ColdFusion Tutorial

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ColdFusion Tutorial

• 11/2003

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ColdFusion Intro

• Why should you be interested in ColdFusion?
  businesses love ColdFusion, because this
  database-to-Web gateway provides an effective and
  simple way to make a dynamic Web.

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ColdFusion Intro

• Webmaster Rule Number OneWhen a potential
  employer/client asks you if you've ever worked
  with XYZ software running on platform ABC, say
  "yes" quickly and with great assurance. Then run
  home, fire up the Net, and figure out what the
  heck they were talking about.

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ColdFusion Intro

• ColdFusion is a tool made by MacroMedia that runs
  concurrently with most Windows and Solaris Web
  servers.
• If you host your own server in-house, you can
  install the package on the same machine if you
  host with an outside provider, you'll have to
  convince them to purchase and install it. There's
  also a growing number of Web providers offering
  ColdFusion as an available service.

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Intro

• Once installed, you'll access your database with
  ColdFusion templates, which look surprisingly
  similar to standard HTML pages. The difference is
  that you can create a single template and serve
  up tons of information dynamically rather than
  having to create a separate page for every item.
  You'll need a basic knowledge of databases and
  HTML,.

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Intro

• A data source name (DSN) is the database you want
  to serve up on the Web and use with ColdFusion.

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Intro

• A ColdFusion template is a standard HTML page
  with some extra coding inserted before the ltHEADgt
  tag. This code tells ColdFusion which data source
  you want to access and sets up variables that
  you'll use further down the page in the actual
  HTML code. Templates use the file extension .cfm
  (in recent versions of the software) or .dbm (in
  versions prior to 3.0).

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Intro

• Let's look at a basic template file. We'll assume
  we have a data source set up as
  contents_of_my_pocket and that the data source is
  a Microsoft Access database called
  contents_of_my_pocket.mdb.

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ColdFusion Intro.

• Within that database is a single table called
  Contents, and you have fields defined as Item,
  Acquired, and Value. If you wanted a Web page to
  list all of the items in the database, the date
  you acquired them, and their value, the top of
  your template file would look something like
  this

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ColdFusion Intro

• ltCFQUERY NAME "pocket" DATASOURCE"contents_of_my
  _pocket"gtSELECT FROM contentslt/CFQUERYgt

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ColdFusion Intro

• This code tells ColdFusion to query your data
  source
• NAME can be anything you like, as long as it
  matches the name in the CFOUTPUT, which I
  describe below. This allows you to set up more
  than one query on a page and name each one, so
  your output could include information from more
  than one database.

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ColdFusion Intro

• DATASOURCE is the name of your DSN, exactly as
  you defined it in ColdFusion Administrator.
• The SELECT statement is a standard SQL statement
  that tells ColdFusion which records you want to
  select from what table. In this case, we're using
  the wildcard symbol "" to indicate that we want
  to grab the information from all fields in the
  table called Contents.

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ColdFusion Intro

• Now, below our query, we begin the standard HTML
  part of the template
• ltHEADgtltTITLEgtContents of My Pocketlt/TITLEgtlt/HEAD
  gt
• ltBODYgt
• ltH1gtContents of My Pocketlt/H1gt

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ColdFusion Intro..

• ltH1gtContents of My Pocketlt/H1gt
• ltCFOUTPUT QUERY "pocket"gtltBgtItemlt/Bgt
• ltBRgtAcquired
• ltBRgtvalue
• ltPgtlt/CFOUTPUTgt
• lt/BODYgt
• lt/HTMLgt

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ColdFusion Intro

• The variables in our template are the items
  enclosed in hash marks (). Note that they're
  keyed exactly to the field names in our database
  contents_of_my_pocket.mdb. We can use these
  variables anywhere in our HTML document, as long
  as we enclose them in ltCFOUTPUTgt tags. CFOUTPUT
  tells ColdFusion that we're about to refer to
  some variables from a specific query named at the
  top of the document.

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ColdFusion Intro

• Note the bold tags around the item variable.
  That's one of the great things about this whole
  deal You can format text from your variables
  just like any static HTML text.

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ColdFusion Intro

• If a user accessed this page from his or her
  browser, the user would see something like this
• Contents of My Pocket
• One Bouncy Ball with Psychedelic Markings 12
  December 199825 cents
• Half of a Cheese Sandwich 14 December 199825
  cents

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ColdFusion Intro

• ColdFusion runs through all of the records you
  chose in your SELECT statement (in this case, all
  of them) and returns formatted HTML code until
  you run out of records. To add items to our page,
  we only have to add items to the database.
  ColdFusion handles the rest.

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ColdFusion Intro

• SQL is a database query language that is
  relatively standard among most database
  applications, although Microsoft in its own
  inimitable way has added proprietary statements
  (see your Help file if you're using MS Access).
  In short, it's a way to select certain records
  from database tables, using criteria you choose.

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ColdFusion Intro

• For example, let's say that you wanted to select
  records from the Contents table in our
  hypothetical database contents_of_my_pocket.mdb.
  For our purposes, we'll assume that you want to
  select only items that were acquired on 12
  December 1998. Your template's SQL statement
  would look something like this

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ColdFusion Intro

• ltCFQUERY NAME "pocket" DATASOURCE
  "contents_of_my_pocket"gtSELECT FROM contents
  WHERE acquired IS "12 December 1998"lt/CFQUERYgt

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ColdFusion Intro

• The above tells ColdFusion to select all the
  records () from the table Contents where the
  field Acquired exactly matches the text "12
  December 1998."

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ColdFusion Intro

• In general, SQL uses the term IS to match text
  fields and "" to match numbers. Let's say you
  want to be less selective and see all of the
  items acquired in the month of December
• ltCFQUERY NAME "pocket" DATASOURCE
  "contents_of_my_pocket"gtSELECT FROM contents
  WHERE acquired LIKE "December"lt/CFQUERYgt

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ColdFusion Intro

• The LIKE term tells ColdFusion to look for
  records where the Acquired field starts with the
  text "December" and is followed by any old day
  and date. The percent sign is SQL's wildcard
  character it means that we don't care what
  follows the word December. LIKE is almost always
  used in conjunction with a wildcard character.
  Similarly, you could select all items acquired in
  1998 by using the following

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ColdFusion Intro

• ltCFQUERY NAME "pocket" DATASOURCE
  "contents_of_my_pocket"gtSELECT FROM contents
  WHERE acquired LIKE "1998"lt/CFQUERYgt

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ColdFusion Intro

• Or if you want to select only items that have the
  letter "b" in them, you could use a statement
  like this one
• ltCFQUERY NAME "pocket" DATASOURCE
  "contents_of_my_pocket"gtSELECT FROM contents
  WHERE item LIKE "b"lt/CFQUERYgt

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ColdFusion Intro

• All you need is a ltCFOUTPUTgt tag and the name of
  a query you defined in your top statement
• ltCFOUTPUT QUERY "pocket"gt Once you've defined
  that, you're free to go hog wild with your
  variables. You have all HTML tags at your command
  as well, but remember that anything put within
  ltCFOUTPUTgt tags is going to repeat again and
  again down your page until all your selected
  records have been accounted for. For example, you
  wouldn't want to use this code....

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ColdFusion Intro

• ... because your output would look like this
• Items in Pocket
• One Bouncy Ball with Psychedelic Markings
• Items in Pocket
• Half of a Cheese Sandwich
• Items in Pocket
• A Bus Transfer etc....

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ColdFusion Intro

• One header line is sufficient, so we should place
  it before the output tag, so it won't get
  repeated for each record, like this
• ltH1gtItems in Pocketlt/H1gt ltCFOUTPUT QUERY
  "pocket"gtitemltPgtlt/CFOUTPUTgt

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ColdFusion Intro

• That way we'll get
• Items in Pocket
• One Bouncy Ball with Psychedelic Markings
• Half of a Cheese Sandwich
• A Bus Transfer
• etc....

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ColdFusion Intro

• You can do all sorts of HTML formatting on your
  variables and place them anywhere you'd like.

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ColdFusion Intro

• ColdFusion also has special built-in tags that
  will take your formatting even further.
• Let's check out the ltCFIFgt and ltCFELSEgt tags.

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ColdFusion Intro

• In our table Contents we're going to add a new
  field called Picture. It will contain a URL that
  points to a location on our site where we've
  stored a picture of each item in my pocket. If we
  just wanted to output a picture of each item
  along with the text describing it, we'd use a
  CFOUTPUT section like this

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ColdFusion Intro

• ltCFOUTPUT QUERY "pocket"gtItem Item
• ltBRgtltIMG SRC"Picture"gt
• ltBRgtlt/CFOUTPUTgt

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ColdFusion Intro

• It's no problem, because ColdFusion variables
  don't mind being used as the source for ltIMGgt,
  ltSRCgt, or ltA HREFgt tags. But just to screw things
  up, let's say that we have pictures for some of
  our items but not all of them. In our Contents
  table the items without pictures have an empty
  Picture field. If we used a standard CFOUTPUT
  section like the one above, we'd end up with
  several broken images.

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ColdFusion Intro

• So let's use ColdFusion's ltCFIFgt and ltCFELSEgt
  tags to set up a simple if-then statement that
  will check to see whether the Picture field
  contains text or not.

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ColdFusion Intro

• CFOUTPUT QUERY "pocket"gtItem Item
• ltBRgt
• ltCFIF Picture EQ""gt    ltIMG SRC"my_generic_pic
  ture.jpg"gt ltBRgtltCFELSEgt    ltIMG
  SRC"Picture"gt ltBRgtlt/CFIFgt
• lt/CFOUTPUTgt

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ColdFusion Intro

• What we've done here is set up an easy test in
  which ColdFusion will examine our Picture field
  and do one thing if it is empty (NULL) and
  another if text appears there. In the above code,
  I used a generic picture that will appear for
  items that don't have their own illustrations.

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ColdFusion Intro

• The test you perform on the CFIF line doesn't
  have to be a simple NULL or NOT NULL check. You
  can also use computations, Boolean operators, etc.

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ColdFusion Resources

• The resource you'll probably turn to most is
  ColdFusion's CFML language reference, which is a
  big list of CF tags, functions, and JavaScript
  statements. You'll find it along with other
  developer docs at MacroMedia's developer site.
  They're in Adobe Acrobat's PDF format.

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ColdFusion Recap

• ColdFusion is a great tool to use with web sites
  and your DBs
• Cost --- 1300.00