Book Image

ColdFusion 9 Developer Tutorial

By : John Farrar
Book Image

ColdFusion 9 Developer Tutorial

By: John Farrar

Overview of this book

Adobe ColdFusion is an application server, renowned for rapid development of dynamic websites, with a straightforward language (CFML), powerful methods for packaging and reusing your code, and AJAX support that will get developers deep into powerful web applications quickly. However, developing rich and robust web applications can be a real challenge as it involves multiple processes.With this practical guide, you will learn how to build professional ColdFusion applications. Packed with example code, and written in a friendly, easy-to-read style, this book is just what you need if you are serious about ColdFusion.This book will give you clear, concise, and practical guidance to take you from the basics of ColdFusion 9 to the skills that will make you a ColdFusion developer to be reckoned with. It also covers the new features of ColdFusion 9 like ORM Database Interaction and CF Builder.ColdFusion expert John Farrar will teach you the basics of ColdFusion programming, application architecture, and object reuse, before showing you a range of topics including AJAX library integration, RESTful Web Services, PDF creation and manipulation, and dynamically generated presentation files that will make you the toast of your ColdFusion developer town.This book digs deep with the basics, with real-world examples of the how and whys, to get more done faster with ColdFusion 9.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
ColdFusion 9 Developer Tutorial
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

Chapter 11. Introduction to Custom Tags

Reuse makes coding easier, faster, and more manageable. We find that the same benefits are possible with the browser side of building websites. In this chapter, we will learn about the basics of custom tags through an example of skinning websites. Skins give us the ability to change the appearance of a website without the need to touch the application code running on the site. We will learn how to create and manage the look-and-feel of our website by combining CSS and content containers—technology that has become the most popular standard. We will also learn how to write and understand custom tags in ColdFusion. Custom tags have some advantages that CFC objects do not have. In this chapter, we will cover the following:

  • Varying forms of code reuse in ColdFusion

  • Passing information to a custom tag

  • Reuse of concepts such as skins with custom tags

  • Different methods of storing and accessing tags and tag libraries