I'm having a few issues with Jira Forms, but it mainly results in not being able to get the form data in a presentable format. This is going to be a long post because of the examples and screenshots. but I'll summarize quickly:
- PDF Output does not respect words when wrapping and does not create Hyperlinks for links
- XLSX Export does not include formatting, or link URL.
- API content is the same as XLSX cell, except it also has issues with quotation marks.
- I reviewed the API again and it does appear that I can get the form answers as an ADF document. Not as easy to work with as Markdown, but it's something at least.
- There does not appear to be a way to get all of the data submitted in a form that includes all of the data and formatting. It is obviously saved since it can display the form content within Jira, but there is no method for exporting all of the form information. If the XLSX or API used Markdown, it'd be fine.
Example Text
First, the example text. Notice that when presented in the interface, this information respects words when wrapping and includes all formatting. The form has one Paragraph form field and I've added the following example text:
Heading 1
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, BOLD TEXT: consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. ITALIC TEXT: Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. STRIKETHROUGH TEXT Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo.
Heading 2
Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. Aliquam lorem ante, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a, tellus. Phasellus viverra nulla ut metus varius laoreet. Quisque rutrum.
Bullet List
Numbered List
Item 1
Item 2
Item 3
Link to Example Site
PDF Export Screenshot
Now, here is a screenshot of that form's PDF export:

PDF Results
Ok, so the PDF formatting is terrible and for the link, useless because it doesn't actually create a hyperlink or show the URL. The next thing I tried was the XLSX export thinking that it'd have the data in some format like Markdown.
Note: This isn't included in this example, but another quirk I found while testing is that attachments on a form are displayed as a UUID string with no filename, link, or context.
XLSX Export Screenshot

XLSX Results
This was even worse. Not only did it not show the URL for the link, but it also did not present any of the formatting. I realize that adding text formatting to cell is likely pretty complicated, but if this were at least in Markdown I could copy and paste it into a Markdown view and get the formatted data. With the XLSX, any formatting other than lists is completely lost.
API
Ok, so if the PDF and XLSX are unusable, surely there is an API that I can use to get all of the information and then I can do whatever I want with it right? Wrong.
https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/forms/rest/api-group-forms-on-issue/#api-group-forms-on-issue
My options for getting the form data are either:
Final Results
The only method for getting the complete form data is via the Get Form API and this includes the data in the Atlassian Document Format which is cumbersome because there are no built-in parsers for it and Atlassian doesn't provide an API for converting ADF to HTML or Markdown.