by Oscar Quigley
Cold fusion is defined as "A scripting language for web designers that wish to do advanced development and/or database interfacing. Cold fusion supports MS Access, dBASE, FoxPro, and Paradox databases." A more detailed definition of cold fusion is, "An application development tool from Allaire Corporation, MA, (www.allaire.com), for writing Web pages that interact with databases. Instead of writing tedious CGI and Perl scripts, operations are coded in the Cold Fusion Markup Language (CFML) which uses HTML-like tags embedded in the Web pages. The Cold Fusion Engine, which interfaces with a Windows-based Web server, interprets the codes, accesses the database and delivers the results as HTML pages for the Web browser."
Cold fusion webhosting is all about making use of content within a specific time frame. Just as products in the grocery store have a shelf life (and expiration date), so does content that appears over the Internet. Cold fusion makes it possible for you to design a time frame system that can work to your advantage and your "timeline" for content. Cold fusion has functions that make publishing as well as getting rid of information as simple as can be. These include cold fusion's Now ( ) function as well as the CFIF tag and CreateDateTime ( ).
No ... the real American has not yet arrived. He is only in the Crucible, I tell you—he will be the fusion of all races, perhaps the coming superman.
—Israel Zangwill (1864–1926)
The CFIF tag is one of the most useful and also one of the most popular tags used in cold fusion web hosting. It is made use of in order to "hide or display content based on comparing a set date to the time that the page is parsed for the visitor." On the other hand, the function of the CreateDateTime ( ) is to take the boundaries of certain dates and times and then create a cold fusion "date/time object." There is a very specific formula to how CreateDateTime looks- it goes like this (year, month, day, hour, minute, second). So another words if it was 10:02 am on April 16, 2006 it would look like this in cold fusion terms- (2006, 4, 16, 10, 02, 0). The Now ( ) component of cold fusion also deals with dates and times but it has no limitations put upon it. Now ( ) devises a cold fusion date/time object for the date and time in question and it takes into account time down to the very second.
The above elements of cold fusion are very helpful when it comes to, for example setting a date in the future for a contest to end. With these functions in place developers can set dates on their websites for announcement, campaigns, events, etc. ahead of schedule and won't have to physically do it on a certain date. You can have your content be near or far and can, on your own timetable make it "appear or disappear" as you wish.
Another tip about cold fusion webhosting are the templates that are used and these are cold fusion custom tags. Very similar to other files in the CFML format, cold fusion custom tags are specifically designed with the purpose of using them over again. Custom tags save a tremendous amount of time for coders especially if they are to be used often. As well free and/or cheap custom tags can "add functionality" to the entire set up. Cold fusion custom tags are broken down into two basic categories- one makes use of the CFML code and the other includes C + +, Java and/or other languages.
A simple custom tag (or CFML based tag) is put to use on a page and then code is added to the selected template and there are no inputs involved. In order to add a "custom tag's functionality" to your web page you will need to open up the custom tag directory and include the custom tag in it. It is a good idea to make sure that the custom tag is placed in the exact folder that it was assigned to via the Cold Fusion Administration panel.
In order to create a simple custom tag it is necessary to save a certain percentage of the code as a template of cold fusion. Attributes that are used in designing a custom tag make it imperative to "reference the attributes using the attributes scope." It is within CF_States is such that nonverbose and selected (attributes.nonverbose and attributes. selected) are used as references in the cold fusion custom tag.