InfoPath 2010 - embed HTML for rich and web forms

May 29, 2011 John Liu

Do we like the SharePoint content editor web part? Yes!

What if there's a way to add your own HTML in your InfoPath form, and have it appear for both web forms and rich (InfoPath Filler) forms?

Here are the quick steps:

Create an external XML file to store the HTML we need
Add the external XML file as a secondary data source for the InfoPath form
Use the Rich Text control and bind the result from the secondary data source
Using resources in the form (images, CSS)

Tricks for InfoPath Filler Rich Form
Tricks for InfoPath Browser Form

Adding your own CSS
Notes

Script tag doesn't work (stripped from rich text control).
Steps to refresh HTML content of the XML resource

1. Create the XML file

This is documented in MSDN Inserting line breaks into text using Rules

This is pretty much the same thing - I'm inserting a namespace here so InfoPath knows this is a HTML block of text.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<html>
<myhtml>
<b xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >A Bold Hello</b> World
</myhtml>
</html>

Save it as html.xml

2. Add the XML file as a secondary data source

Figure: Add a secondary XML document

3. Use the Rich Text control and bind the result from the secondary data source

Remember to change the Rich Text Box to Read-Only

Figure: Add a new rich text box, then change it's binding

Figure: Bind it to the secondary data source

Run it in Preview (InfoPath Filler)

Figure: InfoPath Filler - looks good

Publish and run in browser (Browser Form):

Figure: InfoPath Form Server - also looks good

4. Use Image from form resources

Let's go one step further and play with resources such as images. Add an image into the form's resource files

Figure: Go to resource files

Figure: Add a picture "Save.png"

Modify the HTML to refer to this image.

Preview this:

Figure: works great in InfoPath Filler

Publish and view in Form Server:

Figure: Doesn't work so well in Browser Form

Figure: Raw HTML

4.1 Using form resources in Form Server

Let's see how does the Form Server handle images.

Figure: Create a picture button

Figure: Set the Picture to the resource

Publish, then check HTML source in the browser for the new picture:

So the format is:

/_layouts/FormResource.aspx?solutionId=xxx&solutionFile=Save.png

Update this back in our HTML file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<html>
<myhtml>
<b xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">A Bold Hello</b> World
<img xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" src="Save.png" border="1" />
<img xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" src="/_layouts/FormResource.aspx?solutionId=XXX&solutionFile=Save.png" />

</myhtml>
</html>

IMPORTANT: Remember to escape the & in the query parameter to &

Publish to Form Server again:

Compare the same form published on two different clients:

5. Add your own CSS

Let's try some other tags, this is the STYLE tag:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<html>
<myhtml>

    <b xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">A Bold Hello</b> World
    <img xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" src="Save.png" />
    <img xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" src="/_layouts/FormResource.aspx?solutionId=XXX&solutionFile=Save.png" />

</myhtml>
</html>

Purple dotted borders. Notice how it is also affecting the Ribbon in the Browser Form.

Use this to your advantage ;-)

6. Notes

Firstly, <SCRIPT> won't work. The rich text control strips them out.
Refreshing the XML file when you update it is a bit of a painful process. This is just the way it is with secondary data sources in SharePoint. If you are using offline files, you need to go through the wizard again to overwrite the previous connection (and refresh your offline cache). But if you are storing that XML file in SharePoint - you can just publish a new version there and tell InfoPath not to cache it.