DFDP: A Declarative Form Description Pipeline for Decentralizing Web Forms

Forms are used everywhere on the Web

• Filling in shipping information for an online order
• Submitting a support request
• Entering patient data in a hospital

Forms are used for medical data entry

Running example: Health Data Space

Kiosk

Doctor's computer

Patient's smartphone

Each environment displays the form differently

Different forms require custom implementation per environment for each form

With big buttons

Quick data entry

Extensive descriptions

Can we make forms reusable and workflow independent?

• We only want to create our form once and render it on any environment
• We want to render any form with the same environment implementation

Data is tightly coupled to the application

Declarative Form Description

• Display
• Semantic description of the form fields
• Shape
• Structure of the data
• Footprints
• Semantic description of the associated actions

The display part semantically describes the form

• Using RDF
• SHACL, UI ontology, RDF-Form, ...
• Display not tied to the viewing environment
• Machine interpretability

Same form description can be rendered in any environment

FormRenderer

Using HTML in the browser

FormCli

Text-based via the command-line

Schema alignment translates the form description into an ontology

• Treat definitions that semantically describe the same thing as identical
• Achieves a decoupled solution

Describing actions through footprints

{
  ex:Form pol:event pol:Submit.
} => {
  ex:HttpPolicy pol:policy [
    a fno:Execution;
    fno:executes http:Request;
    http:methodName "POST";
    http:requestURI <https://httpbin.org/post>
    http:headers (
      [
        http:fieldName "Content-Type";
        http:fieldValue "application/ld+json"
      ]
    )
  ] .
} .
        

Footprints complete the fully declarative form

• Removes data storage assumptions
• Semantically describes actions

Declarative form description improves reusability

Viewing environments are now workflow independent

Footprints decouple data from application

Conclusion

https://w3id.org/DFDP

• Declarative form description improves reusability
• Viewing environments are workflow independent
• Footprints decouple data from application