If I create a new form, then attempt to RenderWebForm, I get an error message ‘WEBFORMMERGE Error: Template “” does not exist!’
If I use SaveWebTemplate, and then use RenderWebForm, all is good.
Should RenderWebForm automatically be invoking SaveWebTemplate if it does not find a template?
Where can I find documentation on the order of operations for the process that I should be following?
Should RenderWebForm automatically be invoking SaveWebTemplate if it does not find a template?
No, it definitely shouldn’t. You can’t just use any form as a web form, it takes some special prep. And though using just SaveWebTemplate may have eliminated your error message, it didn’t give you a useful web form. I suspect the web form you got is completely empty. Before you save the form, you need to use the makeformwebtemplate statement.
But actually you don’t want to use any of these statements. Instead, you want to use the Web Form Converter, which you can find in the Form menu when in graphics mode.
Where can I find documentation on the order of operations for the process that I should be following?
That’s an excellent question, but one without an excellent answer. There is no such documentation for Panorama X Server. Instead, you’ll have to use the Panorama 6 documentation. If you don’t have this documentation, here is a link.
Because the web is the web and HTML is HTML, web programming for Panorama X Server is exactly the same as it was for Panorama 6 Server. So all of your questions about order of operations have the same answers now that they did in Panorama 6. With almost no exception, any web code written for Panorama 6 will work with zero changes in Panorama X.
What IS different is some of the user interface. For example, Panorama X has a much nicer interface for uploading procedures and forms to the server. The Panorama X Web Form Converter performs the same functions as the Panorama 6 Web Form Converter, but it has a nicer user interface and has a built in preview for viewing web forms before uploading them. There’s no specific new documentation for the Web Form Converter, but you should be able to figure it out.
However, my recommendation is that you should NOT use the Web Form Converter, or even use RenderWebForm. At least I would recommend that you not develop new applications using these features. This entire system works just as it was designed in 2005, which means that it is entirely obsolete. I said above that “the web is the web”, but that’s entirely untrue. Sure, HTML hasn’t changed, but web development is vastly different than it was in 2005. Other than possibly in-house systems or toy systems, no one should build fixed arrangement web pages like the ones the Web Form Converter generates. No self respecting web developer today would be caught dead creating unresponsive web pages that don’t work on mobile devices. Unfortunately, it’s simply impossible to automatically create a modern responsive web page from a Panorama form. When I say impossible, I don’t mean with the current Panorama, I mean that a Panorama form doesn’t contain the information needed to create a responsive web page. You would have to start with a completely different system than how Panorama forms are built with a graphic editor today.
So my real recommendation would be to pick a modern web framework (Bootstrap, Foundation, Tailwind, etc.) and hand code your web forms. This will work fine with Panorama X Server because text is text, Panorama X server doesn’t care what the text is or where it came from. Unfortunately, unless you’re already well versed in one of these frameworks, this means a huge expansion in the scope of your project. Unfortunately, the reality is that modern web development is a hugely complex field, and Panorama doesn’t have any shortcuts to cut you to the front of the line. It can be done, but not easily. That’s why you don’t really see Panorama X server being heavily promoted for web publishing - it’s really not a viable option unless you are really motivated. A handful of customers have been highly motivated and have built really cool web apps with it, but you really need to be both a Panorama expert and a web development expert to pull it off. That’s a very small club.
