HTML Forms and ColdFusion Variables

A very common way to submit data to a web server is through HTML forms. There are two methods of submitting data through a form: the get method and the post method. The method used is determined by the value of the method attribute of the form tag. The default method is get.

Get Method

When the get method is used, data is sent to the server in name-value pairs as part of the query string. The get method is most commonly used by search pages and is useful when it is important to be able to bookmark the resulting page (i.e, the page that is returned after the form is submitted).

Post Method

When the post method is used, data is sent to the server in name-value pairs behind the scenes. The two major advantages of the post method are:
The name-value pairs are not visible in the location bar, so sensitive data such as passwords are not displayed on the screen. Files, such as images and Office documents, can be uploaded via the form.

The major disadvantage is that the resulting page cannot be bookmarked.

Additional Features of ColdFusion

• Simplified database access
• Client and server cache management
• Client-side code generation, especially for form widgets and validation
• Conversion from HTML to PDF and FlashPaper
• Data retrieval from common enterprise systems such as Active Directory, LDAP, SMTP, POP, HTTP, FTP, Microsoft Exchange Server and common data formats such as RSS and Atom
• File indexing and searching service based on Verity K2
• GUI administration
• Server, application, client, session, and request scopes
• XML parsing, querying (XPath), validation and transformation(XSLT)
• Server clustering
• Task scheduling
• Graphing and reporting
  
• Simplified file manipulation including raster graphics(and CAPTCHA) and zip archives (introduction of video manipulation is planned in a future release)
• Simplified web service implementation (with automated WSDL generation / transparent SOAP handling for both creating and consuming services

ColdFusion

ColdFusion MX 7 code is compiled into Java bytecode, making it extremely portable, flexible and powerful. ColdFusion is made up of two parts:

1. ColdFusion Application Server
2. ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML)

ColdFusion Application Server
When a user navigates in a browser to a page that ends with a .cfm extension, the request is sent to a Web server, which directs the request to the ColdFusion Application Server (CFAS).

ColdFusion Markup Language
The ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) looks very similar to HTML or XML in that it is tag-based. A ColdFusion page generally has a mix of HTML and ColdFusion tags, and may contain other tags as well. ColdFusion tags can be distinguished from all other tags by their first two letters - cf (e.g, ).