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Asked: 2026-05-15T10:29:07+00:00

this is my first stack overflow, and it’s a complex one. Sorry. My task

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this is my first stack overflow, and it’s a complex one. Sorry.

My task is to generate custom documents from a basic template plus some XML without having a custom form design element for each case.

Here’s the whole picture:

  • We are building a Lotus Notes (client, not web) application for world-wide application access control; the scope is something like 400.000 users being able to request access to any of 1000+ applications. Each application needs its own request form — different number of approvers, various info required, that sort of thing.
  • We simply can’t have a thousand forms in a database (one per application), and anyway their maintenance really needs to be pushed from the developers to the application owners.
  • So instead of custom forms, we’d like to create a generic “template” form that stores a block of basic fields, but then allows application owners to define another block of fields dynamically — “I want a mandatory plain-text field named ‘Name’ here, and then a date field named ‘Due’ here that must be later than today’s date, and then …”. I hope this makes sense (if not, think of it as a generic questionnaire application).
  • I pretty much have the structure in place for designing the dynamic fields (form builder GUI -> XML-encoded data -> pre-rendered DXL for injecting into a form), including mark-up for field types, value options, and rudimentary field validation instructions.

My problem is generating a document with this dynamic content injected at the proper location (without needing a custom form design element for each case).

  • Doing the dynamic content via HTML is out. The Notes client web rendering is simply way too poor, and it would be quite a challenge to implement things like field validation instructions, date selectors, and name look-ups.
  • DXL, on the other hand, would allow us to use native Notes fields and code.
    • As a tech demo, I’ve managed to implement a custom form generator that injects the pre-rendered DXL for the dynamic content into a base form; but as I said, we don’t want a ton of custom form design elements.
    • I’ve tried to implement a way to create a document with the “store form in document” flag set, but once I’ve created the document from the base form, I can’t get DXL access to the stored form design, and so I can’t inject my dynamic content.

I know this is not something Notes was ever intended to do. Has anyone ever tried something like it (and gotten away with it)?

Thanks for reading this far.

With a boatload of thanks in advance,

Jan Gundtofte-Bruun

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  1. Editorial Team

    I ended up doing it a bit differently.

    I will still use the “store form in document” option to make sure that each submitted request can stand alone; but “request” documents will be based on hundreds/thousands of individual forms (yes, that’s thousands; research and testing suggests it shouldn’t be a performance issue). These many forms, then, will be programmatically generated.

    I’m setting it up so that “template authors” can create “request templates”, which are normal documents with a block of xml in them. A background agent then takes all these documents and processes each block of xml, and a base form, into new custom forms. These custom forms are presented to users to create their “request” documents from.

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