Macromedia dreamweaver 8-extending dreamweaver User Manual

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Server Behaviors

When Dreamweaver adds a server behavior to a document, it needs to have detailed 
information, including where to insert the code, what the code looks like, and what 
parameters the Dreamweaver author or data replaced at runtime. Each participant EDML file 
describes these details for each block of code. Specifically, the participant file describes the 
following data:

■

The code and where to put the unique instance are defined by the 

insertText

 tag 

parameters, as shown in the following example:

<insertText location="aboveHTML+80">

■

How to recognize instances already on the page are defined by the 

searchPatterns

 tag, 

as shown in the following example:

<searchPatterns whereToSearch="directive">
       <searchPattern><![CDATA[/var\s*MM_paramName/]]></searchPattern>
</searchPatterns>

In the 

searchPatterns

 block tag, each 

searchPattern

 tag contains a pattern that finds 

instances of runtime code and extracts specific parameters. For more details, see 

The script file

Each server behavior also has an HTML file that contains functions and links to the scripts 
that manage the integration of the server behavior code with the Dreamweaver interface. The 
functions that are available for editing in this file are discussed in 

.

A simple server behavior example

This example shows the process of creating a new server behavior so you can see the files that 
Dreamweaver generates and how to handle them. For details about working with the Server 
Behavior Builder interface, see “Adding Custom Server Behaviors” in Getting Started with 
Dreamweaver. The example displays “Hello World” from the ASP server. The Hello World 
behavior has only one participant (a single ASP tag) and does not modify or add anything else 
on the page. 

To create the behavior, you perform the following steps:

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■

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