Specifications

145
CHAPTER 14
Server Behaviors
Dreamweaver MX provides users with an interface for adding server behaviors into their
documents to perform server-side tasks such as filtering records based on user criteria, paging
through records, linking result lists to details pages, and inserting records into a result set. If a
Dreamweaver user repeatedly inserts the same runtime code into documents, you can create a
new extension to automate updating a document with these frequently used code blocks. See
“Adding Custom Server Behaviors” in Getting Started with Dreamweaver MX for details about
working with the Server Behavior Builder interface to implement a custom server behavior. Then,
refer to this chapter for details about working with the supporting server behavior files and the
functions that are available for interacting with established server behaviors. Dreamweaver
currently supports server behavior extensions that add runtime code for the following server
models: ASP.Net/C#, ASP.Net/VisualBasic, ASP/JavaScript, ASP/VBScript, ColdFusion, JSP,
and PHP/MySQL.
The following terms are used throughout this chapter:
• Server Behavior extension: The server behavior extension is the interface between server-side
code and Dreamweaver. A server behavior 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 directory in the
Configuration/ServerBehaviors folder, arranged according to server model. When you script
an extension, use
dwscripts.applySB() to instruct Dreamweaver to read the EDML files,
retrieve the components of your extension, and add the appropriate code blocks to the
user’sdocument.
• Server behavior instance: When Dreamweaver adds code blocks to a user’s 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 behavior extension inserts code blocks into the user’s document. A
code block is a single, continuous block of script, such as 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 (code blocks) for a given server behavior comprise
one participant group.
Note: For information about participants, participant groups, and how Dreamweaver EDML files are structured, see
“Extension Data Markup Language” on page 146.