I was working on designing a form for a program and when I went to launch the form to test the changes that I had made, I received an XML error:
There was an error in the form XML file: CONTACT_ther_ser_nodx.xml.
Error reason: A name was started with an invalid character.
Error line/position in file: 824 / 108
Source text: disable_rule_code=”(document.getElementById(‘serv_loca’).value != ‘569B4372-5F51-492E-87EB-D1927EE714D4’ && document.getElementById(‘serv_loca’).value != ‘E5AA86E2-C558-4423-9CE6-4D29B5489B76’ && document.getElementById(‘serv_loca’).value != ‘922BCDC4-DC91=4AC3-9949-3401AF509AE1’)”
According to the error message, myEvolv was taking issue with some JavaScript that I was attempting to use to disable/enable a field based on the selected value of a picklist field. Apparently I had an invalid character. After scanning through my code looking for an error in my JavaScript and not finding any, I took a closer look at the error and noticed that it was actually a problem in the form XML that was throwing the error but ti was somehow related to the JavaScript code I had written.
It turns out that the problem relates to the XML standard and special characters. In JavaScript, a double ampersand, &&, is used for the logical operator “and”. In XML, the ampersand is a special character and myEvolv stores form data in XML so when my disable rule JavaScript was being parsed within the XML form document without the ampersands escaped, it caused an invalid character XML error.
To fix this, I just had to switch the && in my JavaScript to && and the form rendered fine and the JavaScript still worked.
