Using Ektron PageBuilder to instantiate new SmartForm content

Question

I'm attempting to create a page that will take in given information from a form and create a new SmartForm in a given folder with a specific Template and SmartForm configuration.

The issue is that I have no clue how this could be accomplished. The closest information I could find was the code snippet give here: https://developer.ektron.com/Templates/CodeLibraryDetail.aspx?id=509&blogid=116 but from what I can see this doesn't associate the created content with a specific SmartForm configuration, just a title, folder, template, language, alias, summery, and metadata. Am I just not understanding what I'm seeing here?

Once I understand how to instantiate a new SmartForm it shouldn't be any trouble to populate the fields given a properly made input form. But without a way to specify which SmartForm configuration I want to use I see no way to fill in the proper fields.

Can anyone help me understand how this could be done?

note: I am using Ektron 8.0.2, not the current 9.*

UPDATE:

So I finally came up with a solution and it's a bit long winded for this page so I'm redirecting to a formerly useless blog of mine. If there is demand that I put it here I will do what I can to move the final solution I came up with to this page.

I should also note that in the end, PageBuilder was not used in any way.

Final Solution

-- John

Answer 1

I did something similar a LONG time ago - I think we were on v7.66 at the time. This is from like 2007, so it's been a while.

My app took Word documents as input, reformatted the content of a table (specifically laid out by our writers), and imported it into the Ektron system as SmartForm content.

At the time I want to say I had to analyze the SmartForm XML, and set up our content accordingly. There may have been better ways to do this, but we had a really aggressive deadline and I just needed to get the content into the CMS as fast as possible. I think you can assign the XML of a smartform-based content...

This wasn't an easy thing to do, and there was very little on the Ektron developer site to guide me. I want to say it was a matter of creating a content in the folder, which had the smart form attached to it. (It's been a while and my Ektron fu is a little rusty)

Answer 2

One thing that might help in this endeavor would be Content Types . It's a way of mapping the smartform xml fields to a strongly typed .net object. Ektron has a lot of really helpful info on this topic, and I'm pretty sure this will work in v8.0.2:

Ektron Content Types webinar

"Content Types and SmartForms part II" - Ektron DevCenter Forum Post

The ContentManager class was one of (if not the) first Framework API class introduced, so there's a good chance it would work for you.

UPDATE: You might also give this SO post a read: Creating new smartform data using Ektron ContentTypes