How Data Sources Work - MACROMEDIA DREAMWEAVER 8-EXTENDING DREAMWEAVER Manual

How data sources work

Dreamweaver users can add dynamic data by using the Bindings panel. The dynamic data
objects that are shown on the Plus (+) menu are based on the server model that is specified for
the page. For example, users can insert recordsets, commands, request variables, session
variables, and application variables for ASP applications.
The following steps describe the process that is involved in adding dynamic data:
1. When the user clicks the Plus (+) menu in the Bindings panel, a pop-up menu appears.
To determine the contents of the menu, Dreamweaver first looks for a DataSources.xml
file in the same folder as the data sources (for example, Configuration/DataSources/
ASP_Js/DataSources.xml). The DataSources.xml file describes the contents of the pop-up
menu; it contains references to the HTML files that should be placed in the pop-up
menu.
Dreamweaver checks each referenced HTML file for a title tag. If the file contains a title
tag, the content of the title tag appears in the menu. If the file does not contain a title tag,
the filename is used in the menu.
After Dreamweaver finishes reading the DataSources.xml file or if the file does not exist,
Dreamweaver searches the rest of the folder to find other items that should appear in the
menu. If Dreamweaver finds files in the main folder that aren't in the menu, it adds them
to the menu. If subfolders contain files that aren't in the menu, Dreamweaver creates a
submenu and adds those files to the submenu.
2.
When the user selects an item from the Plus (+) menu, Dreamweaver calls the
addDynamicSource()
user's document.
3. Dreamweaver goes through each file in the appropriate server model folder, calling the
findDynamicSources()
Dreamweaver calls the
get a new list of all the fields in each data source for the user's document. Those fields are
presented to the user as a tree control in the Dynamic Data or the Dynamic Text dialog
box or in the Bindings panel. The data source tree for an ASP document might appear as
shown in the following example:
Recordset (Recordset1)
ColumnOneInRecordset
ColumnTwoInRecordset
Recordset (Recordset2)
ColumnOfRecordset
380 Data Sources
function, so that code for the data source is added to the
function in each file. For each value in the returned array,
generateDynamicSourceBindings()
function in the same file to