LiveCycle Designer Form output to a txt with custom annotation

[cyanstudios]

Hi all, I know that this is my first post but it's definitely not my first visit. Let me get to the nitty gritty.

I'm moderately new to LiveCycle, so please forgive me if this question is a little bit novice.

I have created a form on which you can click buttons to add instances of subforms. These subforms are so that an end user can simply say what they need per product. For instance, they can click a "Pipe" button and this subform is added where they can specify the size, material, quantity, etc for this instance of the product.

Now, the fabrication shop has equipment and software that reads its own specific annotation from a txt file. It's very simple syntax but not common.

I would like the end user to be able to fill out the form completely with each product's properties and have that output to this custom annotation type in a txt attached to an email. As I look at the XML output from a button, all I really need to do is convert <item> </item> tags to a unique tagging system that does not use brackets. Things of this nature. Then output to simple txt, preferably submitted via email as well.

It's over my head but I know it's possible.

If anyone can show me the general concept I bet I can catch on. Thanks.

 

[cyanstudios]

I've really been looking into this. Please have a look at the PDF that I'm creating.

http://www.cyan-studios.net/downloads/smcutsheet.pdf

There are two buttons that work, currently. Straight Joint and Transition.

Now, here is an example of the code that I would need it to output to in a txt file.

ITEM_START
ITEMHEADER_START
ITEMFILE
C:/CAM/items/ryan/Rectangular Manuf/Straight (Cut).ITM
ITEM_NUMBER
1
SPEC
3 WG
MATERIAL
Galvanized

Non-caps strings are the variables that will be defined by form input from the user, coming from XML data.
As you can see, the coding method is a bit awkward, but that won't be an issue for me.

The idea that I have is to create a hidden form in which I will concatenate the values from each input field. Then I'll take the raw value of this hidden field and export it as a .txt file.

If that's the best way to go, how do I go about concatenating the values from each actual instance that's added to this form dynamically?
An example of code that I've tried is:
form1.finals.final1.rawValue = Concat("CODE ITEM ", form1.p1.formsqjoint.wrap.coded.rawValue)

But this only returns the values of one instance.