Macromedia dreamweaver 8-extending dreamweaver User Manual

Server behavior techniques

369

Server behavior techniques

This section covers the common and advanced techniques that create and edit server 
behaviors. Most of the suggestions involve specific settings in the EDML files.

Finding server behaviors

Writing search patterns

  In order to update or delete server behaviors, you must provide a 

way for Dreamweaver to find each instance in a document. This requires a 

quickSearch

 tag 

and at least one 

searchPattern

 tag, which is contained within the 

searchPatterns

 tag. 

The 

quickSearch

 tag should be a string, not a regular expression, that indicates that the 

server behavior might exist on the page. It is not case-sensitive. It should be short and unique, 
and it should avoid spaces and other sections that can be changed by the user. The following 
example shows a participant that consists of the simple ASP JavaScript tag:

<% if (Recordset1.EOF) Response.Redirect("some_url_here") %>

In the following example, the 

quickSearch

 string checks for that tag: 

<quickSearch>Response.Redirect</quickSearch>

For performance reasons, the 

quickSearch

 pattern is the beginning of the process of finding 

server behavior instances. If this string is found in the document and the participant identifies 
a server behavior (in the group file, 

partType="identifier"

 for this participant), the related 

server behavior files are loaded and the 

findServerBehaviors()

 function is called. If your 

participant has no reliable strings for which to search (or for debugging purposes), you can 
leave the 

quickSearch

 string empty, as shown in the following example:

<quickSearch></quickSearch>

In this example, the server behavior is always loaded and can search the document.

Next, the 

searchPattern

 tag searches the document more precisely than the 

quickSearch 

tag and extracts parameter values from the participant code. The search patterns specify where 
to search (the 

whereToSearch

 attribute) with a series of 

searchPattern

 tags that contain 

specific patterns. These patterns can use simple strings or regular expressions. The previous 
example code is an ASP directive, so the 

whereToSearch="directive"

 specification and a 

regular expression identifies the directive and extracts the parameters, as shown in the 
following example: 

<quickSearch>Response.Write</quickSearch>
<searchPatterns whereToSearch="directive">

<searchPattern paramNames="rs,new__url">

/if\s*\((\w+)\.EOF\)\s*Response\.Redirect\("([^\r\n]*)"\)/i

</searchPattern>

</searchPatterns>