Configuring the Submit action configuring-the-submit-action

Adobe recommends using the modern and extensible data capture Core Componentsfor creating new Adaptive Formsor adding Adaptive Forms to AEM Sites pages. These components represent a significant advancement in Adaptive Forms creation, ensuring impressive user experiences. This article describes older approach to author Adaptive Forms using foundation components.

Introduction to submit actions introduction-to-submit-actions

A submit action is triggered when a user clicks the Submit button on an adaptive form. You can configure the submit action on adaptive form. Adaptive forms provide a few out of the box submit actions. You can copy and extend the default submit actions to create your own submit action. However, based on your requirements, you can write and register your own submit action to process data in the submitted form. The submit action can use synchronous or asynchronous submission.

You can configure a submit action in the Submission section of the Adaptive Form Container properties, in the sidebar.

Configure Submit Action

The default submit actions available with adaptive forms are:

You can write a custom submit action for adaptive forms to fulfill your use case. For more information, see Writing custom Submit action for adaptive forms.

Submit to REST endpoint submit-to-rest-endpoint

The Submit to REST endpoint submit option passes the data filled in the form to a configured confirmation page as part of the HTTP GET request. You can add the name of the fields to request. The format of the request is:

{fieldName}={request parameter name}

As shown in the image below, param1 and param2 are passed as parameters with values copied from the textbox and numeric box fields for the next action.

You can also Enable POST request and provide a URL to post the request. To submit data to the Experience Manager server hosting the form, use a relative path corresponding to the root path of the Experience Manager server. For example, /content/forms/af/SampleForm.html. To submit data to any other server, use absolute path.

Configuring Rest Endpoint Submit Action

Post submitted data to a resource or external rest end point  post-submitted-data-to-a-resource-or-external-rest-end-point-nbsp

Use the Submit to REST Endpoint action to post the submitted data to a rest URL. The URL can be of an internal (the server on which the form is rendered) or an external server.

To post data to an internal server, provide path of the resource. The data is posted the path of the resource. For example, /content/restEndPoint. For such post requests, the authentication information of the submit request is used.

To post data to an external server, provide a URL. The format of the URL is https://host:port/path_to_rest_end_point. Ensure that you configure the path to handle the POST request anonymously.

In the example above, user entered information in textbox is captured using parameter param1. Syntax to post data captured using param1 is:

String data=request.getParameter("param1");

Similarly, parameters that you use for posting XML data and attachments are dataXml and attachments.

For example, you use these two parameters in your script to parse data to a rest end point. You use the following syntax to store and parse the data:

String data=request.getParameter("dataXml");
String att=request.getParameter("attachments");

In this example, data stores the XML data, and att stores attachment data.

Send Email send-email

The Send Email submit action sends an email to one or more recipients on successful submission of the form. The email generated can contain form data in a predefined format.

Send PDF via Email send-pdf-via-email

The Send PDF via Email submit action sends an email with a PDF containing form data, to one or more recipients on successful submission of the form.

Invoke a Forms Workflow invoke-a-forms-workflow

The Submit to Forms Workflow submit option sends a data xml and file attachments (if any) to an existing Adobe LiveCycle or AEM Forms on JEE process.

For information about how to configure the Submit to Forms Workflow submit action, see Submitting and processing your form data using forms workflows.

Submit using Form Data Model submit-using-form-data-model

The Submit using Form Data Model submit action writes submitted adaptive form data for the specified data model object in a form data model to its data source. When configuring the submit action, you can choose a data model object whose submitted data you want to write back to its data source.

In addition, you can submit a form attachment using a form data model and a Document of Record (DoR) to the data source.

For information about form data model, see AEM Forms Data Integration.

Forms Portal Submit Action forms-portal-submit-action

The Forms Portal Submit Action option makes form data available through an AEM Forms Portal.

For more information about the Forms Portal and submit action, see Drafts and submissions component.

Invoke an AEM Workflow invoke-an-aem-workflow

The Invoke an AEM Workflow Submit Action associates an Adaptive Form with an AEM Workflow. When a form is submitted, the associated workflow starts automatically on the Author instance. You can save the data file, attachments, and Document of Record to the folder relative or under the payload of the workflow or to a variable. If the workflow is marked for external data storage then the variable option is available and not the payload option. You can select from the list of variables available for the workflow model. If the workflow is marked for external data storage at a later stage and not at the time of workflow creation, then ensure that the required variable configurations are in place.

Before using the Invoke an AEM Workflow submit action, configure the Experience Manager DS settings. For information about creating an AEM Workflow, see Form-centric workflows on OSGi.

The Submit Action places the following at the payload location of the workflow. However, note that only the Variable option is displayed if the workflow model is marked for external data storage, and not the payload option.

Submit to Power Automate microsoft-power-automate

You can configure an Adaptive Form to run a Microsoft® Power Automate Cloud Flow on submission. The configured Adaptive Form sends captured data, attachments, and Document Of Record to Power Automate Cloud Flow for processing. It helps you build custom data capture experience while harnessing the power of Microsoft® Power Automate to build business logics around captured data and automate customer workflows. Here are a few examples of what you can do after integrating an Adaptive Form with Microsoft® Power Automate:

Adaptive Forms editor provides the Invoke a Microsoft® Power Automate flow submit action to send adaptive forms data, attachments, and Document Of Record to Power Automate Cloud Flow. To use the Submit action to send captured data to Microsoft® Power Automate, Connect your AEM Forms instance with Microsoft® Power Automate

After a successful configuration, use the Invoke a Microsoft® Power Automate flow submit action to send data to a Power Automate Flow.

Submit to Microsoft® SharePoint List submit-to-sharedrive

The Submit to SharePoint submit action connects an Adaptive Form with a Microsoft® SharePoint Storage. You can submit the form data file, attachments, or Document of Record to the connected Microsoft® Sharepoint Storage.

Connect an Adaptive Form to Microsoft® SharePoint List connect-af-sharepoint-list

To connect an Adaptive Form to Microsoft® SharePoint List:

Create a SharePoint List Configuration create-sharepoint-list-configuration

To connect AEM Forms to your Microsoft® Sharepoint List:

Use the Submit using Form Data Model in an Adaptive Form use-submit-using-fdm

You can use the created SharePoint List configuration in an Adaptive Form, to save data or generated Document of Record in a SharePoint List. Perform the following steps to use a SharePoint List storage configuration in an Adaptive Form as:

When you submit the form, the data is saved in the specified Microsoft® Sharepoint List Storage.

Server-Side Revalidation in Adaptive Form server-side-revalidation-in-adaptive-form

Typically, in any online data capture system, developers place someJavaScript validations on client side to enforce a few business rules. But in modern browsers, end users have way to bypass those validations and manually do submissions using various techniques, Such as Web Browser DevTools Console. Such techniques are also valid a for adaptive forms. A forms developer can create various validation logics, but technically, end users can bypass those validation logics and submit invalid data to the server. Invalid data would break the business rules that a forms author has enforced.

The server-side revalidation feature provides the ability to also run the validations that an adaptive forms author has provided while designing an adaptive form on the server. It prevents any possible compromise of data submissions and business rules violations represented in terms of form validations.

What to validate on Server? what-to-validate-on-server-br

All out-of-the-box field validations of an adaptive form that are rerun at the server are:

Enabling Server-side Validation enabling-server-side-validation-br

Use the Revalidate on server under Adaptive Form Container in the sidebar to enable or disable server-side validation for the current form.

Enabling Server-Side Validation

If end-user bypass those validations and submit the forms, the server again performs the validation. If the validation fails at server end, then the submit transaction is stopped. The end user is presented with the original form again. The captured data and submitted data are presented to the user as an error.

Supporting Custom functions in Validation Expressions supporting-custom-functions-in-validation-expressions-br

At times, if there are complex validation rules, the exact validation script reside in custom functions and author calls these custom functions from field validation expression. To make this custom function library known and available while performing server-side validations, the form author can configure the name of AEM client library under the Basic tab of Adaptive Form Container properties as shown below.

Supporting Custom functions in Validation Expressions

Author can configure customJavaScript library per adaptive form. In the library, only keep the reusable functions, which have dependency on jquery and underscore.js third-party libraries.

Error handling on submit action error-handling-on-submit-action

As a part of Experience Manager security and hardening guidelines, configure custom error pages such as 404.jsp and 500.jsp. These handlers are called, when on submitting a form 404 or 500 errors appear. The handlers are also called when these error codes are triggered on the Publish node.

For more information, see Customizing Pages shown by the Error Handler.