XML Variables in AEM Workflow

Last update: March 23, 2025
  • Applies to:
  • Experience Manager 6.5

CREATED FOR:

  • Beginner
  • Developer

Variables of type XML are typically used when you have an XSD based Adaptive Form and want to extract values from the Adaptive Form submission in your workflow.

The following video walks you through the steps needed to create variables of type String and XML and use them in your workflow.

The XML variable can be used to pre-populate the adaptive form or store the adaptive form’s submission data in your workflow.

String variable can be populated by Xpathing into the XML variable. This string variable is then typically used to populate the e-mail template placeholders in Send Email component

NOTE
If your adaptive form is not associated with XSD, then the XPath to get the value of an element will look like
/afData/afUnboundData/data/submitterName

The adaptive form data is stored under the data element as shown above. In the above XPath submitterName is the name of the text field in the Adaptive Form.

NOTE
AEM Forms 6.5.0 - When you are creating a variable of type XML to capture the submitted data in your workflow model, please do not associate the XSD with the variable. This is because when you submit XSD based Adaptive Form the submitted data is not compliant with the XSD. The XSD complaint data is enclosed in /afData/afBoundData/ element.
AEM Forms 6.5.1 - If you associate XSD with your XML variable you can browse the schema elements to do the variable mapping. You will not be able to access form data not bound to schema elements. If your use case is to access data bound to schema elements as well as unbound data, then do not bind schema with your XML variable in the workflow.You will have to use the approriate XPath expression to get to the data that you need