Chapter 10: The Server Behavior Builder

Chapter 10 - The Server Behavior Builder
byGareth Downes-Powellet al.
Wrox Press 2003

Overview

Author: Bruno Mairlot

• Predefined server behaviors

• Building your own server behaviors

• Designing an interface for your server behaviors

In the previous chapter, we discovered that even with all the powerful tools that Dreamweaver provides, you might be confronted with a situation where the code you need is not available in the Server Behavior menu items. What can we do in this situation? The quick solution is to go for hand coding the part of the script you need. However, if you were to find yourself writing hand-written code often to carry out a task, wouldn't it be great if we could build our own server behaviors to automate that task? Luckily, Dreamweaver MX allows us to do just that with a tool called the Server Behavior Builder.

The Server Behavior Builder is an interface that will let you write some code, add some parameters to make the code flexible, and build a user interface for those parameters quickly. In this chapter, we'll look at how to use it to create your own server behaviors. With a little work these server behaviors can be packaged in a file format that will allow you to share them with other Dreamweaver users to help them make Dreamweaver more useful.