About directives

Directives are Process Commander extensions to HTML. Directives can appear in HTML rules for display and input, in HTML for correspondence, and in XML for SOAP processing.

As a best practice for improved performance and debugging, use JSP tags rather than directives in new development, except for list view rules. Accept the default value JSP in the Generate for field of the HTML tab of harness, section, flow action, HTML property, and correspondence rules. Automatic conversion of directives to equivalent JSP tags is fast and reliable. CLINB 5/17/06. See Introducing JavaServer Page tags and Converting from directives to JavaServer Page tags.

Delimiters

The default delimiters for directives are curly bracket characters { and }.

Working with properties

Use these four directives to work with properties.

• Reference
• Lookup
• With
• Save

Incorporating HTML sections or fragments

To work with sections or other HTML rules that provide parts of a form, use the Include directive.

Working with scripts and styles

Use these directives when working with scripts or HTML styles. Styles and scripts can include curly brace characters and so can cause confusion with the curly brace characters for directives:

• Literal
• Delimiters

Working with HTML tags

When working with anchors, form tags, and submit buttons, consider using the URL directive.

Working with conditions

To conditionalize HTML, use the When directive.

To work with specific concrete classes, use the Assert directive.

Working with iteration and looping

To display reports and perform other iterative tasks, use the Foreach directive.

Incorporating inline Java

To extend the system-generated Java for an HTML rule, use the Java directive.

Troubleshooting

Use the Comment directive to troubleshoot source HTML or XML.

Directives