CFFORM and CFINPUT issue
I've been neglecting my blog because I have been working on several large eCommerce projects over the last two months, but I found an issue that I think is worth asking the CF community about.
With the new features in CF8, I find myself wanting to use cfform and cfinput more for binding and Ajax features, but I keep running into issues with errors generated by ColdFusion.
Like most developers, I like to make my code modular for use in various parts of an application. I have traditionally done this with forms, where I will set up a CFC that contains a method for displaying part of a form. This worked great when my forms were straight HTML/JavaScript. But take a look at this simplified example...
My CFM file...
<cfset formlibrary = createObject('component','formlib') />
<cfform action="myscript.cfm" method="post">
<cfset formlib.printNameFields() />
<cfset formlib.printAddressField() />
</cfform>
My CFC file...
<cfcomponent>
<cffunction name="printNameFields">
First name: <cfinput type="text" name="firstname" required="yes" message="First name is required." />
Last name: <cfinput type="text" name="lastname" required="yes" message="Last name is required." />
etc...
</cfcomponent>
<cffunction name="printAddressFields">
Line 1: <cfinput type="text" name="addr1" />
Line 2: <cfinput type="text" name="addr2" />
etc...
</cfcomponent>
</cfcomponent>
This code will generate a CF error because you cannot have a CFINPUT tag that is not nested inside a CFFORM tag. However, if the error did not fire, the generated source code sent to the browser would work! The error message that ColdFusion generates isn't really an error. ColdFusion just doesn't understand that I am outputting the form fields from a CFC that is inside the CFFORM tag.
This is a simple example of the problem, but what if I also wanted to use the CF8 type="datefield" CFINPUT? I can't have that in a CFC either. I also can't use any CF8 ajax binding on with CFINPUT tags.
For now, I am just putting the CFINPUT tags in the CFM file and not making the code as modular as I would like. It is frustrating, though, that I have to repeat code on various forms for name and address form fields.
Does anyone have a suggestion for this? Is there a way to suppress the ColdFusion error and let it just generate the code? Or am I missing something?
Todd Rafferty wrote on 02/24/08 10:27 AM
I would highly recommend against CFCs being used to handle display logic like this. If you must have something, then use <cfsavecontent variable="myoutput"> to save the content and <cfreturn myoutput>. That being said, even what I recommended won't work because there's still no cfform around the block of code and it'll throw the same error.That being said, things to try:
1.) Have you tried putting output="Yes" in the function?
2.) Have you tried keeping the code modular by using cfinclude instead?