Advanced ColdFusion Training

ColdFusion Training Outline

• Introduction
• Lists
• How a list stores data as a delimited string
• Changing the delimiter used to separate list elements
• Instantiating a list
• Adding elements to a list
• Retrieving elements from a list
• Removing or changing elements in a list
• Iterating through a list using CFLOOP
• How to break or continue the loop when necessary
• Discussion of how form data from multiple-select lists is treated as a list in ColdFusion
• Arrays
• How an array stores data as a numbered queue
• When to use an array instead of a list
• Instantiating an array
• Adding elements to an array
• Retrieving elements from an array
• Removing or changing elements in an array
• Iterating through an array using CFLOOP
• Structures
• Discussion of a structure as a type of object with named properties
• When to use a structure instead of an array or list
• Instantiating a structure
• Adding elements to a structure
• Retrieving elements from a structure
• Removing or changing elements in a structure
• Iterating through a structure using CFLOOP
• Introduction to object-oriented concepts
• Classes and objects
• Methods and properties
• Inheritance
• Connecting the concepts with ColdFusion:
• ColdFusion components work as classes and objects
• User-defined functions (UDFs) serve as methods
• Public variables serve as properties
• Understanding user-defined functions
• Creating, storing, and loading UDFs
• Passing arguments to a UDF
• Obtaining a value returned from a UDF
• Variable scoping within functions (and outside of functions)
• Creating and using ColdFusion components (CFCs)
• Wrapping one or more functions within a ColdFusion component
• Proper code formatting
• Saving the file as a .cfc file
• Acceptable directories for .cfc files
• Understanding static functions versus instance functions
• Instantiating and using components
• Reusing components across multiple projects
• Creating and using custom (CF_) tags
• Why write a tag instead of a component?
• Where custom tags can be stored (and how to control this in the ColdFusion Administrator)
• Invoking a custom tag
• Passing attributes to the custom tag
• Returning output and values from the custom tag
• Compare/contrast with CFX tags
• Error handling in ColdFusion
• Using CFDUMP as a way to see the status of all variables in the current template
• Using CFERROR and error pages to display a custom error message to the user
• Implementing structured error/exception handling with try-catch-finally
• Types of exceptions and their precedence
• Logging errors
• Emailing errors to the administrator
• File IO in ColdFusion
• Using CFFILE to read from, write to, append to, create, rename, copy, and delete files
• Using CFDIRECTORY to read from, write to, append to, create, rename, copy, and delete directories
• Processing file uploads from forms
• Setting the ENCTYPE attribute of the FORM tag
• Using CFFILE to handle the file(s) uploaded from the form
• WDDX
• Overview of WDDX as a way to serialize ColdFusion primitives and objects for later use
• Using the CFWDDX tag to serialize and deserialize data
• Alternatives to WDDX
• Web services
• Overview of Web services and their core technologies: SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI
• How to expose component functions as Web services
• How to invoke and use remote Web services
• Strategies for handling Web service failures at runtime
• Conclusion