MACROMEDIA COLDFUSION MX 61-GETTING STARTED BUILDING COLDFUSION..., Getting Started

Page 1: ...Getting Started Building ColdFusion MX Applications...

Page 2: ...Macromedia Inc or other entities and may be registered in certain jurisdictions including internationally This product includes code licensed from RSA Data Security This guide contains links to third...

Page 3: ...guage 12 The ColdFusion MX Administrator 13 Using ColdFusion MX with Macromedia Flash MX 14 CHAPTER 2 CFML Basics 15 Working with ColdFusion pages 16 Creating a ColdFusion page 16 Understanding CFML e...

Page 4: ...for ColdFusion development 46 Configuring HomeSite for ColdFusion development 46 PART II Building a ColdFusion Application CHAPTER 5 Lesson 1 Preparing to Build the Sample Application 49 Application...

Page 5: ...erver side action page 96 Validating data on the client using ColdFusion form tags 99 Using cfselect tag to present valid event types 102 Using other client side script to reduce edits on the server 1...

Page 6: ...6 Contents...

Page 7: ...x and HP UX Configuring and Administering ColdFusion MX Part I describes how to manage the ColdFusion environment including connecting to your data sources and configuring security for your applicatio...

Page 8: ...ne documentation All ColdFusion MX documentation is available online in HTML and Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format PDF files Go to the documentation home page for ColdFusion MX on the Macromedia...

Page 9: ...erview of the ColdFusion Markup Language CFML It also provides generic database concepts and information about how to prepare your development environment for using the tutorial in Part II of this boo...

Page 10: ......

Page 11: ...technologies that are the foundation for Macromedia ColdFusion MX In addition it introduces the basic concepts about ColdFusion MX how it works and the various components that comprise it Contents Wh...

Page 12: ...usion page 1 The ColdFusion server looks at the content of the page and searches for the following ColdFusion instructions Tags that begin with cf Variables and functions that are always surrounded by...

Page 13: ...ds that you build your applications using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX Dreamweaver MX offers features and wizards that enhance ColdFusion development For more information about Dreamweaver MX see Chapter...

Page 14: ...an Action Message Format protocol over HTTP This protocol provides fast lightweight binary transfer of data between the Flash client and ColdFusion By using the following features of ColdFusion MX an...

Page 15: ...o create ColdFusion pages and use variables functions conditional processing and form processing Contents Working with ColdFusion pages 16 Understanding CFML elements 18 Working with CFML expressions...

Page 16: ...Note This book shows how to create ColdFusion applications by writing your code manually It does not address how to create ColdFusion pages by generating code with wizards For information about using...

Page 17: ...run the Web Server Configuration Tool and save pages under your web root directory Tip ColdFusion MX on Macintosh OS X uses the J2EE configuration To save the code you typed to create a ColdFusion pa...

Page 18: ...erations such as accessing a database Functions can return data and do other operations like retrieving the system date Almost everything you want to accomplish with ColdFusion will involve using tags...

Page 19: ...le the server needs to know specifics about the database such as the database name and the table name The code required to write this type of statement might look like this cfupdate datasource mydb ta...

Page 20: ...an unformatted date and time However you can format the results of this function with other functions such as the DateFormat or TimeFormat functions Nesting functions Functions can generate data as w...

Page 21: ...atabase table Naming variables You must use the following rules for naming ColdFusion variables Names are case insensitive uppercase lowercase or mixed case Names can contain only letters numbers and...

Page 22: ...iable is important because ColdFusion supports many types of variables The syntax for referencing a local variable is as follows variables variablename Because ColdFusion lets you use the same name wi...

Page 23: ...example the following code creates a variable and instructs the ColdFusion server to return the value of the variable cfset my_first_name Kaleigh cfset my_last_name Smith cfset my_full_name variables...

Page 24: ...ve languages such as JavaScript Specifying pound signs to denote functions or variables In ColdFusion you specify pounds signs to denote functions and variables within a string of text You use pounds...

Page 25: ...ues of the referenced variables Kaleigh and 5 respectively when assigning the value to the variable the_string To display quotation marks on a page as literal characters you must double the quotation...

Page 26: ...NOT NEQ NOT EQUAL Tests for nonequality CONTAINS Tests whether a value is contained within a second value DOES NOT CONTAIN Tests whether a value is not contained within a second value Operators Descri...

Page 27: ...reate a cfif statement The basic syntax is as follows cfif expression HTML and CFML tags executed if expression is True cfif In the previous example ColdFusion only executes the code inside the cfif s...

Page 28: ...ependent steps for creating a form in ColdFusion 1 Creating the layout for the form itself 2 Writing the code to process the submitted information Form processing Every form that you create in ColdFus...

Page 29: ...at ColdFusion supports is post All ColdFusion forms must set the method attribute to post In Part II of this book you will use ColdFusion form tags to create forms and write collected values to a data...

Page 30: ...30 Chapter 2 CFML Basics...

Page 31: ...of relational database concepts and terms It describes what a database is and how it is organized It also discusses the Structured Query Language SQL that you use to interact with databases Contents U...

Page 32: ...nd on hand inventory is stored in a database Within the database you organize the data into storage containers called tables Tables are made up of columns and rows Columns represent individual fields...

Page 33: ...nt information is the same for each employee in a given department however repeating the department information for each employee is redundant Storing redundant data takes up more disk space If the de...

Page 34: ...C JDBC is a standard application programming interface API for accessing information from different database systems and different storage formats About data sources A data source is a complete databa...

Page 35: ...the name of the query The second attribute of cfquery defines the name of the data source The SELECT statement defines the fields columns to be retrieved from a tabled named Employee CFML tags that i...

Page 36: ...36 Chapter 3 Database Fundamentals...

Page 37: ...structure and how to configure the database connection and debugging options in the ColdFusion MX Administrator Additionally it provides a brief overview of using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX or Macrome...

Page 38: ...rectory a backup copy of the file is in the new_user_database directory To ensure that you are working with the original database file verify that the file in the db directory has the same date as the...

Page 39: ...ngs Configuring the connection to the sample database file The following procedures describe how to configure a connection to the sample database file CompassTravel using the ColdFusion MX Administrat...

Page 40: ...ied for the Compass Travel database file is correct To define the sample PointBase database file 1 In the ColdFusion MX Administrator select Data Services Data Sources The Add New Data Source dialog b...

Page 41: ...his click the Delete action button associated with the CompassTravel data source name then repeat the steps in this procedure to reconfigure this data source b Verify that the JDBC URL is correct Fiel...

Page 42: ...u can have these options turned on all the time However if you are working on a production system you most likely will not want to have these options turned on because the debugging information can ap...

Page 43: ...Administrator select Debugging and Logging Debugging Settings A list of debugging options appears on the Debugging Settings page 2 Select the Enable Debugging check box The debugging service is enabl...

Page 44: ...ent environment tools Macromedia Dreamweaver MX is the preferred development environment for building ColdFusion MX applications It combines the best code editing features of ColdFusion Studio with th...

Page 45: ...ery CFML tag Code hints for writing CFML tag attributes Code validator for validating code readiness against other ColdFusion versions Tag chooser with integrated reference material for inserting Cold...

Page 46: ...HomeSite to create the sample application in Part II of this book you must configure HomeSite to recognize the tutorial files and data sources To use HomeSite to create the sample application 1 Establ...

Page 47: ...sts of six lessons Lesson 1 Preparing to Build the Sample Application 49 Lesson 2 Writing Your First ColdFusion Application 57 Lesson 3 Creating a Main Application Page 77 Lesson 4 Validating Data to...

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Page 49: ...ign This lesson provides an overview of these application design steps while the remainder of this book guides you through the lessons on constructing the sample application Application development st...

Page 50: ...nator task Description Produce current trip listing To help Compass Travel agents take trip reservations over the phone and in person the trip coordinator maintains a list of current trip offerings Pr...

Page 51: ...he trip Price Base cost Assigned trip leader Trip photograph By collecting the preceding information about each trip the Compass Travel website can market its trips online to the general public Custom...

Page 52: ...ntain text data while the price column can only contain numeric data It is important to know what type of data is valid for each column so that your data collection forms can validate against incorrec...

Page 53: ...the eventtypes table new mountain climbing trips would be classified differently than ones saved before the change For this reason and to save space in the database the key to the eventtypes row even...

Page 54: ...lication page is where users will come to view information about trips and to navigate to other ColdFusion pages to add edit or search for new trips The following lessons explain how to do these tasks...

Page 55: ...ColdFusion web application root For more information see Saving your ColdFusion page on page 17 You can view ColdFusion application pages on your local computer by opening a web browser and entering o...

Page 56: ...tabase file for MS Windows users and a PointBase database file for UNIX users have been provided For information about how to configure the Compass Travel data source see Configuring Your Development...

Page 57: ...ble search query Develop a results form to display the result of the search ColdFusion tags and functions introduced in this lesson The following table identifies the ColdFusion tags and functions tha...

Page 58: ...a trip query facility You will create a search interface that meets both of these requirements in this lesson The following list identifies the components that you will create in this lesson Dynamic...

Page 59: ...nts are the Compass Travel coordinators and agents not the general public Application development steps You will review or participate in the following application construction steps Steps Description...

Page 60: ...ng a page that is not likely to change often Converting to a dynamic web page Using the static web page approach the Trip Coordinator needs to modify all the web pages that reference trip lists when t...

Page 61: ...clause you can use any of the following operators For example to select the columns named Last Name and First Name for Clients whose City is Boston use the following SELECT statement SELECT LastName F...

Page 62: ...word in the ORDER BY clause the rows are returned in descending order bottom to top The following statement returns a reverse alphabetic list of the Clients table SELECT FROM Clients Order By LastName...

Page 63: ...ing the column contents from the SQL statement In CFML you surround variables with pound signs to display their contents using the cfoutput tag You also use this approach with column names specified i...

Page 64: ...s exercise you will improve the Trip List page to make it easier for the Compass Travel agents to locate trips You must make the following improvements Sort the trip names in alphabetic order Display...

Page 65: ...ng the cfoutput tag from just tripName to include all three selected fields as follows tripName departs departureDate returns returnDate price price BR 3 Create the Budget Trip List report by doing th...

Page 66: ...eria page When designing the search criteria page it is a good idea to develop a list of possible queries the user might issue when searching for the records Since most Compass Travel customers are pr...

Page 67: ...a B SQL is well suited for this type of query When designing the Search Criteria page you must decide which operators to support for each of the queryable columns The operators that you use depends o...

Page 68: ...wever use this page tripsearch cfm later in this lesson to test the search action page The source code for the Trip Search form tripsearch cfm is as follows html head title Trip Maintenance Search For...

Page 69: ...Name tripLocation departureDate returnDate price tripID FROM trips The purpose of the Trip Search form is to supply the data needed to build the WHERE clause to finish this SQL SELECT statement and co...

Page 70: ...er query using the cfoutput block Building the WHERE Clause with the cfif and cfset The WHERE clause in a SQL SELECT is a string You use the CFML cfset and cfif tags to conditionally build the WHERE c...

Page 71: ...e the quotation marks so that the database server does not return an error To preserve the quotation marks you must use the ColdFusion PreserveSingleQuotes function The PreserveSingleQuotes function p...

Page 72: ...ly builds the tripLocation subclause In the following exercise you will add code for the other two queryable columns departureDate and price Code Explanation cfset WhereClause 0 0 The cfset tag initia...

Page 73: ...the text box b Click Search The Trip Results page displays several entries as follows c Notice in the Trip Results page that only one trip has a trip location of China d Click the Back button in your...

Page 74: ...WhereClause and price form priceValue cfelseif Form priceOperator EQ SMALLER cfset WhereClause WhereClause and price form priceValue cfif cfif For Enter this code Windows users using the MS Access da...

Page 75: ...ode and be a more extensible solution then the one presented here This more extensible approach is beyond the scope of this tutorial however Summary This lesson described how to access a relational da...

Page 76: ...76 Chapter 6 Lesson 2 Writing Your First ColdFusion Application...

Page 77: ...mat date and dollar variables Use the MOD function and a query variable to properly alternate the back color of rows in the Trip Search Results table ColdFusion tags and functions introduced in this l...

Page 78: ...ion to include a main application page that lets Compass Travel employees do these tasks View additional details about a trip Scan records in the Trips database table Modify or search for records in t...

Page 79: ...essing additional information about trips that meet the search criteria Main Application page In the beginning of this lesson you will develop the Trip Detail page see the following figure Later in th...

Page 80: ...that you will build After you complete the Trip Maintenance application in this tutorial you will use this Trip Detail page in several ways You can call the TripDetail page directly by typing in the a...

Page 81: ...ROM TRIPS cfif IsDefined URL ID WHERE tripID URL ID cfif cfquery 3 To output the results from the query append the following cfoutput code after the code you added in step 2 cfoutput query TripQuery i...

Page 82: ...HTML code before the cfoutput query TripQuery line html head title Trip Maintenance View Record title head body 6 Insert the ending body and html tags at the end of the page body html 7 Save the file...

Page 83: ...t back from the database In the Trip Detail page we want to only show a single row at a time therefore maxRows is set to 1 cfif IsDefined URL ID WHERE tripID URL ID cfif The URL ID specifies a paramet...

Page 84: ...ge displays the relevant trip information The following code builds the correct WHERE clause supporting this behavior cfif IsDefined URL ID WHERE tripID URL ID cfif If a user called the Trip Detail pa...

Page 85: ...LEncodedFormat tripID tripName a Note The URLEncodedFormat is a ColdFusion function that returns a URL encoded string Spaces are replaced with 20 and nonalphanumeric characters with equivalent hexadec...

Page 86: ...divisible by 2 As described in Chapter 2 CFML Basics on page 15 ColdFusion offers a modulus function MOD that returns the remainder modulus after a number is divided by a divisor for example 10 MOD 3...

Page 87: ...p Detail page dollar and date fields open the tripdetail cfm in the my_app directory in your editor and make the following changes 2 To format the currency and date fields on the Trips Search Results...

Page 88: ...apter 7 Lesson 3 Creating a Main Application Page The Trip Search Results page appears 5 In the Trip Search Result page click the link for Riding the Rockies The properly formatted Trip Detail page ap...

Page 89: ...gation buttons to browse database The drill down search function developed in the last exercise is very useful when the user knows some search criteria to enter Unfortunately however flipping back and...

Page 90: ...he form code This is desirable because the action page must have the current record ID in order to build the query that navigates to the appropriate record in the trips database table 3 Save the file...

Page 91: ...ntenance buttons to the Trip Detail page To add maintenance buttons 1 In your editor open tripdetail cfm from my_app subdirectory 2 Enter the following code immediately after the cfoutput query TripQu...

Page 92: ...ng Your First ColdFusion Application into a drill down facility for trip queries You built a Trip Detail page to show more information about a particular trip You also formatted the Trip Search Result...

Page 93: ...functions introduced in this lesson The following table identifies the ColdFusion tags and functions that you use in this lesson to enhance the ColdFusion application Element Type Description cfform...

Page 94: ...ill create in this lesson Trip Edit page You will create the Trip Edit page see the following figure to add new trips and edit existing trips The page will be launched from the Add and Edit buttons on...

Page 95: ...abase A fundamental concern therefore is ensuring that the captured data is suitable for the column definitions in the Trips table This type of validation on a single field is often referred to as a s...

Page 96: ...you code the following cfif statement cfif Form tripName EQ cfoutput Trip Name cannot be blank cfoutput cfif In the previous example the cfif statement tests to see if the value of the form variable...

Page 97: ...iness rules are passed successfully before the database insert is executed Failure of any one of the rules negates the insert One approach to ensuring that the action page considers each business rule...

Page 98: ...cfif and cfelse conditional processing tags The code inside the cfif tags only executes when the condition evaluates to True To perform other actions when the condition evaluates to False the cfelse t...

Page 99: ...and the server If the data is validated on the client then only valid data is posted to the server and traffic is reduced Validating data on the client using ColdFusion form tags An alternative appro...

Page 100: ...tripeditaction cfm page Finally you will test the form to ensure the client side validation is working correctly To exploit the ColdFusion form tags on the Trip Edit page 1 Open the tripedit cfm in t...

Page 101: ...the single field edits deleted Copy tripeditaction2 cfm in the solutions directory to tripeditaction cfm in the my_app directory 6 When you finish deleting the single field validation rules save the f...

Page 102: ...ype required Yes message Type of event must be selected option value 1 selected Surfing option option value 2 Mountain Climbing option option value 3 Mountain Biking option cfselect td tr As described...

Page 103: ...st of event types from the eventtypes table and add validation To display a list of event types from the eventtypes table and add validation 1 View the tripedit cfm page in a browser Select the event...

Page 104: ...iness rule 6 The trip departure and return dates must be specified for each trip All trip dates must be valid future dates Departure date must precede return date One reason this rule is a good candid...

Page 105: ...ng in the following format MM DD YYYY This means that months and days require leading zeros Returns True if the date passed is a future date greater than the departure date Returns False if the date p...

Page 106: ...he date validation by checking that each of the following tasks fail a Enter a date in the past for the departure date field for example 01 01 2000 be sure to remember the leading zeroes b Enter a dep...

Page 107: ...the FileName passed in cfset fileLocation fileLocation form testFileName cfif FileExists fileLocation cfoutput The test file exists cfoutput cfif cfif cfif Note The trip photo images are stored in the...

Page 108: ...ed photos or cfset PhotoLocation webserverdocroot cfdocs getting_started photos 3 Save the page and test it by opening the tripedit cfm page in your browser Testing recommendations a In the Trip Edit...

Page 109: ...the main application page to browse the trips table Use SQL DELETE to delete rows in the trips table Use cflocation to link the search facility built in Lesson 2 Writing Your First ColdFusion Applica...

Page 110: ...ation pages Notice that the Trip Detail page is at the center of the Trip Maintenance application Depending on the user action the Trip Detail page navigates the records in the database or connects to...

Page 111: ...ally by ID There can be missing IDs where trips were deleted Therefore if the current trip ID is 1 and the user clicks the next navigation button it will not navigate to 2 In order to ensure that the...

Page 112: ...able Form RecordID in the navigation action page for building the proper test in the WHERE clause of the SQL SELECT statement The following code from navigationaction cfm processes the navigation butt...

Page 113: ...er of rows returned cannot exceed 1 maxRows 1 SELECT tripID FROM trips The SQL SELECT statement will always start with SELECT tripID FROM trips cfif IsDefined Form btnPrev X WHERE tripID Form RecordID...

Page 114: ...only for the button that the user clicked Therefore the IsDefined function is used to test which action to take The following code is an excerpt from the maintenanceaction cfm page that tests which ac...

Page 115: ...when issuing the SQL DELETE The RecordID field holds the tripID Therefore using the hidden RecordID input tag from the Trip Detail page the following SQL statement deletes a row from the Trips table...

Page 116: ...k 10 In the Trip Detail page click Delete to remove this record from the Trip database file 11 Verify that the trip record was removed from the Trips database by repeating the search in step 7 Summary...

Page 117: ...odify the Trip Edit page to link the add and update functions to the main application page Write code to insert new trips using SQL Write code to insert new trips without using SQL Write code to updat...

Page 118: ...the Browsing and Maintenance Database Functions you built a Trip Edit page to collect the data Now you can modify the Trip Edit action page to insert the data into the database There are two approache...

Page 119: ...uring Your Development Environment on page 37 a data source stores information about how to connect to an indicated data provider such as a relational database management system The data source you es...

Page 120: ...urnDate Form price Form tripLeader Form photo Form baseCost Form numberPeople Form depositRequired cfquery UNIX users using PointBase Insert the new trip record into the Compass Travel Database Use lo...

Page 121: ...e then click Save After the new trip is written to the database the following message appears Trip is added 5 To verify that the save worked open tripsearch cfm in the my_app directory in your browser...

Page 122: ...pears 8 Click the link to the NH White Mountains to display the details of the trip you just added Verify that all the fields were saved correctly The following page appears 9 Click the Delete button...

Page 123: ...database You will replace the SQL INSERT statement with the cfinsert tag Code Explanation cfquery name AddTrip datasource CompassTravel Using the datasource attribute cfquery connects to the data sour...

Page 124: ...ot specified all fields in the form are included in the operation All the fields of the tripedit cfm page have corresponding columns in the Trips table so you can omit the FormFields attribute for bot...

Page 125: ...et PhotoLocation opt cfusionmx wwwroot cfdocs getting_started photos or cfset PhotoLocation webserverdocroot cfdocs getting_started photos 4 Save the file as tripeditaction cfm in the my_app directory...

Page 126: ...st numberPeople depositRequired tripID FROM trips cfif IsDefined URL ID WHERE tripID ID cfif cfquery Set the local variables cfset tripName TripQuery tripName cfset eventType TripQuery eventType cfset...

Page 127: ...query name TripQuery datasource CompassTravel maxrows 1 SELECT tripName eventType tripDescription tripLocation departureDate returnDate price tripLeader photo baseCost numberPeople depositRequired tri...

Page 128: ...s as follows UPDATE table_name SET column_name new_value WHERE column_name some_value Consider a database table named Clients that contains information about people in the following rows After the fol...

Page 129: ...and the ColdFusion cfquery tag To update multiple database rows using SQL UPDATE with cfquery 1 In an editor open a new page and save it as priceincrease cfm in the my_app directory 2 Remove any line...

Page 130: ...ave completed the Getting Started tutorial You should understand how you can combine CFML and SQL to develop powerful applications When compared with traditional development methods ColdFusion helps s...

Page 131: ...46 described 12 13 introduction 11 14 markup language See CFML using with Macromedia Flash MX 14 ColdFusion MX Administrator accessing 39 debugging options 42 described 13 ColdFusion pages browsing 1...

Page 132: ...I IsDefined function defined 77 J J2EE configuration 17 M Macintosh OS X data source 39 saving CFM pages 17 Macromedia ColdFusion MX See ColdFusion MX Macromedia Dreamweaver MX configuring 46 defined...

Page 133: ...plication requirements 50 creating main application page 77 92 data requirements 51 database configuration 39 database design 52 enforcing business rules 93 108 file structure described 38 implementin...

Page 134: ...134 Index...