Server Behaviors

Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 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. 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, refer to this 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 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 folder in the Configuration/ServerBehaviors folder, arranged according to server model. When you script 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's document.
• 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 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.