Cold Fusion Tutorial

1
Cold Fusion Tutorial

• Mohammad Shamma
• SIMS 213 Spring 1999

2
Cold Fusion Tutorial

• Brief overview of CF Three-tiered architecture
• Building CF queries
• Specifying CF query output
• Building CF data input forms
• Inserting data from a CF form
• A sample CF database drill-down application

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Cold Fusion Architecture
4
Cold Fusion Architecture

• As shown in the previous slide, the Cold Fusion
  Application Server (CFAS) processes .cfm
  templates by parsing only CFML (Cold Fusion
  Markup Language) tags within the template.
• CFML looks almost exactly like HTML which makes
  building .cfm templates easier for user who are
  familiar with HTML.

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Intro to CFML

• This is an example of CFML query that produces a
  student list.
• ltcfquery namestudent_list datasourcestudent_d
  bgt
• SELECT studentID, studentName
• FROM students
• ltcfquerygt
• The required attributes for ltcfquerygt are name
  and datasource. Name refers to an arbitrary
  name so that you can refer to this query in
  ltcfoutputgt and datasource refers to the unique
  datasource name specified in the ODBC
  Administrator tool in Microsoft Windows. For
  further informaiton on ODBC please see FAQ at
  (http//www.roth.net/odbc/odbcfaq.htm).

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CFML (contd)

• Next, the ltcfoutputgt tag is required to display
  the output of a particular ltcfquerygt.
• ltcfquery namestudent_list datasourcestudent_
  dbgt
• SELECT studentID, studentName
• FROM students
• lt/cfquerygt
• ltcfoutput querystudent_listgt
• studentID -- studentName
• lt/cfoutputgt
• Although the ltcfquerygt tags do not have to be
  placed within the ltHTMLgt lt/HTMLgt tags, the
  ltcfoutputgt must be placed within these tags.

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CFML

• The following output will be displayed with
  whatever HTML formatting is inserted inside the
  ltcfoutputgt lt/cfoutputgt tags. So if we wanted to
  apply HTML formatting to one of the output fields
  in the previous example, we would do so like
  this
• ltcfoutput querystudent_listgt
• ltBgt studentIDlt/Bgt -- studentName
• lt/cfoutputgt
• The ltBgtlt/Bgt tags around the studentID output
  field will apply a Bold font style to that
  particular field.

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What would this .cfm file look like?
Once finished the .cfm file would look like
this.
ltcfquery namestudent_list datasourcestudent_d
bgt SELECT studentID, studentName FROM
students lt/cfquerygt ltHTMLgt ltHEADgt ltTITLEgtCF
Query examplelt/TITLEgt lt/HEADgt ltBODYgt ltcfoutput
querystudent_listgt studentID --
studentName lt/cfoutputgt lt/BODYgt lt/HTMLgt
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CF Data Input Forms

• A typical way to build a CF based data input form
  is to create a typical HTML form and assign the
  appropriate field names as attributes within your
  form.
• Ex.
• ltinput typetext namestudentID
  maxlength10gt
• ltinput typetext namestudentName
  maxlength25gt
• Notice that the names of these two inputs
  correspond to the field names used in the
  previous example.

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CF Data Input Forms

• Next you need to specify the form action, which
  in this case is the page that will insert the
  data from the form into the student_db
  datasource.
• ltFORM ACTIONaddStudent.cfm methodPOSTgt
• ltinput typetext namestudentID
  maxlength10gt
• ltinput typetext namestudentName
  maxlength25gt
• ltinput typesubmit namesubmit valueInsert
  Studentgt

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Inserting data from a form.

• The tag ltCFINSERTgt is an easy way to insert data
  from a form into a database table. The following
  is an example of what would be placed at the top
  of the addStudent.cfm action template
• ltcfinsert datasourcestudent_db
  tablenamestudentsgt
• Note that we are using the same datasource and
  that that table to be updated is specified as
  well.

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Sample CFML files

• Along with these notes are a set of .cfm files
  that read and display simple data from a
  datasource, add data to that datasource and
  perform complex searches to drill-down into
  that datasource.
• The datasource for these files is a Microsoft
  Access database file called (tutorial.mdb).

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CFML Sample files

• The file grade_report.cfm produces a list of
  students and their grades from particular
  courses.
• The files addStudentGrade_EntryForm.cfm and
  addStudentgrade_EntryAction.cfm allow data to
  be inserted into the database.

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CFML Sample files

• Finally the last set of files allow you to build
  complex data drill-down applications to the
  database
• studentsearch_Search.cfm
• studentsearch_Result.cfm
• studentsearch_Detail.cfm
• studentsearch_AppendCriteria.cfm

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More on Cold Fusion

• If you want to know more about Cold Fusion
  (http//www.allaire.com)
• Further documentation can be viewed from
  (http//www.allaire.com/Documents/cf4docs.cfm)