Crs 342 
Building Web Sites with Cold Fusion

This a course for Web Designers who will be developing commercial web sites using Cold Fusion servers and forms containing CFML (Cold Fusion Markup Language) tags. The course will concentrate mainly on Cold Fusion MX, but will also cover Cold Fusion 5. 

 

Course Outline Ctd.

Overview of the Cold Fusion Application Framework

  • Cold Fusion Markup Language (CFML)
  • CFML as a "tag" based programming language
  • Support for database queries and transactions
  • Handling collections of data (lists and arrays)
  • Web service support
  • Error handling and debugging
  • Web site indexing and search support
  • Support for sending email
  • Support for XML

Templates

  • CFINCLUDE
  • Template design and reuse

Programming in CFML

  • Client variables, Application variables and Server variables
  • Flow control with CFIF and CFELSE tags
  • Conditional inline function IIF()
  • Delay evaluation function DE()
  • CFABORT command
  • One and two-dimensional CF arrays
  • Looping through arrays with CFLOOP
  • Creating and invoking User Defined Functions (UDFs) - CFFUNCTION, CFSCRIPT
  • CF Lists and list functions for sorting and searching lists

Working with Databases and Forms

  • connection protocol selection - CF Admin
    • JDBC
    • ODBC
    • Oracle Net
  • Querying the database and processing returned query records CFQUERY, CROUTPUT, CFLOOP
  • Database transactions - CFTRANSACTION
  • Setting properties of Cookie and Form objects - CFSET
  • Form processing in CFML
  • Setting defaults for Form parameter values - CFPARAM
  • Redirection - CFLOCATION
  • Critical sections and control of access to shared resources - CFLOCK

Data Validation

  • Server side vs. client side data validation
  • Generating client side form validation Javascript - CFFORM, CFINPUT, CFSELECT

Cold Fusion Components 

  • Principles of Object Oriented thinking
  • Objects as instances of a Class
  • Objects as data types having data ( instance variables ) and methods
  • The message sending metaphor of object method invocation
  • CFCOMPONENT
  • CFFUNCTION
  • CFINVOKE
  • Implementing Web services with Cold Fusion Components

Cold Fusion Advanced Topics

  • Error handling and debugging
  • Exception handling - CFTRY and CFCATCH
  • Website searching and indexing with the Verity Search Engine - CFCOLLECTION, CFINDEX, CFSEARCH
  • Scheduling events - CFSCHEDULE
  • Handling XML data - an overview

 

Intended Audience

The course is intended for experienced web designers. It is assumed that attendees will have a good working knowledge of HTML, Frames and Forms.  Experience with some kind of Web site development tool - such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver would be helpful - though not necessary. 

Key Skills

  • Using Dreamweaver MX to develop Cold Fusion applications
  • An in depth understanding of CML tags and the standard idioms for using them
  • Understand forms processing in CFML
  • Implementing database driven applications using CFML tags for connecting, to querying, and modifying the database
  • Ability to formulate basic SQL queries and make sense of complex SQL queries
  • Implementing and invoking User Defined Functions (UDFs)
  • Using CFML tags to maintain state using Cookies
  • Understand object oriented application development using Colf Fusion Components (CFCs)
  • A grounding in more advanced topics such as sending email, exception handling, web site searching and indexing , scheduling of events and working with XML. 

 

Practical Work

  • Implementing simple CFML based programs
  • Implementing and testing Forms and Form processing
  • Designing and deploying forms for interacting with a relational database 
  • Generating client side Javascript for Form data input validation
  • Processing one and two dimensional data arrays
  • Use session level cookies to support complex transactions
  • Implementing a simple Cold Fusion Component (CFC) based Web service
  • Adding indexing and searching capabilities to a web site
  • Handling XML data
 

Course outline

Overview of Cold Fusion

  • History
  • Architecture - how a Cold Fusion Server functions
  • Java underpinnings
  • How CFML tags are processed

Dreamweaver MX

  • Tour of the Dreamweaver MX IDE
  • Cold Fusion application development using Dreamweaver