Programming ColdFusion MX, 2nd Edition

Formatting Techniques

Once you have query data in the form of a result set, you might want to massage it a bit before outputting it to the browser or to a file. ColdFusion provides several built-in functions for formatting a variety of datatypes. This section covers some of the more popular functions for formatting strings, HTML code, numbers, currency, dates, times, and Boolean values. For more information on all the functions covered in this section, see Appendix B.

Formatting Plain-Text Strings

ColdFusion provides functions for formatting text strings: ParagraphFormat( ), Wrap( ), Ucase( ), Lcase( ), JSStringFormat( ), and XMLFormat( ). Each function is covered in the sections that follow.

Using ParagraphFormat

ParagraphFormat( )takes a string and formats it so that single newline characters are replaced with a space, and double newline characters are replaced with HTML <p> tags. This function is most often used to display data that has been entered into a Textarea HTML form field. The following example shows how the ParagraphFormat( ) function handles single and double newline characters:

<cfset MyText="This is my block of text.
It has both single newline characters in it like this paragraph, and double 
newline characters like in the next paragraph.
   
This is the paragraph with the double newline characters.">
   
<form>
<cfoutput>
<textarea cols="50" rows="10" name="TheText" wrap="Virtual">
#ParagraphFormat(MyText)#
</textarea>
</cfoutput>
</form>

Wrapping text

As of ColdFusion ...