Link Patterns

A link pattern specifies the HTML that wraps text being rendered, which creates a hyperlink. The link pattern could, for example, be in the HTML “HREF” syntax, in order to create a link. Link patterns are most important when rendering an active table of messages or an active hierarchy of folders, to give each message or folder a hot link the Web user can click to obtain more detail, or to read or compose a message.

You should set up link patterns when you create rendering objects, and they will be used throughout the application.

Setting the LinkPattern property changes the “message_Link” named format. This format is created with a default value of %value%, which means that initially, it produces no links. Setting LinkPattern provides active hyperlinks that specify the location of a form or the links from a message or folder to the next message or folder. The message_Link named format should be changed only by setting the LinkPattern property.

For example, the following link pattern specifies the HTML that wraps the contents of a table cell (indicated by %value%) when the objContainerRenderer.Render method is called:

objContainerRenderer.LinkPattern = "<A HREF='details.asp?obj=%obj%'>%value%</A>"
 

Another type of link pattern is the “folderhierarchy_Link” format. For more information, see the tables in the section Suggested Formats and Patterns.