Where are custom forms loaded from?

Camunda 7 Topics
1

Newish to camunda, so forgive my confusion.

I’ve read about 5 different ways they’re loaded, but it seems none of them match our situation because I’ve still not managed to succeed.

Here is what I know:

We started out with a project generated by https://start.camunda.com/

  • it’s spring boot
  • It’s loading bpmn from the classpath
  • We have no WAR of our own.
  • We are not deploying from the modeller.

I need to put together some custom form (html) pages (embedded?), but have been thoroughly unable to get camunda to load the configured html file.

The error I am getting is:
“EMPTY_CONTEXT_PATH”: “The context path is either empty or not defined.”,

So what is the definitive location that custom forms are loaded from in our situation?
Is anything else in terms of setup required?

I see no 404’s in the browser,

(Anyone who can point me to the code that does the loading will be a great help. I’m happy to try debug it)

2

Refer this article:

3

Thanks, can see what I learn by doing that.

However, I’m trying to load from the classpath or file system.
(We deploy the server, nyegration code and bpmn as one artifact)

4

I’m not sure I would start a new project on Camunda 7 at this point, considering that it will be end-of-support in a couple of years. Important Update: Camunda 7 Community Edition End of Life Announced - #11 by mary_grace

There are other posts on the forum about modifying the configuration files for Camunda 7, which specify which file types to auto-scan for when the application server starts up. By default it only scans for .bpmn, .dmn, .bpmn2.xml (I think). You have to modify this to also scan for .form

Auto deployment has a number of issues, that I’m not sure that updating the configuration files to scan for.form files will solve. See also Automatic Resource Deployment | docs.camunda.org
You need to add in the .form to be scanned for in this configuration

5

Thanks for the info.

Yes, aware of EOL of 7. (Oct 2025).
We are a couple of months in with 7 because of logistical issues getting 8 supported in a corporate env. Desktop dev is also an issue given the Docker requirement for 8, which again runs afoul of corp policy.

BTW, not using .form files - just custom html, but I daresay the issue is similar.

6

I thought (though I’m likely wrong since I don’t do a lot of deployment - just modelling) that HTML forms were meant to be hosted on a different system…
I don’t know if I can find the documents on HTML forms in the help pages. That’s going to be your best place to look.

7

Ok, so the problem is nothing (yet) to do with not loading the forms.

It appears that the problem is that I have no Process Application or more specifically Process Application Name. (we have no processes.xml) This results in there being no contextPath in the form definition - which (not sure why) the web ui cannot deal with.

So, IOW, we are failing before we try and load any form.

SO, the question is, how can we set a process application name with this default project: https://start.camunda.com/

8

Answering my own question, to some extent:

The error I am getting is:
“EMPTY_CONTEXT_PATH”: “The context path is either empty or not defined.”,

This error is nothing to do with where static resources are loaded from and everything to do with the fact that there is no Process Application (see here)

Once a Process Application (not just a process engine) has been deployed, then and only then, is it possible to load custom forms.

And the html forms are indeed loaded from classpath://static/*

Many thanks for the help/pointers above

9

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