MACROMEDIA COLFUSION MX 7-GETTING STARTED BUILDING COLDFUSION... User manual

COLDFUSION®MX 7
Getting Started Building ColdFusion MX Applications

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Part Number ZCF70M200
Acknowledgments
Project Management: Randy Nielsen
Writer: Anne Sandstrom
Editors: Linda Adler, Noreen Maher
Production Management: Patrice O’Neill,
Media Design and Production: John Francis, Adam Barnett
Special thanks to Sawako Gensure, Seungmin Lee, Takashi Koto, Nozomi Kugita, Masayo Noda, Hiroshi Okugawa, Bowne
Global Solutions
First Edition: January 2005
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3
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
PART I: Welcome to ColdFusion
CHAPTER 1: Introducing ColdFusion MX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
About ColdFusion MX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
How ColdFusion processes pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Building applications with CFML. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
CHAPTER 2: CFML Basics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Working with ColdFusion pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
About CFML elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Working with CFML expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
About conditional processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Processing form data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Commenting your code. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
CHAPTER 3: Database Fundamentals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
About database basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
About SQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Using SQL with ColdFusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
PART II: Building a ColdFusion Application
CHAPTER 4: Lesson 1: Preparing to Build the Sample Application . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Application development steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Exercise 1: Determining the application functional requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Exercise 2: Determining the data requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Exercise 3: Designing the database for your application. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Exercise 4: Developing the sample application. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

4 Contents
CHAPTER 5: Lesson 2: Configuring Your Development Environment. . . . . . . . . 49
Exercise 1: Verifying the tutorial file structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Exercise 2: Setting up your development environment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Exercise 3: Configuring a database connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Exercise 4: Configuring debugging options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
CHAPTER 6: Lesson 3: Retrieving Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Exercise 1: About the trip list. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Exercise 2: Retrieving the information for the trip list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Exercise 3: Displaying the query result using the cfoutput tag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Exercise 4: Writing structured, reusable code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Exercise 5: Creating additional queries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
CHAPTER 7: Lesson 4: Building Dynamic Queries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Exercise 1: Creating the trip search form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Exercise 2: Building a query that uses dynamic SQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Exercise 3: Constructing the initial Trip Search Results page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Exercise 4: Testing the Trip Search Results page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Exercise 5: Enabling the departure and price criteria on the Trip Search form . . . . 82
Exercise 6: Testing the revised Trip Search Results page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
CHAPTER 8: Lesson 5: Creating a Trip Detail Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Exercise 1: Creating a Trip Detail page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Exercise 2: Avoiding the potential security risk when using dynamic SQL. . . . . . . 91
Exercise 3: Linking the Trip Search Results page with the Trip Detail page . . . . . . 92
Exercise 4: Enhancing the look of the Trip Search Results and Trip Detail pages . . 93
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
CHAPTER 9: Lesson 6: Creating a Main Application Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Exercise 1: Creating the main application page from the Trip Detail page . . . . . . . 98
Exercise 2: Adding database maintenance buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
CHAPTER 10: Lesson 7: Validating Data to Enforce Business Rules. . . . . . . . . 103
Exercise 1: Using an HTML form to collect data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Exercise 2: Creating a simple action page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Exercise 3: About data validation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Exercise 4: Providing server-side validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Exercise 5: Validating data on the client using ColdFusion form tags. . . . . . . . . . 114
Exercise 6: Dynamically populating the list of event types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Exercise 7: Validating the existence of the trip photo file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

Contents 5
CHAPTER 11: Lesson 8: Implementing Browsing and Searching. . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Exercise 1: Enabling users to browse trip details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Exercise 2: Determining actions based on which button a user clicks. . . . . . . . . . 127
Exercise 3: Enabling searching from the Trip Detail page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
CHAPTER 12: Lesson 9: Enabling Database Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Exercise 1: Deleting the current trip record shown on the Trip Detail page . . . . . 129
Exercise 2: Adding trips with SQL INSERT statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Exercise 3: Adding data using the cfinsert tag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Exercise 4: Updating a SQL row using the cfupdate tag. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Exercise 5: Linking the Trip Edit page to the main page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Exercise 6: Inserting values in the edit form. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
CHAPTER 13: Lesson 10: Restricting Access to ColdFusion Applications . . . . 143
Exercise 1: About the Login Wizard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Exercise 2: Requiring users to log in to the Compass Travel application. . . . . . . . 147
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

6 Contents

7
INTRODUCTION
Getting Started Building ColdFusion MX Applications is intended for anyone who needs to begin
programming in the Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 development environment. This manual
includes a tutorial, which uses supporting files that are installed if you chose to install sample
applications. If you did not install the ColdFusion MX sample applications, you can download
the tutorial files from the ColdFusion Support center on the Macromedia website.
About Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 documentation
The ColdFusion MX 7 documentation is designed to provide support for the complete spectrum
of participants.
Documentation set
The ColdFusion MX 7 documentation set includes the following titles:
Book Description
Installing and Using
ColdFusion MX
Describes system installation and basic configuration for Microsoft
Windows, Solaris, and Linux. To see this manual, go to http://
www.macromedia.com/go/livedocs_cfmx7docs_installing.
Configuring and
Administering
ColdFusion MX
Part I describes how to manage the ColdFusion environment, including
connecting to your data sources and configuring security for your
applications. Part II describes Verity search tools and utilities that you can
use for configuring the Verity K2 Server search engine, as well as creating,
managing, and troubleshooting Verity collections. To see this manual, go to
www.macromedia.com/go/livedocs_cfmx7docs_configadmin.
ColdFusion MX
Developer’s Guide
Describes how to develop your dynamic web applications, including
retrieving and updating your data, and using structures and forms. This
manual includes two volumes. To see this manual, go to
www.macromedia.com/go/livedocs_cfmx7docs_dev.
Getting Started
Building
ColdFusion MX
Applications
Contains an overview of ColdFusion features and application development
procedures. This manual includes a tutorial that guides you through the
process of developing a sample ColdFusion application. To see this manual
online, go to www.macromedia.com/go/livedocs_cfmx7docs_gs.

8 Introduction:
Viewing online documentation
All ColdFusion MX documentation is available online in HTML and Adobe Acrobat Portable
Document Format (PDF) files. Go to the documentation home page for ColdFusion MX on the
Macromedia website: www.macromedia.com. In addition, you can view the documentation in
LiveDocs, which lets you add comments to pages and view the latest comments added by
Macromedia, by going to www.macromedia.com/go/livedocs_cfmx7docs.
CFML Reference Provides descriptions, syntax, usage, and code examples for all ColdFusion
tags, functions, and variables. This manual includes two volumes. To see
this manual, go to www.macromedia.com/go/
livedocs_cfmx7docs__cfml_reference.
CFML Quick Reference Shows the syntax of ColdFusion tags, functions, and variables in a brief
guide.
Book Description

PART I
Welcome to ColdFusion
Part I provides an introduction to Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7. It defines ColdFusion MX 7
and provides an overview of the ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML). It also provides generic
database concepts.
The following chapters are included in Part I:
Chapter 1: Introducing ColdFusion MX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Chapter 2: CFML Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Chapter 3: Database Fundamentals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
PART I