Programming ColdFusion MX, 2nd Edition

Flow Control and Looping

CFScript contains a number of statements to handle flow control and looping, as we’ll discuss in this section. Note that you can’t use any CFML tags within a cfscript block.

if/else

The if/else statement has the same functionality as the cfif and cfelse (and by extension, cfelseif) tags in regular CFML. The if statement can be used alone, as in:

if (expression)
  statement;

Or it can be used with the else statement, as in:

if(expression)  
  statement;
else
  statement;

You can also use the else and if statements in combination to achieve the same results as the cfelseif tag:

if (expression)
  statement;
else if (expression)
  statement;
else
  statement;

To understand the differences between the cfif/cfelse tags and the ifelse statement, let’s first consider an example that uses the cfif and cfelse tags. Example 19-3 assigns the current year to a variable called TheYear. The cfif and cfelse tags are then used to determine whether the current year is a leap year. The results are then written to the browser.

Example 19-3. Determining if the current year is a leap year using cfif/cfelse

<!--- Set a variable equal to the current year --->
<cfset TheYear=Year(Now( ))>
   
<!--- Check to see if the current year is a leap year. --->
<cfif IsLeapYear(TheYear)>
    <cfset ReturnOutput="is a leap year.">
<cfelse>
    <cfset ReturnOutput="is not a leap year.">
</cfif>
   
<cfoutput>
#TheYear# #ReturnOutput#
</cfoutput>

The same code can easily be rewritten using CFScript. Example 19-4 shows the ported ...