Creating Components
Creating
a CFC is easy. You simply define the component using the
cfcomponent
tag and save the file with a
.cfc extension. cfcomponent
is a paired tag that acts as a container for the CFC. Within the
component, you can have any number of properties (defined by the
cfproperty
tag) and methods (each defined using a
pair of cffunction
tags). Each method can accept
zero or more arguments, defined with cfargument
tags. If a CFC returns any data, it does so with the
cfreturn
tag. Essentially, a component is a
collection of related UDFs grouped within a
cfcomponent
container. Syntactically, a basic CFC
looks like this:
<cfcomponent> <cfproperty />constructor code
... <cffunction> <cfargument>CFML
<cfreturn> </cffunction> <cffunction> <cfargument>CFML
<cfreturn> </cffunction> </cfcomponet>
The cfcomponent
tag has four optional attributes:
-
displayname="
display_name
"
Used to display a descriptive name for the component in ColdFusion MX’s Component Browser or when the component is introspected using the
getMetaData( )
function. These concepts are discussed later in the chapter.-
hint="
text
"
Used to display a hint describing what the component does in ColdFusion MX’s Component Browser or when the component is introspected using the
getMetaData( )
function.-
extends="
component_name
"
Name of a parent component from which the component should inherit methods and properties.
-
output="yes|no"
Indicates whether the component’s constructor code (any area within the
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