Learning about sections

Sections are the building blocks of your user interface. You can populate a section with components, such as fields and controls, to create a functional chunk of user interface that can be reused in different contexts for improved consistency and efficient development.

Sections are instances of the Rule-HTML-Section class and define how an area of a user interface looks. You can display a section in a harness, another section, or a paragraph rule.

Sections use templates that organize content into separate regions. Each region can contain properties, labels, controls, and other sections. You can create a custom template specifically for your application, or choose from several out-of-the-box templates that cover most UI scenarios.

For example, your application may need to display user data as a list of ID cards. To create a section that is the basis of a card, you can apply the list item template to the section, and populate it with references to properties that store user data. You can then include the section in a repeating layout, and the application uses it as a model for all user ID cards in that layout. Because the system sources all cards from the same section, they share the visual design and the type of data that they display. However, the content of each card is different because the data is independent of the user interface design.