Attribute and Field Collection Class Reference

In addition to being collections of objects, metadata nodes also contain two types of elements, called attributes and fields. These are name/value pairs, where the name is case-insensitive. They are each stored in a collection container object. As is the case with nodes, both collections share methods and properties. The field collection however has additional methods to support multiple entries with the same name, which is forbidden with attributes.

The TAddFlags type is not defined in an Active Script environment, such as the PlanetPress Watch Script task. See the detailed reference for the numerical values to use.

WARNING: Attributes are intended for system-defined data. Please restrict user-defined data to Fields. Do not modify the Attributes, unless you really know what you are doing.

Properties
Integer	Count
	Returns the number of elements in the collection.
Methods
	Delete (Integer Index)
	Deletes the element at the specified index.
	Clear ()
	Clears all elements from the collection.
String	Item (Integer Index)
	Returns the value of the element stored at the specified index.
String	Name (Integer Index)
	Returns the name of the element stored at the specified index.
String	ItemByName (const String Name)
	Returns the value of the element of the specified name,.
String	ItemByNameIndex (const String Name, Integer Index)
	Returns the value of the n'th element of the specified name.
Integer	CountByName (const String Name)
	Returns the number of elements with the specified name.
	Add (const String Name, const String Value)
	Adds a new element to the collection or overwrites its value.
	Add2 (const String Name, const String Value, TAddFlags Flags, [optional] Integer Index)
	Adds a new element with a customizable behavior if the name already exists.

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Property Documentation

Integer Count

Returns the number of elements in the collection.

Returns:

Returns the number of elements in the collection.

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Method Documentation

Add	(	const String	Name,
		const String	Value
	)

Adds a new element to the collection. If the specified name already exists in the collection, the new value overwrites the previous one.

Parameters:

	Name	Name of the element to add. The name must adhere to this syntax rules: start with a letter, followed by zero or more letters, numbers, underscore or dash. The name is not case-sensitive.
	Value	Value of the element. There is no restriction on the content, although binary is discouraged.

Exceptions:

EOleException

The name is empty or invalid.

Add2	(	const String	Name,
		const String	Value,
		TAddFlags	Flags,
		Integer	Index	(optional)
	)			Field collection only

Adds a new field to the collection. The behavior of the method when the specified name already exists in the collection is determined by the Flags argument.

Parameters:

	Name	Name of the field to add. The name must adhere to this syntax rules: start with a letter, followed by zero or more letters, numbers, underscore or dash. The name is not case-sensitive.
	Value	Value of the field. There is no restriction on the content, although binary is discouraged.
	Flags	Additional flags for the method. This determines how the method behaves when the specified name already exists. Script users: afReplace = 0 Overwrites the previous value with the new afAppend = 1      Appends the new value at the end of the previous one                                                                  afDuplicate = 2 Creates a new field with the same name afFail = 3 Raise an error
	Index	(optional) Instance of the field to modify. This must be a numeric value equal to 0 or greater and can only be used with the afReplace flag.

Exceptions:

	EOleException	The name is empty or invalid.
	EOleException	The flags value is invalid.
	EOleException	The name already exists and the afFail flag was specified.
	EOleException	The index is invalid.
	EOleException	An index is specified but afReplace is not specified.

Clear

(

)

Deletes all the elements of the collection.

Integer CountByName

(

const String

Name

)

Returns the number of attributes or fields with the specified name.

Parameters:

Name

Name of the element to count.

Returns:

Number of occurrences of elements with the specified name. When counting attributes, the only possible values are 1 and 0 because attributes can only occur once.

Delete

(

Integer

Index

)

Delete a specified element from the collection.

Parameters:

Index

0-based index of the element to delete. The first element in the collection is at index 0 and the last is at Count-1.

Exceptions:

EOleException

Index is lower than 0 or higher than Count-1.

String Item

(

Integer

Index

)

Returns the value of the element at the specified index in the collection.

Parameters:

Index

0-based Index of the element value to retrieve. The first element in the collection is at index 0, and the last is at Count-1.

Returns:

The value of the specified element as a string.

Exceptions:

EOleException

Index is lower than 0 or higher than Count-1.

String ItemByName

(

const String

Name

)

Returns the value of the element of the specified name.

Fields only: If more than one field has the specified name, the value of the first one in the list is returned.

Parameters:

Name

Name of the element to retrieve.

Returns:

The value of the element as a string. If no element is found, an empty string is returned.

String ItemByNameIndex	(	const String	Name,
		Integer	Index
	)			Field collection only

Returns the value of the n'th field of the specified name. This method can be used to retrieve the value of a specific field when more than one field has the same name.

Parameters:

	Name	Name of the field to retrieve.
	Index	Ordinal of the field to retrieve. To retrieve the value of the first field named Name, use 0. For the second field, use 1, and so on.

Returns:

The value of the specified field as a string. If an field named Name is not found, or Index is higher or equal to the number of fields named Name (in other words, you specify 4 to get the fifth but there are only three), an empty string is returned.

Exceptions:

EOleException

Index is lower than 0.

String Name

(

Integer

Index

)

Returns the name of the element at the specified index.

Parameters:

Index

0-based Index of the element value to retrieve. The first element in the collection is at index 0, and the last is at Count-1.

Returns:

The name of the element as a string.

Exceptions:

EOleException

Index is lower than 0 or higher than Count-1.

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