list form vs form library

Question

I have to create a form in sharepoint 2013 (office 365 E3), it has the next requirements:

• some of the fields will be hidden based on some others field selections
• some fields are calculated
• we need a repeating section

what would you use? list forms or form library?

If I use a form library would I can use reporting and searching? what difference with lists about reporting and searching?

I've seen also that I can link the form library to a list so anything I collect in the form library will be trasspased to a list, have you used this feature?

Answer 1

Since a requirement is repeating sections, use a form library. This is my #1 criteria when differentiating which mechanism to use (list or library). InfoPath handles repeating sections so easily and figuring out how to store and render the repeating section in a list is more trouble than its worth.

Answer 2

You'd better not use InfoPath since it has been discontinued by Microsoft: http://blogs.office.com/2014/01/31/update-on-infopath-and-sharepoint-forms/. So, I'd recommend to use custom list forms or any 3-rd party tool which creates forms well integrated into SharePoint. My team develops one of them called Forms Designer but there's a large selection: http://sharepoint-community.net/profiles/blogs/a-list-of-possible-infopath-forms-replacement

Answer 3

Input forms are one of those things that are lacking in SharePoint, hence the multitude of diverse third party solutions as Dmitry Kozlov suggests. The built in list forms will feel woefully inadequate for even the simplest logic you'd like to implement. InfoPath has some serious disadvantages (Slow, to be discontinued, hard to customize, limited possibilities), but also big advantages (Good and easy designer, easy to implement logic, repeating sections, etc).

Give InfoPath a go and see how far you can get. At the very least, you'll be able to quickly prototype because of how fast the designer works.