User Guide

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CHAPTER 16
Data Sources
The Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Data Sources API functions let you add data sources,
which appear in the Plus (+) menu in the Bindings panel (for related information, see the
function
dreamweaver.dbi.getDataSources() in the Dreamweaver API Reference).
Data source files are stored in the Configuration/DataSources/ServerModelName folder.
Dreamweaver currently supports the following server models: ASP.Net/C#, ASP.Net/VisualBasic,
ASP/JavaScript, ASP/VBScript, ColdFusion, JSP, and PHP/MySQL. Within each server model
subfolder are HTML and EDML files that are associated with the data sources for that
server model.
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() function, so that code for the data source is added to the
user’s document.