User Defined Functions can be tricky to debug - a common debugging technique is to embed output at strategic locations in your code, and as UDF's are written in you can't simply embed output. The solution? Use the WriteOutput() function in your code and you'll be able to embed output wherever...
In the past, data in a could be sorted using the sort buttons (turned on or off using the SORT attribute). In the new (introduced in ColdFusion 5) these buttons are no longer needed. Data can be sorted simply by clicking the column title - click once to sort ascending, again to sort descending,...
is used to generate pie charts, bar charts, and more. can also create drill-down charts whereby individual graph components (pie slices or bars) can be links to other URL's (or graphs). To use this functionality you must generate graphs in Flash format, and not in JPEG or PNG. You may either...
Need access to a database that has no data source defined? Use DBTYPE="dynamic" and pass the required information in the CONNECTSTRING attribute instead. (Applies to: ColdFusion 5)
displays data in a grid format - columns and rows. The new (introduced in ColdFusion 5) supports moveable grid columns. Users can simply click on the column title bar and drag it to the left or right to change the order in which columns appear. This has no impact on underlying data, however....
Graphs created using are created using a default or supplied color scheme, and colors are assigned in the order that data is used. For more explicit color control, use to provide the graph data, specifying the color to use in the COLOR attribute. (Applies to: ColdFusion 5)
is used to flush the generated output buffer so as to send data to the client for processing before page processing has completed. is used in two ways, manually (when needed) or automatically (at intervals specified as a number of bytes). As a rule, never use the INTERVAL method with Web pages, you...
Browsing log files to find specific errors (so as to understand what caused them) can be a daunting task. It is often difficult (if not impossible) to know exactly what a user was doing when an error was generated. The new tag solves this problem by allowing you to embed your own entries in log...
When debugging it is often necessary to inspect the contents of variables. Simple variables can be displayed easily, but more complex data requires looping and using special functions. Or rather, it did. The new tag can dump (display) the contents of all variables, even complex variables (queries,...
ColdFusion Custom Tags are powerful, but they are not as fast as functions. As CFML now supports user defined functions, consider rewriting some of your Custom Tags as functions. Functions are not a complete replacement for tags (there are things that functions cannot do), but where appropriate,...