Property

A PSML property lets you define a field within your document by associating one or multiple values with a name. You can use different types of values including text, dates, values from a list, or rich text.

PSML properties are useful to:

• Organize documents sharing the same characteristics.
• Enforce a particular set of fields to associate with your documents.
• Use in placeholders (metadata properties only).

Property in detail

Each property has the following characteristics:

Datatype

See the following information under property datatypes.

Multiple

A flag indicating whether the property has one or multiple values. When a property has multiple values, they are displayed as a list. In the editor, users are able to add and remove values. Placeholders can only be mapped to single value properties.

Name

The name of a property is what PageSeeder uses internally to reference the property. PageSeeder also uses the name for searches.

If the title of a property is not defined, the name is displayed in place of the title. To make property names more readable in the user interface, PageSeeder automatically capitalizes the name and replaces underscores with spaces so you don’t have to provide a title for simple cases.

Title

The title of a property is a friendlier alternative to the name when the property name-value pair is displayed.

Use the title when the name is difficult to read, when you need to use characters that are not allowed in the name, or to provide different capitalization.

Value

The value of the property – or values if the property has the multiple flag. When a property has multiple values, all the values share the same property datatype.

Property datatypes

Property values have the following datatypes:

Text

This is the default. Any text content can be used, but the editor can be configured to use different input types such as text boxes, drop-down boxes, or checkboxes to choose values among a list of values.

Additional constraints can be added to ensure, for example, that the value is unique, that it matches a specific pattern, or is taken from a list of values.

Text values are limited to plain text. Only markdown or markup datatypes allow additional formatting such as bold or italic.

Date

For date values, the “YYYY-MM-DD” format is used. Date properties are indexed as dates, so you can use date ranges in searches. The editor prompts users for a date using a date picker.

Xref

For a PSML xref, the editor lets users select an existing document or create a new one to link to. It can also be configured to restrict the xref to specific documents.

Markdown and markup

For text values that require additional formatting, such as bold or italic and/or need to include headings, paragraphs or lists, the editor provides a rich text editor with the available formatting options.