cf_space

Category: Coldfusion,tech notes
Author: Charles

I am currently redoing the help files for coreforms.  I have to totally redo them because I have added a bunch of new features, and I don't think the current version is that useful.  You kind of know that your documentation needs changing when the author of whatever you are trying to document has a hard time figuring them out.

So the solution I am working on needs a database so I can organize the documentation better.  The problem is that I do not want to require that people who want to view the documentation need to have a database connection and load a bunch of tables onto their server.  So I am trying some static ways to create coldfusion datasources.

The first way is to manually build out the query using coldfusion's queryNew, queryAddRow and querySetCell tags.

<cfset get_format = queryNew("name,description,status,attributes")>

<cfset queryAddRow(get_format)>
<cfset querySetCell(get_format,"name","text")>
<cfset querySetCell(get_format,"description","general text field, same features as an html text field")>
<cfset querySetCell(get_format,"status","A")>
<cfset querySetCell(get_format,"attributes","3")>

<cfset queryAddRow(get_format)>
<cfset querySetCell(get_format,"name","textarea")>
<cfset querySetCell(get_format,"description","general textarea field, same features as an html text field")>
<cfset querySetCell(get_format,"status","A")>
<cfset querySetCell(get_format,"attributes","4")>

This is ok for a small amount of rows, but I have another query that will hold all the attributes.  For this one I am going to use the basic concepts as the one above but build out a comma delimeted file first then loop through the data to create the query.

<cfsavecontent variable="theData">
1,fieldname,Yes,put the name of the query field,A,A
2,required,No,enter a Y if you need the field filled out,A,A
3,max,No,enter the total number of characters for a text field or a maximum date for a date field,A,S
4,cols,No,enter the number of columns for a textarea field just like the html attribute,A,S
</cfsavecontent>

<cfset theFields = "id,attributename,required,description,status,scope">

<cfset get_attributes = queryNew("#theFields#")>

<cfloop list="#theData#" delimiters="#chr(10)##chr(13)#" index="ii">
<cfset queryAddRow(get_attributes)>
    <cfset loopcounter = 1>
    <cfloop list="#thefields#" index="jj">
        <cfset querySetCell(get_attributes,"#jj#","#listgetat(ii,#loopcounter#)#")>
        <cfset loopcounter = loopcounter + 1>
    </cfloop>
</cfloop>

 Then all I have to do to get the query onto my page is to cfInclude the files that I put the above code on.