User Guide

340 Chapter 20: Data Translators
Adding a translated attribute to a tag
Attribute translation relies on the Dreamweaver parser to ignore server markup. By default,
Dreamweaver already ignores the most common kinds of server markup (including ASP, CFML,
and PHP); if you use server markup that has different opening and closing markers, you must
modify the third-party tag database to ensure that your translator works properly. For more
information on modifying the third-party tag database, see “Customizing Dreamweaver” in
Using Dreamweaver.
When Dreamweaver handles preserving the original server markup, the translator generates a
valid attribute value that can be viewed in the Document window. (If you use server markup only
for attributes that do not have a user-visible effect, you do not need a translator.)
The translator creates an attribute value that has a visible effect in the Document window by
adding a special attribute,
mmTranslatedValue, to the tag that contains the server markup. The
mmTranslatedValue attribute and its value are not visible in the HTML panel or in Code view,
nor are they saved with the document.
The
mmTranslatedValue attribute must be unique within the tag. If it is likely that your
translator needs to translate more than one attribute in a single tag, you must add a routine in the
translator that appends numbers to the
mmTranslatedValue attribute (for example,
mmTranslatedValue1, mmTranslatedValue2, and so on).
The value of the
mmTranslatedValue attribute must be a URL-encoded string that contains at
least one valid attribute/value pair. This means that
mmTranslatedValue="src=%22open.jpg%22" is a valid translation for both src="<? if
(dayType == weekday) then open.jpg else closed.jpg" ?>
and <? if (dayType ==
weekday) then src="open.jpg" else src="closed.jpg" ?>
.
mmTranslatedValue="%22open.jpg%22" is not valid for either example because it contains only
the value, not the attribute.
Translating more than one attribute at a time
The
mmTranslatedValue attribute can contain more than one valid attribute/value pair.
Consider the following untranslated code:
<img <? if (dayType==weekday) then src="open.jpg" width="320" ¬
height="100" else
src="closed.jpg" width="100" height="320" ?> alt="We're open 24 ¬
hours a day from
12:01am Monday until 11:59pm Friday">
The following example shows how the translated markup might appear:
<img <? if (dayType==weekday) then src="open.jpg" width="320" ¬
height="100" else
src="closed.jpg" width="100" height="320" ?>
mmTranslatedValue="src=%22open.jpg%22 width=%22320%22 ¬
height=%22100%22"
alt="We're open 24 hours a day from 12:01am Monday until 11:59pm ¬
Friday">
The spaces between the attribute/value pairs in the mmTranslatedValue attribute are not
encoded. Because Dreamweaver looks for these spaces when it attempts to render the translated
value, each attribute/value pair in the
mmTranslatedValue attribute must be encoded separately
and then pieced back together to form the full mmTranslatedValue attribute. For an example of
this process, see “A simple attribute translator example” in the next section.