This document discusses converting existing forms to Liferay Forms. It introduces Liferay Forms and tools developed to aid conversion. Use cases described are upgrading an existing Liferay portal with many legacy web forms to the latest version, and converting forms from other technologies to Liferay. Automated tools presented simplify the conversion process from web forms or static HTML to compliant Liferay Forms. The document also discusses factors to consider when evaluating if Liferay Forms meets requirements or if custom development is preferable.

1. Convert to
Liferay Forms!
Sébastien Le Marchand
Freelance Technical Consultant
@slemarchand
MARCH 10, 2021

2. 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

3. 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?

4. Custom tools and feedback
presented in this session come
from real-world projects
performed by...

5. 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

6. (Re-)discovering Liferay Forms

7. LIFERAY FORMS: THE BIG PICTURE
Inspired from Google Forms
Find everything you love about Google Forms
Keep full control on your data
Don’t let any SaaS vendor control your data… A kind of “Signal” of Forms 😉
Deeply integrated into Liferay
Re-use your Liferay security model and seamlessly embed forms into your websites
Extensible
Thanks to OSGi, you can add any exotic feature you need… Sky is the limit!

8. Give direct control
to business users
Liferay Forms is a real game changer
Reduce delay Reduce costs
€

9. History of forms in Liferay
7.2 7.3
7.0 7.1
6.2
6.1
Liferay Forms
Liferay Web Form
Age of maturity
Available separately on Marketplace for EE

10. Defining form
01

11. End users fill form instances
02

12. Analyze results
03

13. Advanced field types

14. 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

15. 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
Custom
validation rules
+ Service override
+ MVC Command override

16. The need to convert

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

18. Use Case #1
7.2 7.3
7.0 7.1
6.2
6.1
Liferay Forms
Liferay Web Form
Age of maturity
Available separately on Marketplace for EE

19. 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

20. Use Case #2
... ...

21. 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 !

23. Liferay Forms: behind the scenes

25. Server side ...
...

26. serializedFormBuilderContext :
+ 4 000 lines of JSON

28. Tools we made

31. GENERAL PIECE OF ADVICE
Consider to encapsulate and adapt
Liferay native API which not fit
the context of your project.

32. nysis-ddm-form-generator
Liferay
nysis-web-form-converter
Web Form Portlets
DDM Form Instances
DDM Form Portlets
Use Case #1
UPGRADE PROCESS
SIMPLIFIED API

33. ▪ 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

34. Liferay 6.1 Liferay 7.2

35. Use Case #2
nysis-ddm-form-generator
Liferay
nysis-json-form-converter
DDM Form Instances
SIMPLIFIED API
JSON
htmlform2json
SCRIPT NODE.JS
Static HTML
Web crawler
Web Application

36. ▪ 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

37. Get more information,
enroll as tester and
share your feedback:
forms.nysis.com

38. Next steps for our tools?

39. Transverse improvements
Transverse 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

40. New converters considered
Upstream 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

41. Forms: Should I Stay or Should I Go

42. Liferay Forms
Custom development

43. 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!

44. Maybe you need bigger size for no-code/low-code ?
Forms
App
Builder

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

46. What did we learn?

47. 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

48. Thanks !
Sébastien Le Marchand
contact@nysis.com
@slemarchand