property

The property keyword declares a rule, ruleset, or ruleflow property.

Purpose

This keyword is used to declare specific properties for a rule, a ruleset, or a ruleflow in a rule file.

Context

Rulesets, ruleflows, and rules

Syntax

property propertyName = value;

Description

The propertyName argument is any identifier and value is of type String.

You can use the property keyword at two levels: the ruleset level and the individual rule level.

  • At ruleset level, the property declaration must be shown after the import statement.

  • At rule level, the property declaration is part of the rule header.

Users can declare properties at both the ruleset level and the rule level.

As a ruleflow property, this property is used to define a user property on the task. The engine does not interpret this property. You can retrieve its value later by using the API.

Example

The first example shows a ruleset property. The second example shows a rule property.

Example 1

When used at the ruleset level, as in this example, the property keyword is enclosed by a declaration that begins with the word ruleset, followed by any identifier. Two user-defined properties store the first and last names of the ruleset author.

ruleset Vacation { 
   property authorlastname = "Brans";
   property authorfirstname = "Sue";
}
Example 2

When used at the rule level, the property keyword is part of the header declarations. A user-defined property declares the date at which the rule was last changed. Note that the value is of type String.

Rule CdUpdate {
   priority = 100;
   property lastChangeDate = "22 02 06";
   when { ...