User Guide

278 Chapter 15: Server Behaviors
Type
Block tag.
Required
No.
<updatePattern>
Description
This tag is a specific type of regular expression that lets you update participant text precisely.
There should be at least one update pattern definition for every unique parameter that is declared
in the insertion text (of the form
@@paramName@@).
Parent
updatePatterns
Type
Block tag.
Required
Yes (at least one, if you declare the updatePatterns tag).
Values
The value is a regular expression that finds a parameter between two parenthetical subexpressions,
in the form
/(pre-pattern)parameter-pattern(post-pattern)/. You need to define at least
one update pattern for each unique
@@paramName@@ in the insertion text. The following example
shows how your insertion text might look:
<insertText location="afterSelection">
<![CDATA[<%= @@rs@@.Field.Items("@@col@@") %>]]>
</insertText>
A particular instance of the insertion text on a page might look like the following example:
<%= RS1.Field.Items("author_id") %>
There are two parameters, rs and col. To update this text after you insert it on the page, you
need two update pattern definitions:
<updatePattern paramName="rs" >
/(\b)\w+(\.Field\.Items)/
</updatePattern>
<updatePattern paramName="col">
/(\bItems\(")\w+("\))/
</updatePattern>
The literal parentheses, as well as other special regular expression characters, are escaped by
preceding them with a backslash (\). The middle expression, defined as \w+, is updated with the
latest value that passed in for parameters
"rs" and "col", respectively. The values "RS1" and
"author_id" can be precisely updated with new values.
Multiple occurrences of the same pattern can be updated simultaneously by using the regular
expression global flag
"g" after the closing slash (such as /pattern/g).