Editing New Features in EPrints 3.1 (section)

== XML based Scripting ==
=== Expansion inside epc:phrase ===
This means you can place a bit of EPScript inside {} in the ref element of a phrase tag and have it expanded before the phrase is selected. Eg.
<pre><nowiki>
 <epc:phrase ref="page:html_description_{somefield.as_string()}" /></nowiki></pre>
So if the value of somefield was "foo" this would display the phrase "page:html_description_foo".

=== <epc:foreach> ===
This is a new tag for XML files: <epc:foreach> takes a list (eg. the value of a "multiple" field) and returns the contents of the tag once for each value in the list.eg.
<pre><nowiki>
<ol>
  <epc:foreach expr="creators_name" iterator="name">
    <li>(<epc:print expr="$name" />)</li>
  </epc:foreach>
</ol></nowiki></pre>
which would resolve to something like:
<pre><nowiki>
<ol>
  <li>(Smith, John)</li>
  <li>(Jones, Davy)</li>
</ol></nowiki></pre>

=== STRING.strlen()===
This just returns the length of a string. Useful in the issues.xml for identifying very long or short strings.
 <spc:print expr="title.strlen()" />
would return the number of characters in the title field.
=== today() ===
The today() function takes no parameters and returns the current date.
=== DATE.datemath( CHANGE, TYPE ) ===
CHANGE is a positive or negative value and type is year, month or day. Returns the resulting date.
For example:
 today().datemath( -6, "month" )
would return a date six months before today.

=== VALUE.as_string() ===
This strips any EPrints MetaField type from the value and returns a plain STRING. This is used to suppress the normal render function. So that, for example, a value from a set field will be printeda as the database value, rather than the phrase associated with it.