Introduction

This manual contains reference material for the Java beans supplied with the Escenic Content Engine. A bean is a Java object that complies with the JavaBeans naming conventions. Any object that complies with these conventions can be easily accessed using Java Server Pages (JSP) tags and the JSP expression language.

The beans supplied with the Content Engine fall into two categories:

Core Beans

These beans represent the core components of an Escenic publication: the publication itself, content items and sections. They are automatically created by the system when a request is received and made available as request scope attributes for use in your Java Server Pages.

Utility Beans

These beans represent other data structures created by the Content Engine for specific purposes: search results, tree structures and so on.

A bean is used by retrieving its properties, values that can be used in the construction of web pages. A content item, for example, is represented by a PresentationArticle bean (see PresentationArticle), which exposes all the content item's fields in a property called fields. The article in an Escenic request is made available as a request scope PresentationArticle variable called article. This means that you can retrieve the content of article's title field with the following expression:

${article.fields.title}

In order to make proper use of the Content Engine's beans you need background knowledge both about the Content Engine itself and about the technologies it is based on such as Java Server Pages, JSTL, the JSP expression language, Java Beans and so on. You can start by reading the Escenic Content Engine Template Developer Guide, followed by the Escenic Content Engine Advanced Developer Guide if you want more information. The Template Developer Guide contains a What Next? section containing links and references to sources of general background information.

This manual contains brief descriptions of all the Content Engine beans, followed by descriptions of the bean properties, including examples of how to retrieve the properties.

A number of the beans and properties described in this manual are deprecated: that is, you are recommended to avoid using them. They are old beans/properties that are no longer needed and may eventually be withdrawn. They are currently still available in order to ensure that older applications that use them will still work. You should not, however, use them in new applications.

All deprecated beans and properties are clearly marked.