NetForms User's Guide: Directives

Directives are placed at the very beginning of your FDML document, before the <HTML> header. They are used to control (or "direct") NetForms activities, including telling NetForms to build a new HTML file, to add a link to a menu document, etc.

Please note that you may use each directive only once in each FDML document. Also, filenames will be automatically converted to acceptable Macintosh path names. NetForms will strip most non-alphanumeric characters (periods and underscores will be left, all others removed) and will shorten file and folder names to 30 characters.


NetForms current accepts 7 directive commands...
<CREATEDOC>"Filename"</CREATEDOC>
This is the only required FDML command, and without it NetForms won't do a darn thing. The CreateDoc directive tells NetForms to build an HTML document and save it as a file specified by Filename. Filename is specified as a path relative to the MacHTTP root directory. You will normally use other FDML commands (like Replace, described in the "Insertion Commands" section) to build the "Filename" so that documents are uniquely named on your server. When the Replace, Time, and Date commands are used in a filename, you should use the "_FN" extension so that colons and slashes that might appear in the text inserted by these commands are not interpreted as file or folder delimiters in the path. See the command descriptions below for details.

<AUTOLINK>"Filename"</AUTOLINK>
One of the best features of NetForms is the AutoLink feature. The AutoLink directive allows you to specify a file (again, with a relative path from the MacHTTP directory) that will be used to automatically add HyperText links to the finished HTML article. The AutoLink file specified is an ASCII text file which lists the links to be generated. See the "Creating an AutoLink File" section for details.

<MENUDOC>"Filename" <LI>HTML Command</MENUDOC>
If you ever want anyone to be able to see the article, you'll probably want to have the article listed in a menu, with a HyperText link to it. With MenuDoc, you specify the HTML page you want the link added to and the <LI> command you want inserted. The <LI> command will be put into a bullet point section which will become the list of articles. Currently, NetForms only supports links being added to bullet lists. If there is more than one bullet list in the menu document, the link will be added to all lists. The link will always be added to the top of the bullet list, so that the most recent articles will be displayed first in the list. Like the CreateDoc directive described above, make sure to use the "_FN" extensions on the Replace, Time, and Date commands when they are used within the "Filename".

<COPY>"Filename"</COPY>
The Copy directive is used to save a copy of the article file. The filename here can be a full path, so the copy can be placed on another AppleShare volume. This may be handy for providing full text searches on Articles where the search engine is running on a different server, or for placing a copy in an administration folder for easy reviewing of recent articles.

<CHAIN>"Filename"</CHAIN>
Chain allows you to specify additional FDML documents to be processed using the same user entry. In other words, if you would like for a single user entry to generate two or more HTML articles, you can chain from one FDML document to the next. For example, you may want to create a system where each article has an executive summary followed by another more detailed section. You could create an entry form with both an executive summary field and a detail field, then create two FDML documents. The first FDML document would create the executive summary article and then chain to the second FDML document which would create the fully detailed article.

<RESPONSE>"Filename"</RESPONSE>
The Response directive allows you to specify an HTML document that will be returned to the author after they have submitted an article. If you don't use Response to specify such a file, a very simple "Thank You" response will be sent back to the author. See "Creating a Response File" for more details.

<RECENTLIST> <LI>HTML Command </RECENTLIST>
NetForms will automatically maintain a "Recent List" for your server. This allows users to retrieve a list of articles that have been recently added to your server. This command is very much like the MenuDoc command, except that you do not need to specify a file name to be updated, since the article list is maintained in an internal database. When you use the RecentList command, you are adding a link to this database, which will be automatically time-stamped. Then, when users ask for a list of recent articles, this database is searched and the appropriate links are returned. Up to 256 links can be stored in the database.

NetForms (C) 1994 by Maxum Development Corp.

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