Adobe Extending Dreamweaver CS4 - Manual (Page 252)

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Chapter 17: Server behaviors
Adobe® Dreamweaver® provides users with an interface for adding server behaviors into their documents to perform
server-side tasks such as the following:
• Filtering records based on user criteria
• Paging through records
• Linking result lists to details pages
• Inserting records into a result set
While using Dreamweaver, at times you insert the same runtime code repeatedly into the documents. In such cases,
create an extension to automate the procedure of updating the document with the frequently used code blocks. For
details about working with the Server Behavior Builder interface to implement a custom server behavior, see “Adding
Custom Server Behaviors” in Getting Started with Dreamweaver. Then, read the Server behaviors chapter for details
about working with the supporting server behavior files and the functions that interact with established server
behaviors. For individual function information, see “Server Behavior functions” and “Extension Data Manager
functions” in the Dreamweaver API Reference. Dreamweaver currently supports server behaviors extensions that add
runtime code for the following server models: ASP/JavaScript, ASP/VBScript, ColdFusion, and PHP/MySQL.
Server behavior terminology
The following terms are commonly used in association with server behavior:
Server behaviors extension The server behaviors extension is the interface between server-side code and
Dreamweaver. A server behaviors extension consists of JavaScript, HTML, and Extension Data Markup Language
(EDML), which is XML that is created specifically for extension data. Examples of these files reside in your installation
folder in the Configuration/ServerBehaviors folder, arranged according to server model. When you write script for an
extension, use the
dwscripts.applySB() function to instruct Dreamweaver to read the EDML files, retrieve the
components of your extension, and add the appropriate code blocks to the user document.
Server behavior instance When Dreamweaver adds code blocks to a user document, the inserted code constitutes an
instance of the server behavior. The user can apply most server behaviors more than once, which results in multiple
server behavior instances. Each server behavior instance is listed in the Server Behaviors panel of the Dreamweaver
interface.
Runtime code Runtime code is the set of code blocks that are added to a document when a server behavior is applied.
These code blocks usually include some server-side code, such as ASP script that is enclosed in <% ... %> tags.
Participants Your server behaviors extension inserts code blocks into the user document. A code block is a single,
continuous block of script. For example, a server-side tag, an HTML tag, or an attribute that adds server-side
functionality to a web page. An EDML file defines each code block as a participant. All the participants for a given
server behavior make up one participant group.
Note: For information about participants, participant groups, and how Dreamweaver EDML files are structured, see
“
Extension Data Markup Language ” on page 247.