Convert to Liferay Forms!

Sébastien Le MarchandFreelance Technical Consultant

@slemarchand

MARCH 10, 2021

Sébastien Le Marchand

13 years of experience on Liferay (since version 4.3 in 2007)

Co-organizer of meetup Liferay France User Group

@slemarchand linkedin.com/in/slemarchand

Freelance Technical Consultant

Agenda

(Re-)discovering Liferay Forms

The need to convert

Liferay Forms: behind the scenes

Tools we made

Next steps for our tools?

Forms: Should I Stay or Should I go?

Custom tools and feedback

presented in this session come

from real-world projects

performed by...

Liferay at the core of each project

Official Liferay training partner

An accomplished team that supports you towards autonomy

www.nysis.com

Consulting Expertise Training

(Re-)discovering Liferay Forms

LIFERAY FORMS: THE BIG PICTURE

Inspired from Google FormsFind everything you love about Google Forms

Keep full control on your dataDon’t let any SaaS vendor control your data… A kind of “Signal” of Forms 😉

Deeply integrated into LiferayRe-use your Liferay security model and seamlessly embed forms into your websites

ExtensibleThanks to OSGi, you can add any exotic feature you need… Sky is the limit!

Give direct control to business users

Liferay Forms is a real game changer

Reduce delay Reduce costs

€

History of forms in Liferay

7.2 7.37.0 7.16.26.1

Liferay Forms

Liferay Web Form

Age of maturity

Available separately on Marketplace for EE

Defining form

01

End users fill form instances

02

Analyze results

03

Advanced field types

And much more besides...▪ Advanced behavior rules on fields

▪ Repeatable fields

▪ Flexible display layout▪ Pages▪ Fields width▪ Fields position (rows and columns)▪ Fields group

▪ Customizable success page

Custom development

https://help.liferay.com/hc/en-us/articles/360029030711-Introduction-to-Liferay-Forms

StorageAdapter DDMFormFieldType

DDMFormFieldTypeSettings

DDMFormFieldTemplateContextContributor

DDMFormFieldValueValidator

Custom Storage Backend

Custom Field Type

Customvalidation rules

+ Service override

+ MVC Command override

The need to convert

How to take advantage of Liferay Forms for a great number of “legacy” forms?

Use Case #1

7.2 7.37.0 7.16.26.1

Liferay Forms

Liferay Web Form

Age of maturity

Available separately on Marketplace for EE

Upgrade Liferay 6.1 → 7.2

A significant amount of Web From portlets:

▪ 47 forms▪ 40 fields on the biggest form▪ 6 fields by form on average

Web Form no more available for Liferay 7.2

No upgrade process provided by Liferay

Web Form : our historical context

Use Case #2

... ...

Upgrade { other technologies → Liferay 7.2 }

A Liferay portal is often an opportunity to replace many old forgotten small apps of the Information System!

Any techno can be concerned:

▪ PHP▪ CGI / Perl▪ ColdFusion▪ JSP▪ ASP▪ ...

Third party technologies: infinity of contexts !

Liferay Forms: behind the scenes

Server side ...

...

serializedFormBuilderContext :+ 4 000 lines of JSON

Tools we made

GENERAL PIECE OF ADVICE

Consider to encapsulate and adapt Liferay native API which not fit the context of your project.

nysis-ddm-form-generator

Liferay

nysis-web-form-converterWeb Form Portlets

DDM Form InstancesDDM Form Portlets

Use Case #1

UPGRADE PROCESS

SIMPLIFIED API

▪ End-to-end automated

▪ No manual operations required to get ready-to-go forms *

Converting Web Forms 6.x

* : Unless there is some custom JS validator on the web forms

Liferay 6.1 Liferay 7.2

Use Case #2

nysis-ddm-form-generator

Liferay

nysis-json-form-converter

DDM Form Instances

SIMPLIFIED API

JSON

htmlform2jsonSCRIPT NODE.JS

Static HTML

Web crawler

Web Application

▪ HTML extraction prevent server-side technology dependency and so allow any server-side technology

▪ Only semi-automated: some forms definitions must be completed using GUI to be fully compliant to the original form

▪ JSON pivot format open all possibilities for future upstream of the conversion chain, for example to deal with non-web technologies

Any website → Liferay Forms: conversion chain

Static HTML

JSON

Liferay Forms

Web App / Website

Get more information, enroll as tester and

share your feedback:

forms.nysis.com

Next steps for our tools?

Transverse improvementsTransverse improvements in the roadmap of nysis-ddm-form-generator :

▪ Additional field type support▪ File upload ▪ Number▪ Date

▪ Form layouting support▪ Multi pages▪ Advanced field positioning

▪ Field advanced properties support▪ Placeholder▪ Data provider▪ ...

With the “keep it simple” spirit

→ All new features are optional and

preserve simple format for basic

features

New converters consideredUpstream of nysis-json-form-converter or nysis-ddm-form-generator, we consider new converters to take some new kind of input :

▪ Source code JSF, Spring MVC or JSP + Liferay tags to increase automation compared to conversion from final HTML

▪ Forms from PDF files

▪ SaaS forms like Google Forms or Typeform

▪ Prototypes form tools like Figma, Axure, Balsamiq

According to your

expectations…

Talk with us!

👇

forms.nysis.com

Forms: Should I Stay or Should I Go

Liferay Forms

Custom development

Aligned context

▪ Short delivery time required▪ High frequency small changes▪ Low budget▪ OOTB features match requirements

How to evaluate relevance of Liferay Forms?

Non-aligned context

▪ Certified QA endorsement ▪ Need for changes history▪ Very-high business complexity▪ Business users don’t want use the form

builder UI

It’s my personal subjective

decision grid

All criteria should be evaluated and weighted according each project’s context : Here is the challenge!

Maybe you need bigger size for no-code/low-code ?

Forms

App Builder

https://learn.liferay.com/dxp/7.x/en/developing-applications/developing-low-code-applications/app-builder-overview.html

What did we learn?

Take away

Consider Liferay Forms for your projects

Evaluate Liferay Forms relevance in the context

Consider automated conversion opportunities

Test our converters: forms.nysis.com

Thanks !

Sébastien Le Marchandcontact@nysis.com@slemarchand