code similar to the following: XPathNavigator xnDoc = this.MainDataSource.CreateNavigator(); XPathNavigator xnFormName = xnDoc.SelectSingleNode("/my:myFields/my:formNameField", this.NamespaceManager); xnFormName.SetValue("Form1"); Scott

  • Anonymous
    July 19, 2007
    I've tried to call this.Submit() method with your sample code in my own Button Clicked event, but the Forms Server tell me that I cannot call XmlForm.Submit in a SubmitEventHandler. I want to do this because I need to call Rules before Submit in your way. Can you help me? Peter

  • Anonymous
    July 19, 2007
    Hi pkarpati, You have a couple of options:

  • Change your button to simply be a "Submit" button (don't use code)
  • Use the click event of the button to call the same code that is in the "Submit" event and remove the Submit event handler. NOTE: if you use the 2nd option, you will  need to remove the "e.CancelableArgs" lines. Scott

  • Anonymous
    July 23, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 25, 2007
    Hi Rajiv, There is no built-in InfoPath functionality to limit the forms a user can see once submitted. You could create a custom SharePoint "View" that uses the "[Me]" filter to limit what documents they see when they open that library; however, this is not "security" per sé just a filter. Regarding the permissions not working - I believe you would be better served by asking this of the SharePoint group. Scott

  • Anonymous
    September 20, 2007
    I am also facing the same problem as Shirinp. In my case, i upload the form to the form server and then activate it to a particular sitecollection. of cNow i have a number child sites in tht sitecollection which will use this form content type, so i need to find a way to get the URL of the form library at run time. Ofcourse this post solves the problem for the forms that are opened using the browser but what to do in case forms are opened using Infopath? Have anybody got the solution for the problem ?

  • Anonymous
    September 24, 2007
    Also, I am able to submit the new form using this method, but how can i resubmit or save the same form when it is opened in edit mode.

  • Anonymous
    September 26, 2007
    Hi Neelesh, If I understand correctly you are asking how to open an existing form from a library, modify it and then re-save it using the same name - correct? If so, then when you setup the "submit" data connection make sure you enable the option: Allow overwrite if file exists." Scott

  • Anonymous
    September 26, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 27, 2007
    Hi Neelesh, As I have mentioned a couple of times before, there is no way that I know of to get this information. Regarding adding data at runtime, since this is a repeating node you will want to use code to accomplish this. There are a number of ways this can be done: append the new row as I am dong below or if you want to extract the form files you can get the actual "OuterXml" of the node you want to append and use this to append the row or if this is a client-only form you can use the "ExecuteAction" method to add a new row. The following sample assumes the following:

  • A secondary data connection to the SQL Server Northwind Shippers table - this connection is called Shippers
  • A Repeating Table with 3 columns: f1_ID, f2_CompanyName and f3_Phone
  • On the Loading event of the form, I populate those repeating table fields using the following code: public void FormEvents_Loading(object sender, LoadingEventArgs e)        {            //Create a NamespaceManager to use when referencing namespaces            XmlNamespaceManager ns = this.NamespaceManager;            //Create an XPathNavigator object for the main DOM            XPathNavigator xnDoc = this.MainDataSource.CreateNavigator();            //Create an XPathNavigator object for the Repeating Table node            XPathNavigator xnRepeatingTable = xnDoc.SelectSingleNode("/my:myFields/my:group1", ns);            //Create a DataSource object for our secondary data connection            DataSource dsShippers = this.DataSources["Shippers"];            //Create an XPathNavigator object for the data source            XPathNavigator xnShippers = dsShippers.CreateNavigator();            //Create an XPathNodeIterator object so we can enumerate all the records from the            //secondary data connection            XPathNodeIterator xiShippers = xnShippers.Select("/dfs:myFields/dfs:dataFields/d:Shippers", ns);            //Loop through those records            while (xiShippers.MoveNext())            {                //Create string variables for all the fields we need to populate                //in the Repeating table                string strID = xiShippers.Current.SelectSingleNode("@ShipperID&quot;, ns).Value;                string strCompanyName = xiShippers.Current.SelectSingleNode("@CompanyName&quot;, ns).Value;                string strPhone = xiShippers.Current.SelectSingleNode("@Phone&quot;, ns).Value;                //Use the AppendChild method to add a new row to the repeating table and                //concatenate each field value appropriately                xnRepeatingTable.AppendChild("<my:group2><my:f1_ID>" + strID + "</my:f1_ID><my:f2_CompanyName>" + strCompanyName + "</my:f2_CompanyName><my:f3_Phone>" + strPhone + "</my:f3_Phone></my:group2>");            }            //Cleanup            ns = null;            xnDoc = null;            xnRepeatingTable = null;            dsShippers = null;            xnShippers = null;            xiShippers = null;        } I hope this helps! Scott

  • Anonymous
    October 10, 2007
    Many Thanks for the suggestions. That worked perfectly. If some one also wish to clear the repeating tables befor filling them...following code will be useful: string NodeGroup = /my:myFields/my:group7/my:openTable"; XPathNavigator FirstNode = MainDataSource.CreateNavigator().SelectSingleNode(NodeGroup + "[1]", NamespaceManager);                XPathNavigator LastNode = MainDataSource.CreateNavigator().SelectSingleNode(NodeGroup + "[position()=last()]", NamespaceManager);                if(FirstNode != null)                {                                      if (LastNode != null)                    {                                            FirstNode.DeleteRange(LastNode);                    }                    else                    {                        FirstNode.DeleteSelf();                    }                }

  • Anonymous
    October 10, 2007
    I have one more query. One of the field in the repeating table is a date field and i am populating it from sharepoint list. it shows me the validating screentip "Only Date allowed". I have not applied any validation and also the date which i am filling in the date filed is in the same format as specified for that field. I also tried to delete the nil attribute but still no luck. Any clues...

  • Anonymous
    October 11, 2007
    Hi neelesh, Here is some sample code that works for me - in this case, "field1" has a "Date" data type: XmlNamespaceManager ns = this.NamespaceManager;            XPathNavigator xnDoc = this.MainDataSource.CreateNavigator();            XPathNavigator xnDateField = xnDoc.SelectSingleNode("/my:myFields/my:field1", ns);            //Remove the "nil" attribute            if (xnDateField.MoveToAttribute("nil", "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"))                xnDateField.DeleteSelf();            xnDateField.SetValue("2007-10-12");            ns = null;            xnDoc = null;            xnDateField = null; Scott

  • Anonymous
    October 11, 2007
    Hi Scott, I have already tried the same code, but it does not works. In my case, i am first adding the row to the repeating table at run time using the code: xnRepeatingTable.AppendChild("<my:group2><my:MyDate></my:MyDate></my:group2>"); Where, MyDate is the date field which is initialy empty and also not having any nil attribute. After this i wrote the code to remove the nil attribute and set the value of the date field which is as follows: XPathNavigator xnDoc = this.MainDataSource.CreateNavigator();           XPathNavigator xnDateField = xnDoc.SelectSingleNode"/my:myFields/my:group1/my:group2" + "[" + Index of the row+ "]" + "/my:MyDate", ns);           //Remove the "nil" attribute           if (xnDateField.MoveToAttribute("nil", "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"))               xnDateField.DeleteSelf();           xnDateField.SetValue("2007-10-12"); But it still showing me the same error.

  • Anonymous
    October 15, 2007
    Hi neelesh, And just to confirm, your date field is a node in your "main" DOM - correct? And if you look at the properties for this node, the data type is set to "Date (date)" - correct? Scott

  • Anonymous
    October 18, 2007
    Yes, That is correct. And i am getting the error when the date field is empty. I am trying to insert a blank string in a field after delting the nil vallue. I don't know how to insert blank date in the field. Neelesh

  • Anonymous
    October 18, 2007
    Hi Neelesh, I am confused: in your prior response, you advised you tried the code I supplied, which actually inserts a date, failed for you. Is this correct? If you actually specify a date in the code it fails? Or does it only fail if you try to insert a blank date? (If only when inserting a blank date, why do you want to insert a blank date??) Scott

  • Anonymous
    October 23, 2007
    Hi Scott, If i use the following code to add the date field then it shows the error "can not blank", while i have not used any validations. xnRepeatingTable.AppendChild("<my:group2><my:MyDate></my:MyDate></my:group2>"); Neelesh

  • Anonymous
    October 24, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 24, 2007
    This is what the problem is...I do not want the date field to be made required BY DEFAULT.

  • Anonymous
    October 25, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 29, 2007
    Hi This worked great thanks. Is it possible to use this technique on data connections ? Thanks Brian

  • Anonymous
    October 30, 2007
    Is there a solution like this for vb?  Here is my issue.  I have a shrepoint library which is/will be storing many documents. I wrote a infopath form that needs to submit the new document(s) to the sharepoint site.  I cannot use the default submit because of the need to organize the documents into specific locations/folders.  Once the form is completed, i have a field which has the "save as" filled in as well as the location with the appropriate url and folder.  so the question is how to submit to sharepoint server for this scenario.  The other scenario is "old" documents.  Those which have already been saved... how do I get the actual filename for the document, then proceed to overwrite it if any changes are made?  Is there a method which I can extract the url, filename, location/folder?? thanks in advance

  • Anonymous
    October 31, 2007
    Hi Brian, Not sure I follow - are you asking if you can append data to secondary data connections in this manner? Hi scorphg, For the submit part of your question, that is what this post basically does: allow you to specify the submit location at runtime. Am I misunderstanding what you are asking? Scott

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2007
    Hi Scott, Thanks for the very quick response.  I dont think you are misunderstanding the question, as much as I may not be stating it correctly.   Basically, the question is how do i get the filename of an existing form saved to sharepoint using vb managed code? The c# code above is great, and I will use that for future projects, so thanks... is there the same code for vb managed code?

  • Anonymous
    November 15, 2007
    Hi scorphg, Sorry for the delay - it has been quite busy. You would need to parse the Uri I believe but unfortunately I don't have any sample code for any of this in VB. If I get some time, I'll see what I can come up with. Scott

  • Anonymous
    November 19, 2007
    How can we populate a drop down using c# code? I need to set both the value and the display names and also need to read those vales and display name back. Right now i am only able to fill the values. Any suggesstions?

  • Anonymous
    November 21, 2007
    Hi neelesh, As you have probably seen, you do not have programmatic access to controls in InfoPath. What you would need to do is either populate a repeating structure in the main DOM that the dropdown is bound to or populate an XML resource file that is used as the source of data for the dropdown or use a web service to retrieve the data. Scott

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2007
    Hello, This code works great for the initial submit.  But when editing an existing document I get errors.  5537   Any suggestions?  I think the URLs are different for a new document submit and an edit cheers, Brad

  • Anonymous
    December 27, 2007
    Though this query does not belong to this blog, still I am posting it here as this is a very critical requirement in one of our projects. Is there some way to convert the browser enabled infopath 2007 file saved in the form library to pdf/word document programmatically? We have a windows service which will send these converted pdf/word files as an attachment in the email. Thanks in advance.

  • Anonymous
    January 02, 2008
    Hi Brad, I was finally able to get to the issue of opening and submitting an existing form and I did need to modify the code. This updated sample code is a bit verbose but I wanted to show the various steps. Here are the updates:

  • Replace the sample Loading event code with the following: // See if the form was opened in the browser            Boolean OpenedInBrowser = Application.Environment.IsBrowser;            //Variables to store the results of testing if the form            //being opened is new and if not, the "source" location            //parameter so we can get the server or server/site name            Boolean newForm = true;            string strSource = string.Empty;            // Get the Uri (or SaveLocation/XmlLocation in a browser form) of where            // the form was opened.            if (OpenedInBrowser)                if (this.New) //We will get the SaveLocation parameter                    _strUri = e.InputParameters["SaveLocation"].ToString();                else //We will get the XmlLocation parameter                {                    _strUri = e.InputParameters["XmlLocation"].ToString();                    newForm = false;                    //Store the "Source" parameter so we can parse this for                    //the server/site URL                    strSource = e.InputParameters["Source"].ToString();                }            else //Opened in the client            {                //See if we are opening a new form - if so, we will get the                //Uri to the template                if (this.New)                {                    _strUri = this.Template.Uri.ToString();                }                else                {                    //If opening an existing form, we will get the Uri                    //of the form we are opening.                    _strUri = this.Uri;                    newForm = false;                }            }            // Populate the fields on the form - keep in mind, this            // not necessary - this is simply to see the results            PopulateLibInfo(OpenedInBrowser, newForm, strSource);
  • Replace the sample PopulateLibInfo procedure with this one: private void PopulateLibInfo(Boolean OpenedInBrowser, Boolean newForm, string strSourceParam)        {            // Create a Navigator object for the main DOM            XPathNavigator xnDoc = this.MainDataSource.CreateNavigator();            // Create Navigator objects for each field            XPathNavigator xnFormURL = xnDoc.SelectSingleNode("my:myFields/my:strFormURL", this.NamespaceManager);            XPathNavigator xnLocation = xnDoc.SelectSingleNode("my:myFields/my:strLocation", this.NamespaceManager);            XPathNavigator xnFolderName = xnDoc.SelectSingleNode("my:myFields/my:strFolderName", this.NamespaceManager);            // Get the Uri stored in the FormState Dictionary variable            string strUri = _strUri.ToString();            // Create a variable to store the path (URL) to the document library            string strPath = "";            if (OpenedInBrowser == true)            {                if (newForm)                {                    //If we are open in the browser, the strUri value is just                    //the server name and library - so we just need to get                    //the URL without the last "/"                    strPath = strUri.Substring(0, strUri.LastIndexOf("/"));                }                else                {                    //We need to get the server URL (up to the library name) so                    //we can successfully submit the form.                    string strServer = string.Empty;                    //The following is broken into 2 parts so it is easier to see                    //what we need to do:                    //Get the URL up to the word "Forms" in the URL                    strServer = strSourceParam.Substring(0, strSourceParam.IndexOf("Forms"));                    //Get the URL up to the last "/" before "Forms" - this will be                    //the server or server/site                    strServer = strServer.Substring(0, strServer.LastIndexOf("/"));                    strPath = strServer + strPath;                }            }            else //Opened in the client            {                // Parse just the path to the document library -                // this would return something like this:                //  http://server/library                //NOTE: This process will not work when an ADMIN deployed form                //is opened in the client.                try                {                    strPath = strUri.Substring(0, strUri.IndexOf("Forms") - 1);                }                catch { }            }            // Now, parse the URL to where the document library resides;            // this would return something like:            // http://server or http://server/site            string strLoc = strPath.Substring(0, strPath.LastIndexOf("/"));            // Lastly, parse the URL to return just the document library name -            // in this case,we are looking for the last "/" character            // knowing that what comes after this is the document library name            string strFolder = strPath.Substring(strPath.LastIndexOf("/") + 1);            // Populate the fields on the form – we will use these            // values in the Submit process            xnFormURL.SetValue(strUri);            xnLocation.SetValue(strLoc);            xnFolderName.SetValue(strFolder);        } With these changes, you should be able to open and submit either a new or existing form. Scott

  • Anonymous
    January 22, 2008
    I was able to get this work when creating a blank template but could not get it to work using a form that is connected to a SQL DB. The error I get when opening the form from SharePoint is: "System.NullReferenceException Object reference not set to an instance of an object.   at Template13.FormCode.PopulateLibInfo()   at Template13.FormCode.FormEvents_OnLoad(DocReturnEvent e)   at Microsoft.Office.Interop.InfoPath.SemiTrust._XDocumentEventSink2_SinkHelper.OnLoad(DocReturnEvent pEvent)" Will this solution work with a form that is created for a SQL DB? Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    January 22, 2008
    Hi derrickgh, Yes - this will work when your form template has been created from a database; however, the XPATH will be different for the fields you create in this sample. For instance, the strLocation node in this sample has an XPATH of: my:myFields/my:strLocation. However, when your form is created from a database connection, the XPATH is now: /dfs:myFields/my:group1/my:strLocation. It sounds as if you may not have the correct XPATH referenced. If you are using InfoPath 2007, simply right-click on each node that you have referenced in your code and choose Copy XPath. Then paste this into your code and compare. Scott

  • Anonymous
    January 23, 2008
    Thanks Scott that worked!! One last question. The forms I need to use this on use a search functionality, so once the form is the person finds their project in a drop-down hits search and this populates the form, which in turn clears the 3 fields used for this solution. Is there a way to run the code after the search event? Thanks again for your help

  • Anonymous
    January 23, 2008
    Hi derrickgh, The fields that store the folder name, location, etc. - are these in your database table as well? Scott

  • Anonymous
    January 23, 2008
    Scott, Yes, the 3 fields are in DB table.

  • Anonymous
    January 23, 2008
    Hi derrickgh, OK - then you can either move the code to populate these to the submit code or (the easier option) remove those fields from the database and simply add them to your datasource. Unless I am missing something from your design needs, these fields are not required to be in the database. You can display the Data Source Task Pane, right-click on the "myFields" node and choose Add. Then simply add these 3 fields. Now these will not get submitted to the database table but that should not be needed. Scott

  • Anonymous
    January 23, 2008
    I moved the code under the submit button and it works perfectly. Thanks again for your help!

  • Anonymous
    January 23, 2008
    Hi Scott, nice article. I have an InfoPath form created in order to be used as a workflow association form. I would like to retrieve the list that the workflow is (about to be) associated from the InfoPath form's FormLoad event code. When the association form is loaded from the web browser (through InfoPath form services), the url is "http://vmserver/development/Company1/_layouts/CstWrkflIP.aspx?List={345EB1D6-434E-4CA9-9138-823CB320AD6C}". How can i get this List ID? When using the e.InputParameters["SaveLocation"], i get the following exception "The given key was not present in the dictionary." How can i get the URL? regards

  • Anonymous
    January 24, 2008
    Hi dkarantonis, In this scenario, the "List" parameter is not an "InputParameter" to the form. If you debug this you will see the InputParameter count is zero. I have been unable to find a way to get this from behind the InfoPath form - so you may want to look at trying to get the URL and parsing it from the ASPX page. Scott

  • Anonymous
    January 24, 2008
    Hi Scott i finally got through it by adding a System.Web reference to my project and retreiving the list GUID from the url by using the HttpContext.Current.Request.QueryString["List"].ToString() command. I don't know if this is the best way to handle this issue, but it did work for me. If there is a better way, please let me know. thanks for the support

  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2008
    Hi Scott, do you have any idea about how i could programmatically retreive the workflow association name from inside the form's code at runtime (the workflow association name is not known at design time? Is it something i could get also from the aspx page?

  • Anonymous
    January 31, 2008
    Hi dkarantonis, Unfortunately I do not - your best bet would probably be to post that query to a workflow forum or you could open a support case with the SharePoint folks. Scott

  • Anonymous
    March 04, 2008
    Hello Scott, quick question.  In reference to your answer

re: Submitting to 'this' document library

Thursday, July 19, 2007 6:00 PM by infopath In reference to putting this code behind a button.   I need to be able to run Rules first and then submit.   This works fine but I can't get my document to Close when submitted.   I have close document in the submit options but I don't think they are being called because you're going directly thru the Data connection.   Is there a way to close the form after your submit code?

  • Anonymous
    March 05, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 01, 2008
    Hi, I have a InfoPath form with VSTA code embedded to it. In InfoPath development mode, we attach the project file to the .xsn form. So while  publishing the form the .xsn form compiles the project file (in to a .dll file). But how do we manage this situation in the production enviornment? If we try to publish the form (using File -> Publish option of the InfoPath form), using VSTA it will start searching for the project file & try to compile it. But in the production enviornment there wont be Visual Studio installed to map the project file & compile it while publishing the form. In the production enviornment how do we manage to publish InfoPath form with with embedded VSTA code? Regards, Vipul Mehta

  • Anonymous
    July 01, 2008
    Hi Vipul, As you know, when you compile the VSTA code behind your InfoPath form template (XSN file), the compiled DLL becomes part of the XSN. You are correct that each time you publish we attempt to compile the code; however, when you publish on a machine that does not have the project files you can simply click "Ignore" and the publish process will continue. (Obviously the other option, since you have InfoPath on that machine is to simply copy the project files to that computer and then when you get that message click the 'Browse' button to locate the project file.) Scott

  • Anonymous
    August 12, 2008
    Scott, Firstly, thanks for a very useful post. We are implementing around 100 forms in SharePoint and you sample code helps a lot to make the form submission independent of the form library. However, I am having a problem with updating the existing form. I got your latest code you wrote in your comments which will updated an already existing form. I got it working but it has one glitch. The program is raising 'unauthorized exception' unless I use an account with full rights(owner). The user who created the form, is als not able to update it. I worked around it by calling the data connection submit call within SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges block. But here is the problem, the sharepoint library columns 'Created By' and 'Modified By' are populated with 'System Account' or the admin account name instead of the current user name. So, is there any other work around for this? or Are we missing anything? Is there any explanation for this behaviour(user not able to update)? Thanks for your help. -Srinivas

  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2008
    Hi Srinivas, I had not heard this before so I just tried this on my test site and it seems to work correctly. My "TestUser" has Contribute permissions to my site - I then logged on as that user, created and submitted a new form and then successfully opened that same form, modified data and re-submitted. In this test, the form shows Modified By: TestUser. What you may want to look at is doing a Netmon or Fiddler trace to see if you can track down down the cause of the failure - obviously remove your workaround code. :) Offhand I cannot think of a reason why...do you have your form set to Full Trust? Scott

  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2008
    Hi Scott, My problem is that by clicking the button in infopath form published on sharepoint site i should open existing form that resides in infopath forms library and one of it's fields should match certain value.How could i do that?Neither i found the opportunity to get the full url of existing form nor the opportunity to request the form with desired field value. Will be grateful for any help. Best regards, Vitaly.

  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2008
    Scott, Thanks for your reply. I just tried copying your code as it is and it worked just fine. Even a user with just the contribute access is able to add and update a form. I will retest the same in my other problematic environment at my work place. I will let you know the result. In between, I wonder if a form can be published once and deployed into multipe environments (development, staging, production)? As of now its not possible because we have to give the URL to the sharepoint site to which we publish and so it is hardwired to the form. Technically, I agree that might not be possible because we digitally sign the form for a particular environment. But with a wild card certificate this should not be a problem right? Thx, Srinivas

  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2008
    Hi Scott Thanks for reply. After looking through these articles I still haven't found the way to open the form with desired value in certain field.It should be made via some CAML query or what? Thanks in advance Vitaly

  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 14, 2008
    Hi Scott The thing is that the 2nd form is not always the same.It's different every time and depends on the data in 1st form.So i think that this problem could be solved using SPQuery class from SharePoint OM.By doing so we can select what existing form to open by making the query.Could we somehow use this class in InfoPath?We should add some using directive or assembly reference? Thanks for your help Vitaly

  • Anonymous
    August 14, 2008
    Hi Vitaly, Yes - you can use this in your InfoPath manged code...note that you will need to develop this on your server machine. You will need to add a Reference to Windows SharePoint Services and then a "using" directive: using Microsoft.SharePoint; Once you have these in place in your managed code, you can then use the SharePoint OM. Scott

  • Anonymous
    August 14, 2008
    Scott, I got it working today. I still don't know what was the mistake I was doing. But the good the thing is its working now. Regarding the publishing once, I thought a form has to be published separately for each target site. I will give a try if I can deploy a form which was published to a Dev site into QA site. We have different server farm for different environments. For the data connections I am using UDC's, so, that is taken care of. All the forms are fully trusted, admin published forms. Srinivas

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2008
    Hi Scott Thanks for your help but i've got another question..i've decided to make my template browser-enabled but thus some methods of Application class,such as NewFromFormTemplate disappeared..maybe i'm missing some references or what?i've added references to C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12InfoPathOMMicrosoft.Office.Infopath.dll C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.FormControl.dll and others but still NewFromFormTemplate method and some others are not available.What should i do in order to be capable to use them? Thanks in advance, Vitaly

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2008
    Hi Vitaly, As you have seen, everything that is available for designing for the InfoPath client is not always available for designing for the browser. This applies not only to object model differences but also controls, etc. The method you are asking about is an InfoPath client-only method: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa942326.aspx Scott

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2008
    Hi Vitaly, As you have seen, everything that is available for designing for the InfoPath client is not always available for designing for the browser. This applies not only to object model differences but also controls, etc. The method you are asking about is an InfoPath client-only method: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa942326.aspx Scott

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2008
    Hi Scott Is there any other way to open template from form?For example knowing the URL displayed when you manually create new form from template located in forms library? Vitaly

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2008
    Hi Vitaly, If you need to create a new form from the same template, you can set the "Submit" option: Create a new, blank form - this way when your form is submitted, a new blank form will be created. And if you currently do not have a submit connection, you could create one just to "Submit to host" - won't really do anything other than cause a server postback and then create a new form. (It will obviously create a new form so all existing data is gone.) However, I don't believe it is possible to create a new form from a different template. In fact - as you have seen, programmatically creating a new template from the same one is not supported - nor is the Rule to create a new form (this too is not available for forms services.) So short of the above submit option, I don't believe there is a way to do this. (Other than maybe using your own ASPX page to host the XmlFormView control and using code behind your ASPX page to launch a new form.) Scott

  • Anonymous
    August 19, 2008
    Hi Scott It's a pity there's no simple way to do this.. What can you say about this:i have a browser-enabled form with managed code which simply adds content of one field to another.But each time i'm clicking the button to perform this action i get this message:"An entry has been added to the Windows event log of the server". Log ID:5337. My code is just this: XPathNavigator xNavMain2 = this.MainDataSource.CreateNavigator(); string string1 = xNavMain2.SelectSingleNode("//my:Comments", this.NamespaceManager).Value; string string2 = xNavMain2.SelectSingleNode("//my:Add_comment", this.NamespaceManager).Value; xNavMain2.SelectSingleNode("//my:Add_comment", this.NamespaceManager).SetValue(""); xNavMain2.SelectSingleNode("//my:Comments", this.NamespaceManager).SetValue(string1 + "n" + System.DateTime.Now + " " + string2); What should i do to get rid of this error? Vitaly

  • Anonymous
    August 19, 2008
    Hi Vitaly, You need to determine what is failing for you. This code works fine in my testing so I would suggest you either see if there is any relevant information in the Application Event log or enable Verbose logging for the various Forms Services categories, reproduce the error and then check the ULS logs on your SharePoint server to see if these point to the cause of the problem. Have you tried running this in the InfoPath client? Does it fail there as well? Scott

  • Anonymous
    August 21, 2008
    Hi Scott Got that problem fixed,thanks.It was security issue i think.After setting full trust mode and creating trusted certificate that code worked. Scott,what should we do if we want to run some code on client machine?The only available way i see is to save the form in source files and then insert javascript code in,manifest.xsf.Haven't tried it yet,though.Is it really possible?Maybe there are other more friendly ways? Vitaly

  • Anonymous
    August 22, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2008
    hey, I'm fairly new to form services.. maybe you can shed some light on this.. I'd really appreciate that. The questions are serious :-)

  1. save to "this" sounds promising. But somehow "SaveLocation" is an unknown key in my dictionary. Now I happen to know there's a SaveLocation Property for XmlFormView. But setting that property doesn't really help. So how am I supposed to open forms carrying along this parameter? Thinking about that.. if I still have to set the parameter manually there's no gain here, is there?
  2. And as you have to publish the form template to the "Form Templates" library I cannot see how saving to "this" library actually makes sense anymore :-/ Don't you typically want to open the form from the forms library and then store filled out forms to another library? I'm currently looking for a way to open, save and close within a aspx site automagically. For opening purposes I use the XmlFormView control. The saving part is where I'm stuck right now. Among choosing the right library I also need a way to create unique (filled out) form names. Now() doesn't sound not really promising. Any way I can have GUIDs here? Again, help is much appreciated! Thanks in advance
  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2008
    Hi Liga, Let me try to address each question: #1: See my response to a question on January 2nd - it has modified code. #2: First of all, you do not actually "publish" to the Form Templates library. That is a special library that is used when you "Admin" deploy a form template. So the short answer to this is: yes - you want to determine where this form was opened from so you can dynamically determine where to submit the completed form. This is what this sample demonstrates. #3: Are you using a custom ASPX page for any special reason? Does the built-in FormsServer.aspx page not provide what you need? At any rate - yes, you can use a GUID to create unique names but you would need to do this in code. There are certainly other options as well:
  • Use a combination of fields from your form template
  • Use code (or a web service) to pull a unique number from a database (i.e. SQL Server)
  • Use a web service to generate and return a random number or GUID - this would eliminate the need to do this in code behind your form template Scott

  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2008
    Thanks for your reply, Scott :-) @3: Yes. Special reasons being: The form has to be shown in the context of a website. We do not want to open a new window. I already tried assigning a GUID but as it turns out Filename is a read-only property (on FileSubmitConnection). But as I'm still struggling with all the "dynamically save to library x" part I didn't really look into that yet. Any directions you can point me to? @2: Yes, I understand that. But still you open the form directly from that "special" library don't you? (no matter if you use formsserver.aspx or some custom.aspx site with a xmlformview control) So let's assume I have 10 different forms in my forms template library. Doesn't each and every one have the same "Request url"? It would make sense if you had a webpage in a library (let's say "NovemberForms" and within that page open a form from the forms template library and save that to novemberforms library. Much like reading the Request object in asp. On a side note.. are there forums I can turn to?

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2008
    Great! It all makes sense now :-) Oh and there's a SaveLocation parameter in the url now, so that's working, too. happy Unfortunately another part of my solution broke apart while switching to the new multi-purpose library. I can't open the new form within an XmlViewControl (within my webpart) anymore. I set XsnLocation to the url I get when creating a new form from my library. "The following file is not a valid InfoPath form template" http://forms.domain.tld/_layouts/FormServer.aspx?XsnLocation=http://forms.domain.tld/FormServerTemplates/SampleSimpleFormWithCode.xsn&SaveLocation=http://forms.domain.tld/test. Opening the form directly (without xmlformview control) works perfectly fine.

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2008
    Hi Liga, Glad you are making progress! In regard to the XmlViewControl, have you tried setting the XsnLocation to this: http://forms.domain.tld/FormServerTemplates/SampleSimpleFormWithCode.xsn Scott

  • Anonymous
    November 10, 2008
    Hi Scott, I tried that. As soon as you add any additional parameters to the XsnLocation property the XmlFormView fails to load the form. If I omit the SaveLocation parameter.. guess what.. KeyNotFoundException :-) So I guess I'll have to specify the target library prior to deployment rather than figuring it out dynamically :-(

  • Anonymous
    November 10, 2008
    Hi liga, I have never used the XmlView control (I am assuming this is a SharePoint web part?) so this may not work as you need. Scott

  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2010
    Hi, I'm trying to use this "How to" with Infopath 2010 and SPS 2010, but I always get following error : The InfoPath formular could not be transmitted. The eventhandler for "OnSubmitRequest" doesn't work correctly. The objectlink was not specified to a objectinstance. onTestForm_web.FormCode.FormEvents_Submit(Object sender, SubmitEventArgs e) on Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.Internal.FormEventsHost.OnSubmit(DocReturnEvent pEvent) on Microsoft.Office.Interop.InfoPath.SemiTrust._XDocumentEventSink2_SinkHelper.OnSubmitRequest(DocReturnEvent pEvent) (Info: The first three sentences of the message were translated by myself (from german to english)) Any ideas? walter

  • Anonymous
    March 31, 2010
    Hi Walter, I just tested the exact steps in the blog with InfoPath 2010 and SharePoint 2010 and they worked without any modification whatsoever. Now, I did test opening the form in the browser...is this how you tested? If so, did you follow the steps in this post exactly as they are documented? Thanks... Scott

  • Anonymous
    April 01, 2010
    Hi scott Thanks for your answer! Yes! I followed all the steps which have to be taken in the tutorial. I wasn't able to test the form in the browser, cause I'm currently using 2008 server R2 in German and all the rest (SPS, Infopath,...) in beta (so in english). Thats the reason I can't use InfoPath WebApps at the moment..So I have to test the form with a localy installed InfoPath 2010 beta. The test procedure I've done:

  1. upload the form into a form library (manually)
  2. open and fill out the form
  3.  click submit -> the upper error occurs! :(

  • Anonymous
    April 01, 2010
    Hi Walter, Hmmm...this still works for me...so first concern is your comment: "upload the form into a form library (manually)". Not sure what you mean by that but what you should be doing is "publishing" the XSN from within InfoPath and, for testing purposes, let the publishing wizard create a new library for you. If you are indeed just using the SharePoint "upload" functionality to upload the XSN to a library, this will not work in many ways. :) When you publish the XSN to your SharePoint site as I have described above you should be able to click on the New button and get a new instance of the form. If the code is working as designed, the 3 text boxes on this sample form will already be completed with the correct information about where the form was published and opened. Scott

  • Anonymous
    April 06, 2010
    Hi Scott Thank you! Now It'works!:) I didn't publish the form template but uploaded it! That was the point I misunderstood :( Scott, I got another question... I should publish an infopath form template to serveral different libraries in different team sites on one sharepoint server. Is it possible to automate the publishing procedure? (ps script?) Walter ps: I currently creating those team sites including their document libraries by using a powershell script.

  • Anonymous
    April 06, 2010
    Hi Walter, Glad you were able to get it working! In regard to publishing - the InfoPath designer does not have an object model so there is really no way to automate this. However, have you considered publishing the XSN as a "Site Content Type?" When you do this, instead of publishing to a specific library you "publish" the XSN to your site and "store" it (the XSN) in a library you create (i.e. MyContentTypes.) Then once you have published the XSN as a "Site Contene Type" then you can add that XSN to any library in that site collection. To do that:

  • Create a library where you want to use the XSN
  • From the Settings button, choose Form (or Document) Library Settings
  • Click Advanced Settings
  • For Allow Management of Content Types, choose Yes and click OK
  • You will now see a "Content Types" section with either a default Form or Document content type - click Add from existing site content types
  • Select the XSN you published as a Site Content Type, click Add and then OK
  • Click on the default Form or Document content type that was there by default and then click Delete this content type (all that does is remove the default type from this library) Now when you click New you get a new instance of your XSN just as if you had published it but now you add the added benefit of being able to use that XSN in other libraries in this site collection. :) Scott
  • Anonymous
    April 06, 2010
    Hi Scott Thank you for your detailed explanation about publishing forms! In fact, that is exactly what I need! Is it possible to automate the following few steps?
  • From the Settings button, choose Form (or Document) Library Settings
  • Click Advanced Settings
  • For Allow Management of Content Types, choose Yes and click OK
  • You will now see a "Content Types" section with either a default Form or Document content type - click Add from existing site content types
  • Select the XSN you published as a Site Content Type, click Add and then OK
  • Click on the default Form or Document content type that was there by default and then click Delete this content type (all that does is remove the default type from this library) ..if so, which classes do I need for each step above? Walter

  • Anonymous
    April 06, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 06, 2010
    Well, I will looking for those information in a sps forum! But anyway I'd like to thank you for supporting me! Walter

  • Anonymous
    April 06, 2010
    My pleasure Walter! Take care, Scott

  • Anonymous
    April 11, 2010
    Hi Scott I got a little question about submitting a form to a sps document library. I publish my forms as content types at the root of the site collection. After filling out one of these form templates I'd like to submit this form to a specific doc library in the same site collection, the URL of the appropriate library is depending on a string in a textbox. So I have to add a submit dataconnection programmatically, however I don't have a clue how to do that? Walter

  • Anonymous
    April 11, 2010
    Hi Walter, So that you know, InfoPath does not have an object model for the designer whatsoever so "adding" a data connection at runtime is not possible; however, changing an existing data connection at runtime is possible and that is what this blog post is for. But if you have tested (or gone through the comments in this blog) you have seen that if you publish the XSN as a Site Content Type and are opening the form in the InfoPath client then there is no way to capture the location of where the form has been opened. We have had this request a number of times but it is not possible to capture that information...unless you open the form in the browser. Scott

  • Anonymous
    June 29, 2010
    Hi Scott, First, thanks!  Your example worked as expected in SP2010 (even works with Document Sets.)  Although, I'm hoping that you're able to provide insight for a problem that I'm encountering.  After the form is submitted to the "this" library/location, I get an error when I re-open the form and the following is logged to Windows Event Log: Source: InfoPath Forms Services Event ID: 5337 Task Category: Runtime - Business Logic Type: KeyNotFoundException Exception Message: The given key was not present in the dictionary. Any ideas? Thanks! Thomas

  • Anonymous
    June 30, 2010
    Hi KCD75, Glad it worked for you. :) When you get the error are you opening the form in the InfoPath client or in the browser? Also - can you post the actual code you have on the loading event? Thanks, Scott

  • Anonymous
    August 08, 2010
    Hi Scott I got the same error message (5337 in the event log) as KDC75, each time I'am reopening a form. Here you got my loading method: public void FormEvents_Loading(object sender, LoadingEventArgs e)        {                //Get the Uri (or SaveLocation in a browser form) of where                //the form was opened                //See if the form was opened in the browser                Boolean OpenedInBrowser = Application.Environment.IsBrowser;                //If so, we will get the "SaveLocation" from the InputParameters                if (OpenedInBrowser)                    _strUri = e.InputParameters["SaveLocation"].ToString();                else                    //If it was opened in the client, we will get the Uri                    _strUri = this.Template.Uri.ToString();                //Populate the fields on the form - keep in mind, this is not necessary -                //this is simply to see the process in action                PopulateLibInfo(OpenedInBrowser);        } Walter

  • Anonymous
    August 08, 2010
    .. oh I get the error message in the browser.

  • Anonymous
    August 12, 2010
    Hi KDC75 and Walter, The error you are getting was due to a bug <g> in my original sample code. Take a look at the January 2 comments on page 5 - here I have updated code to correct that error. Scott

  • Anonymous
    August 27, 2010
    Thats a good tutorial. Can I have a a similar solution for creating a  Receiving data connection from a Sharepoint list?

  • Anonymous
    August 29, 2010
    Hi Abdul, Are you referring to how to dynamically create a receive data connection to a SharePoint list? If so - I don't know of a way to do this as InfoPath actually uses the GUID to the list as part of the receive data connection so it is not as simple as just knowing what URL the XSN was opened from. Scott

  • Anonymous
    November 23, 2010
    Hi Scott, You say to Walter in April 2010: ... if you publish the XSN as a Site Content Type and are opening the form in the InfoPath client then there is no way to capture the location of where the form has been opened. If you double click an InfoPath Form that was published as a Content Type in a SharePoint Form Library, then in FormEvents_Loading if you use the statement: string formUrl = this.Uri; formUrl will contain the total URL for where the form was opened from. If you do this on a form you opened with NEW it will contain a suggested form name such as Form1. If you do it from Preview or Debug mode it will contain (Preview) Form1. I use this technique to retrieve the form URL at runtime so that I can tell where it came from to use as necessary in program logic. Jeff

  • Anonymous
    November 29, 2010
    Hi Jeff, Thank you for the information. I believe in most cases, users will add the Content Type to the library and click New, which will not give the same information. Scott

  • Anonymous
    December 09, 2010
    Is there a way to submit a form to a folder on the computer rather than a URL?

  • Anonymous
    January 05, 2011
    Hi, I'm having a problem publishing my form to a content type. I made the form full trust created a cert to sign it, but my only option when publishing is to make it administrator-approved. Do you have any idea why that might be? Meri

  • Anonymous
    January 05, 2011
    Hi Meri, Yes - this is expected when you form template is browser-compatible. Once you set the security level to Full Trust and you have a browser-compatible form, the only SharePoint publishing option you will have is as an Administrator-approved form template. However, once you complete the entire process, you will wind up with a SharePoint Content Type that you activate to a site collection and then add to a library. Take a look at this link: technet.microsoft.com/.../cc262921.aspx It is written for InfoPath and SharePoint 2010 but if you are using 2007 the steps are basically the same. Scott

  • Anonymous
    January 31, 2011
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 31, 2011
    Hi Scott, I did not create the dummy Library and that was why I was getting this error. Now the form is submitted perfectly. But when I try to open, while opening it throws the same exception as above. Not sure why is that. On my form load event, I have the method you have to populate the strlocation etc.And then I have few of my other logic. Any ideas?

  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2011
    Hi Anita, If you followed the code in the original post, I believe I had a "bug." :) Take a look at the updated code I provided in my 2 Jan 2008 2:17 PM comments and see if this resolves the issue. My apologies for the inconvenience... Scott

  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2011
    Perfect Scott..That worked great. A very useful blog I have to say!!

  • Anonymous
    February 03, 2011
    Do I really need to digitally sign the infopath forms with the code? I am deploying the Infopath 2010 forms to the SharePoint using administrator approved method? I have set the forms to full trust but wondering if I really need to set the digital certificate?

  • Anonymous
    February 06, 2011
    Nik - if the InfoPath form will only ever be used in the browser then no - you don't have to digitally sign the XSN. However, if the security level is explicitly set to Full Trust and there is a possibility it will be opened in the InfoPath client, then you will need to sign it. Scott

  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2011
    Hi Scott, Thanks for the code. We are using infopath 2003, used 'SubmitToThisLib_2003_js.txt' script and working as expected. As per my understanding this code helps to submit the "InfoPath form template" to multiple SharePoint document library's dynamically. But we need to publish the infopath template to multiple SharePoint document library's right?. Can we avoid this multilple Publish in infopath 2003?

  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2011
    Hi Surya, To clarify - the code allows you to submit the completed InfoPath form to the library from which it was opened without knowing that library at development time. It does not submit the InfoPath Form Template - this is something that is published and you must publish the XSN to each library...there is no way around this. In fact, this behavior is the same in all three versions of InfoPath: 2003, 2007 and 2010. Scott

  • Anonymous
    February 23, 2011
    Hi Soctt, Thanks for your quick responce. This code is working when we Enable the Submit functionality (Tools | Submit Options) and choose the “Perform custom action using code” option. In our case we have a Button for submit and it has some rules before submiting the form. How can we enable this functionality for submit button with out "Enable the Submit functionality"

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2011
    Hi Surya, You will need to move the logic you have in the "rules" to the code. If all the rule logic is met, then proceed to submit the form. Scott

  • Anonymous
    March 27, 2011
    Hi, would the updated code you used on 2 Jan 2008, allow it to work with the forms library having subfolders and check in / check out functionality turned on? As it is now, whenever a form is submitted from within a subfolder an exact replica is created in the root of the forms library. We are using 2003 C#

  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2011
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 02, 2011
    This is kinda working for me (submitting an Infopath 2010 Browser enabled form to a Sharepoint 2010 Document Set) when first submitted, but on subsequent submissions it's failing. I've used the revised code from the 2nd January post but it's still not working: strFormURL: First Run: http://server/doc library/docset/ Second Run: /doc library/docset/form name strLocation: First Run: http://server/doc library Second Run: http://server strFolderName: First Run: docset Second Run: doc library I'm not a programmer and am quite possibly an idiot (I bet it's a schoolboy error), so go easy on me! Thanks in advance for any help - much appreciated!

  • Anonymous
    July 13, 2011
    Hi Scott, Thanks for the blog! I used your same code. There was no error. However, when I publish and test it, I get the following msg: The given key was not present in the dictionary.   at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowKeyNotFoundException()   at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.get_Item(TKey key)   at Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.Internal.DataConnectionsHost.get_Item(String name)   at Stakeholder_checklist_final.aspx.FormCode.FormEvents_Submit(Object sender, SubmitEventArgs e)   at Microsoft.Office.InfoPath.Internal.FormEventsHost.OnSubmit(DocReturnEvent pEvent)   at Microsoft.Office.Interop.InfoPath.SemiTrust._XDocumentEventSink2_SinkHelper.OnSubmitRequest(DocReturnEvent pEvent) I m not sure what seems to be the problem. Please help Thank you, Shyam

  • Anonymous
    July 18, 2011
    Hi Shyam, I really have no idea since I don't know where the failure occurs. It could be that one of the fields is  not populated? Does it work in the InfoPath client? If it does and only fails in the browser then you will need to debug the code when it runs in the browser - take a look at this for how to debug browser code: blogs.msdn.com/.../debugging-browser-forms.aspx Scott

  • Anonymous
    August 25, 2011
    Does the DummyLib need to be created on the site to get this code to work.

  • Anonymous
    August 28, 2011
    Hi SP, If you are using InfoPath 2010, then yes - the "dummy" library needs to exist as InfoPath now validates that the submit to library is there. As such, you could just use any default library that would normally be there, such as "Shared Documents". Scott

  • Anonymous
    January 16, 2012
    I am so new to this. I already created my form. I am not sure how to place the codes. Can you help, please. Neetu

  • Anonymous
    January 16, 2012
    Scott, I am using infopath 2010, I have already deployed my form to sharepoint but having trouble getting it onto my website. Help! Neetu

  • Anonymous
    January 16, 2012
    Hi Neetu, This particular blog post is fairly code intensive...you need to have some idea about programming to be able to maintain your code once you follow these steps. If you don't have that, it's going to be very difficult to implement changes, updates, etc. The post itself documents where to add the code. In regard to your question about having trouble getting the InfoPath Form Template to your web site, you are going to need to provide more detail as I don't know what you are referring to. Did you publish the Form Template (XSN file?) Did it produce an error or publish successfully? It sounds like you are new to InfoPath - if so, you may want to go through this training before going any further with this post: InfoPath 2007 Training Labs office.microsoft.com/.../HA102227501033.aspx InfoPath 2010 Training Labs msdn.microsoft.com/.../gg180739.aspx Scott

  • Anonymous
    March 05, 2012
    Hi Scott, Great post!  Especially considering that this post is over 5 years old and is still very relevant.  It's gotten me to almost where I want to be.   I have a SharePoint 2010 web part which hosts a XmlFormView control.  I use this control to render an Administrator-approved InfoPath 2010 browser-enabled form.  This form has custom code for the Loading and Submit events.  I've verified that they both work if I submit the form using the Submit button from the SharePoint ribbon. Now, I need to be able to call the Submit event of the form via an ASP.NET button.  This is because I need to process other information together with the data in the InfoPath form.  This is were I'm having trouble.  Calling the Submit (XmlFormView.XmlForm.Submit()) method yields me an InfoPathFatalException exception.  It doesn't even step into the Submit coe I wrote for the InfoPath form.  Just to test and make sure that the form still works, I've kept the Submit button in the SharePoint ribbon visible.  I can debug and step into the Submit code. I've checked various sources in the internet and have yet to find a working sample of calling the InfoPath form's Submit method from an ASP.NET button.  Is this even possible? Hope you can help.  Thanks! Dino

  • Anonymous
    March 06, 2012
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2012
    Hi Scott, It's been a few days and I haven't seen my post, so I think it might not have gone through when I submitted. Anyway, the approach you suggested won't work for my scenario because I need the form's validation to fire.  It won't if I just upload the Xml file into the library.  In fact, this is my current implementation. Since I can't call InfoPath's Submit, I'll split my form into 2 pages as a workaround.  1 page for the ASP.NET controls and another for InfoPath.  The user will then access the form as if he/she were running a wizard, with step 1 being the ASP.NET page and step 2 being the InfoPath form.   Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    October 18, 2012
    Hello!  I think you forgot a brace in your property set: private object _strUri {  get { return FormState["_strUri"];   <----should be a brace here, no?  set { FormState["_strUri"] = value; } }

  • Anonymous
    October 19, 2012
    There is no need of setting the Security Level of the form to Full Trust and signing the form template with a digital certificate if to convert "Main submit" data connection to UDCX file connection having stored it in a data connection library on the same sharepoint site collection

  • Anonymous
    June 06, 2013
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    June 07, 2013
    Hi Cheemalapati, It sounds like the form/data is being locked. Unfortunately this could be any number of things causing this and troubleshooting that in this blog would not be beneficial. I would suggest you enable Verbose logging on the server, reproduce the issue and see if this points you to what may be the underlying cause. If not, then you will want to open a support case to have a support engineer dig into this with you. Scott

  • Anonymous
    February 07, 2014
    How i can Know if the user open a new form or open existing form?

  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2014
    Hi Muayad, If you are not using code then you would need to check if a field you know would always be empty on a new form and always completed on an existing form. If you are using code then you can do this: //C# sample if (this.New) { } else { } //VB sample If Me.[New] Then Else End If Scott

  • Anonymous
    March 12, 2014
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 13, 2014
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 21, 2014
    Thanks for the insights, Scott. I'm going to do what I can to track down the issue.