Importing a library

Once you've saved a library of blocks, you will eventually want to reuse the code.

To see how this is done, first here's a sample <library>:

<library>
  <block name="storeSelection" storechoice="1">
    <sel value="store={@storechoice}"/>
  </block>
</library>

The above library has been saved as a Quick Query to pub.demo.retail.selectionlib.

There are two steps to making a <block> available in your current query. First, in order to use a block stored in a library you must import the library using the <import> operation. To do this, simply provide the path to your library in the path attribute.

The second step is to call any <block> in the imported library by referencing its name. This is done in the <insert>, <expand>, or <call> operations.

The following code shows both steps: importing the library pub.demo.retail.selectionlib, and then calling the block StoreSelection within the library.

<base table="pub.demo.retail.item"/>
<import path="pub.demo.retail.selectionlib"/>
<insert block="storeSelection"/>

This code returns records for the selection store=1, because the default value for the variable storechoice is 1.

See the following section, Inserting a block, for more information.