Creating Blocks

The Block Infrastructure provides a variety of means to create, populate and edit in-memory block trees. A block tree can be constructed incrementally, as the data needed to populate the tree may come from several different sources. A block can be created entirely programmatically or by using a server-side layout definition file. The recommended method is to use a server-side layout definition file (XML file) since including the construction code in a Java class programmatically requires a recompile of the class in case of modifications. For details on constructing blocks using server-side layout definition files, read Server-side Layout Definition Files.

After a block is created, it must be registered with the Block Library to use it in MicroStrategy Web. Blocks are automatically registered simply by placing the block XML file in the plugins\PluginName\WEB-INF\xml\blocks subfolder where plugins is a subfolder inside your MicroStrategy Web installation and PluginName is the name of your customization plug-in.