FML

From Flux Developer Portal

The flux Markup Language (FML) allows you to create highly customized community websites for your users. FML enables the flux platform to be extended to meet your particular needs. FML is a combination of standard HTML tags with additional proprietary flux‐specific tags added. The flux‐specific tags are used to access the social data and layer it into the community pages. Any web developer who is familiar with HTML can easily get started with FML without needing to have any understanding of the .NET framework upon which the site is built. FML currently allows all standard HTML tags to be used, and CSS inclusion and JavaScript is fully supported by FML.

Getting Started with FML

FML is a markup language that conforms to XML syntax. Every FML document always starts with the following declaration: <?fml version="1.0" ?> Each FML tag is always prefixed with <fx: to indicate that it is a special tag and must be processed by the FML Interpreter. An example of an FML tag to add a menu to the page is as follows: <fx:menu />. FML can be used to customize virtually every part of the community. The structure of FML pages is below. More detail on customizing each section using FML can be found in later sections of this documentation.

Page Structure

The Master Page is the global container for every page on the site. It constructs the basic framework of the site, including the Menu, Ad Placements, Page Content, Footer etc. Each community can have only 1 Master Page.

Each customizable page has a pre-defined Page Layout which specifies the structure of content on the page. This can be configured to have any kind of tabular layout. An example of a simple page layout would contain 3 columns of content, but FML can be used to create any custom layout desired.

Within each page on the site, Modules are added to specify the actual content for the page. For example, if you want to display a gallery of community members you can easily add a module which displays member thumbnails and metadata. flux provides a number of preset modules with customizable properties to achieve basic customization of presentation. However, FML allows you to achieve advanced customization by presenting the data in whatever format desired.

Data Retrieval

The flux Data Access API (DAAPI) provides the mechanism for retrieving publicly available community data. FML uses DAAPI queries to make requests for data. The output is offered in multiple formats (XML, Atom, JSON) for convenience. The DAAPI can be used both inside the community and externally (for integration of outbound widgets and promotions). For additional information, see the full DAAPI documentation.

FML Tags

For an alphabetical listing, see FML tags.

FML tags are organized into the following logical groupings:

Common tags

Common tags can be used in page templates and in modules.

Template and page structure tags

Elements of this grouping define global site template and pages' structures.

Master Page tags specify a global site template - Master Page.

Page Layout tags specify structures of particular pages.

Module tags

These tags must be used for building FML Modules (blocks of information) on pages. In general, main part of the FML Modules can be separated into three types: modules contain list of items (e.g. content list, people list, etc.), modules contain info about single item (user, content, category, etc) and auth/account modules.