Programming ColdFusion

CFScript Statements

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 if/else statement, let’s first consider an example that uses the CFIF and CFELSE tags. Example 18-3 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 18-3. 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 18-4 shows the ported ...