Using Functions

This is where it starts to get interesting. CFML (the ColdFusion Markup Language) is made up of two primary language elements:

  • Tags. These perform operations, such as accessing a database, evaluating a condition, and flagging text for processing.

  • Functions. These return (and possibly process) data and do things such as getting the current date and time, converting text to uppercase, and rounding a number to its nearest integer.

Writing ColdFusion code requires the use of both tags and functions. The best way to understand this is to see it in action. Here is a revised hello page. Type Listing 8.2 in a new page, and save it as hello2.cfm in the ows/8 directory.

Listing 8.2. hello2.cfm
<html> <head> <title>Hello 2</title> </head> ...

Get Adobe ColdFusion 8 Web Application Construction Kit, Volume 1: Getting Started now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial