830
Chapter 37: Managing Files on the Server
Using cfcontent
The
cfcontent
tag downloads files from the server to the client. You can use this tag to set the
MIME type of the content returned by a ColdFusion page and, optionally, define the filename of
a file to be downloaded by the current page. By default, ColdFusion returns a MIME content
type of text/html so that a web browser renders your template text as a web page.
As with
cffile
and
cfdirectory
,
you can disable
cfcontent
processing in the ColdFusion
MX Administrator.
About MIME types
A
MIME type
is a label that identifies the contents of a file. the browser uses the MIME type
specification to determine how to interact with the file. For example, the browser could open a
spreadsheet program when it encounters a file identified by its MIME content type as a
spreadsheet file.
A MIME content type consists of
"type/subtype"
format. The following are common MIME
content types:
•
text/html
•
image/gif
•
application/pdf
Changing the MIME content type with cfcontent
You use the
cfcontent
tag to change the MIME content type that returns to the browser along
with the content generated from your ColdFusion page.
The
cfcontent
tag has one required attribute,
type
, which defines the MIME content type
returned by the current page.
To change the MIME content type with cfcontent:
1
Create an HTML page with the following content:
<h1>cfcontent_message.htm</h1>
<p>This is a <em>test message</em> written in HTML.</p>
<p>This is the <em>second paragraph</em> of the test message.
As you might expect, it is also written in HTML.</p>
2
Save the file as cfcontent_message.htm in the myapps directory under your
web_root
.
This HTML file will be called by the ColdFusion file that you write in steps 3 through 7.
3
Create a ColdFusion page with the following content:
<html>
<head>
<title>cfcontent Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<h3>cfcontent Example</h3>
Summary of Contents for ColdFusion MX
Page 1: ...Developing ColdFusion MX Applications...
Page 22: ...22 Contents...
Page 38: ......
Page 52: ...52 Chapter 2 Elements of CFML...
Page 162: ......
Page 218: ...218 Chapter 10 Writing and Calling User Defined Functions...
Page 250: ...250 Chapter 11 Building and Using ColdFusion Components...
Page 264: ...264 Chapter 12 Building Custom CFXAPI Tags...
Page 266: ......
Page 314: ...314 Chapter 14 Handling Errors...
Page 344: ...344 Chapter 15 Using Persistent Data and Locking...
Page 349: ...About user security 349...
Page 357: ...Security scenarios 357...
Page 370: ...370 Chapter 16 Securing Applications...
Page 388: ...388 Chapter 17 Developing Globalized Applications...
Page 408: ...408 Chapter 18 Debugging and Troubleshooting Applications...
Page 410: ......
Page 426: ...426 Chapter 19 Introduction to Databases and SQL...
Page 476: ...476 Chapter 22 Using Query of Queries...
Page 534: ...534 Chapter 24 Building a Search Interface...
Page 556: ...556 Chapter 25 Using Verity Search Expressions...
Page 558: ......
Page 582: ...582 Chapter 26 Retrieving and Formatting Data...
Page 668: ......
Page 734: ...734 Chapter 32 Using Web Services...
Page 760: ...760 Chapter 33 Integrating J2EE and Java Elements in CFML Applications...
Page 786: ...786 Chapter 34 Integrating COM and CORBA Objects in CFML Applications...
Page 788: ......