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.

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ColdFusion 9 Developer Tutorial
John Farrar
Jul, 2010 | 388 pages
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Table of Contents (22 chapters)
ColdFusion 9 Developer Tutorial
ColdFusion 9 Developer Tutorial
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Web Pages—Static to Dynamic
Web Pages—Static to Dynamic
Turning HTML into a dynamic web page
Understanding and using simple variables
Understanding structures
Let's get interactive
Setting page defaults
Introduction to lists and loops
Understanding arrays
Conditional processing with If/<cfif>
Conditional processing with switch
Summary
2
Basic CFCs and Database Interaction
Basic CFCs and Database Interaction
Our first CFC
Our first object
Using an object constructor
Connecting to a database
Returning data from the CFC
Making our data query flexible
The basic data object concept
Object method access control
Summary
3
Power CFCs and Web Forms
Power CFCs and Web Forms
The practice of protecting access
Web forms introduction
Managing our product data
Getting data to our edit page
Saving our data
Improving page flow
Adding a new record
Let's look under the hood
Summary
4
ORM Database Interaction
ORM Database Interaction
Introduction to ORM in ColdFusion
Working with entity-object relationships
ORM functions
Summary
5
Application, Session, and Request Scope
Application, Session, and Request Scope
Life span
Introducing the Application.cfc object
Application variables
The start methods
The end methods
Scope visibility
Practical application
Universal datasource
Mappings per application
Custom tag paths per application
Summary
6
Authentication and Permissions
Authentication and Permissions
How ColdFusion recognizes users
Custom authentication (additional power)
Extra notes
Summary
7
CFScript
CFScript
Script basics
Exception handling
New functions/commands in CF9
Summary
8
CF AJAX User Interface
CF AJAX User Interface
Changing times
ColdFusion AJAX
Styling notes
Tips
Map interaction
Summary
9
CF AJAX Forms
CF AJAX Forms
AJAX forms
Grid updates and deletes
Linked grids
The date requestor
The autosuggest box
The directory tree
Message boxes
Progress bar
Summary
10
CF AJAX Programming
CF AJAX Programming
Binding
Bind with event
Extra binding notes
Multiple radio buttons or checkboxes and multiple select
Spry binding
CFAJAXProxy
CFC proxy class objects
Client debugging
Firebug
Built-in debugging
Summary
11
Introduction to Custom Tags
Introduction to Custom Tags
Different forms of code reuse
Custom tags
Custom header/footer tags
Nested tags
CFInclude from custom tags
Templates versus skins
Managing custom tags
CFModule approach
Tag library approach
Summary
12
ColdFusion Powered Views
ColdFusion Powered Views
What is open source?
The fun factor
Happily separated
Turning lemons to lemonade
Fun with lists
Better form coding
Custom list item rendering
Summary
13
Control Logic Processing
Control Logic Processing
The code side of applications
Shared variables
Processing request events
Remote AJAX events
Data versatility
Personal extension of COOP
Summary
14
Guide to Unit Testing
Guide to Unit Testing
When to test
Installing our testing software
Understanding assertions
Testing private methods
Testing included files and custom tags
A son's view of testing
Summary
Beyond this Book
Beyond this Book
Areas of interest
Current technologies
Scale versus implementation
Standards
Tools and Resources
Tools and Resources
AJAX
Analytics
Coding
Conferencing and collaboration
Data-management tools
Graphics creation/acquisition
Open source libraries
Project management
Source control
Usability
Virtual development box
XML
Index
Index

Exception handling

I wish I could say that either my book or some other book could help anyone write perfect code that never fails. Until you find the magic mix, you will have to live in the imperfect world with the rest of us. This means that we need to have a way to deal with issues. Exception handling is about both exceptions and errors. Sometimes there is also a gap between our understanding of what the code does and what it actually does. In either case, adding exception handling will help make our code more stable:

try
{
  result = 7/0;
}
catch(any strCatch)
{
  writeDump(strCatch);
}

Throw/abort

Here is the data dump from a browser. We will always get an error while trying to divide a number by zero, so it is obvious that this failure was intentional. In other cases, we find sections of our code that may be harder to predict what these issues might be. We may want to take an issue like this and ask the user to correct the form data. There are many ways to deal with exceptions, but if...

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