Interview for Welcome to CF
"Welcome to CF" interview with Simon Horwith
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Michael Smith: This time we are talking with Simon Horwith about his CFUNITED-05
talk "Welcome to CF". So why should a developer come to your session Simon?
Simon Horwith: CFML, ColdFusion Mark-up Language, is the language used to create
ColdFusion Applications. This session is a good introduction to the
fundamentals of the CFML programming language. If you're new to ColdFusion or
are a manager that is either evaluating ColdFusion as a solution or is already
managing a ColdFusion project, my talk will give you a solid understanding of
how to create dynamic web pages with ColdFusion.
MS: So are there any prerequisites to this talk like HTML or SQL?
SH: No - no prerequisits. If you're familiar with HTML then you'll find
ColdFusion's syntax less foreign at first, and some SQL knowledge neverr hurts,
but if you don't have any experience with either you will still be able to learn
the basics of ColdFusion development.
MS: What kinds of things can you do with ColdFusion?
SH: Well, there isn't much that you can't do with ColdFusion, really. That
said, 90% of ColdFusion applications are all about taking data stored in a
database and presenting it on the web (the phrase "dynamic web pages" is
generally used to describe this) as well as giving people a way to add, edit,
and/or delete that data as well. This session is an introduction to ColdFusion,
but in 50 minutes it will teach you the basics of how to do just that - create
dynamic web pages. This is because the strength and popularity of ColdFusion
has always been in it's ease of use. Learning how to do what 90% of the
applications are doing in just 50 minutes isn't too shabby, is it?
MS: No, that is cool! Will you have any example code in your session?
SH: Oh yes - definitely. I'll be writing code throughout the session. I'll
show all of the fundamentals of what to do and what not to do with regards to
creating and outputting variables, using functions, talking to databases, and
more!
MS: Can you give us a quick peak at some ColdFusion code so that we can see how
easy it is?
SH: Well, understanding the code is certainly more important, and you'll have to
come to the session for that, but it is very simple syntax. Fr example - the
code to take a static HTML table and turn it into a dynamically generated table
containing all of the employees in a database might look something like this:
(angled brackets replaced by square brackets to get through my email program! - MS)
[cfquery name="qGetEmp" datasource="mydsn"]
SELECT * FROM employees ORDER BY firstname
[/cfquery]
[table]
[tr][th]First Name[/th][th]Last Name[/th][/tr]
[cfoutput query="qGetEmp"][td]#qGetEmp.firstname#[/td][td]#qGetEmp.lastname#[/td][/cfoutput]
[/table]
It's as simple as that - one tag to get data from the database, an HTML table
with one row of static headers and one row that is in a [CFOUTPUT] tag and has
values from the query inside it's cells. Easy as pie!
MS: That looks like it will be a great session. See you at CFUNITED!
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