Macromedia dreamweaver 8-extending dreamweaver User Manual

370

Server Behaviors

The search string is defined as a regular expression by starting and ending with a slash (/) and 
is followed by 

i

, which means that it is not case-sensitive. Within the regular expression, 

special characters such as parentheses () and periods (.) are escaped by preceding them with a 
backslash (\). The two parameters 

rs

 and 

new__url

 are extracted from the string by using 

parenthetical subexpressions (the parameters must be enclosed in parentheses). In this 
example, they are indicated by 

(\w+)

 and 

([^\r\n]*)

: These values correspond to the 

regular expression values that are normally returned by 

$1

 and 

$2

.

Optional search patterns

  There might be cases where you want to identify a participant 

even if some parameters are not found. You might have a participant that stores some optional 
information such as a telephone number. For such an example, you could use the following 
ASP code:

<% //address block

LNAME = "joe";
FNAME = "smith";
PHONE = "123-4567";

%>

You could use the following search patterns:

<quickSearch>address</quickSearch>
<searchPatterns whereToSearch="directive">

<searchPattern paramNames="lname">/LNAME\s*=\s*"([^\r\n]*)"/i¬
</searchPattern>
<searchPattern paramNames="fname">/FNAME\s*=\s*"([^\r\n]*)"/i¬
</searchPattern>

<searchPattern paramNames="phone">/PHONE\s*=\s*"([^\r\n]*)"/i¬
</searchPattern>
</searchPatterns>

In the previous example, the telephone number must be specified. However, you can make 
the telephone number optional, by adding the 

isOptional

 attribute, as shown in the 

following example:

<quickSearch>address</quickSearch>
<searchPatterns whereToSearch="directive">

<searchPattern paramNames="lname">/LNAME\s*=\s*"([^\r\n]*)"/i¬
</searchPattern>
<searchPattern paramNames="fname">/FNAME\s*=\s*"([^\r\n]*)"/i¬
</searchPattern>
<searchPattern paramNames="phone" isOptional="true">¬
/PHONE\s*=\s*"([^\r\n]*)"/i
</searchPattern>

</searchPatterns>

Now the participant is recognized, even if the telephone number is not found.