Work With MashZone NextGen Attributes

You use MashZone NextGen attributes to provide credentials or other runtime inputs for apps, mashables or mashups.You can also use attributes to provide additional meta data for artifacts. Common examples include information for the current user, such as a credential for a mashable, shared information that should be used for all contexts, such as an application ID that should always be used for a specific mashable, or information from a previous response that is specific to the current transaction or session.

MashZone NextGen attributes can be defined for these contexts:

User Attributes: are defined by each user as part of their profile in MashZone NextGen and saved in the MashZone NextGen User Repository.

You can also choose to expose attributes from the MashZone NextGen User Repository as MashZone NextGen user attributes. You can expose attributes from the default User Repository or from your LDAP Directory, if MashZone NextGen is configured to use LDAP. See Expose User Attributes from the User Repository in MashZone NextGen for more information.

At runtime, the MashZone NextGen Server first checks the MashZone NextGen user attributes for the current user to resolve any references to MashZone NextGen attributes used in a request. If there is no matching user attribute for the current user, the MashZone NextGen Server uses the matching MashZone NextGen global attribute to resolve the attribute value before processing the request.

Global Attributes: can be used to define a default or shared value for a MashZone NextGen user attribute. This can be used for all users or just for those users that have not defined a specific value.

Global attributes can also be used to define any common value that should be used in many contexts. See Manage MashZone NextGen Global Attributes for instructions on creating global attributes.

Session Attributes: are data that is available for one user session. They can be defined or updated in these ways:

From data in a mashable or mashup response. These MashZone NextGen session attributes are defined in requests using a MashZone NextGen Header/Parameter. For more information, see Map MashZone NextGen Attributes to Artifact Input Parameters.

Request Attributes: can be used to refer to HTTP headers or cookies for a specific request. For more information, see Map MashZone NextGen Attributes to Artifact Input Parameters.

Artifact Attributes: are additional meta data that you provide for individual apps, mashables or mashups. See Manage Artifact Attributes for more information.