Each: Unified Struct And Array Iteration In ColdFusion

The other day, I was talking to Marc Esher on Twitter about creating better StructFindValue() functionality in ColdFusion. Specifically, he wanted to add regular expression searching such that a target value could simply match a pattern rather than an entire string. I decided to see if I could build the desired functionality and quickly found that the requirement of recursively crawling over both structs and arrays lead to a whole bunch of duplicated code and logic.

After thinking it through, I figured the easiest way to fix this duplication would be to create a ColdFusion custom tag that could provide a uniform interface for looping over both structs and arrays (much like the .each() method in jQuery). This way, both the struct and array iteration logic could be reduced to a single loop rather than two separate loops. As for the tag interface, I decided to use that of a collection loop, where "Item" is the iteration variable and "Collection" is the struct or array over which we are iterating. I chose the collection interface because it felt the most generic of the two (struct vs. array).

For each iteration of the collection, Item (the iteration variable) holds a struct with the following values:

• CollectionType: The type of collection, Array or Struct, over which we are iterating. This might seem like useless meta data, but I figured it might come in handy depending on the context.
• Index: The index of the current iteration, starting with one.
• Key: The key within the given collection being examined within the current iteration. For struct iteration, this would be the struct key. For array iteration, this would be the array index.
• Value: The value within the given collection located at the current key.

The code for this ColdFusion custom tag is actually quite straightforward, requiring little more than a few CFIF statements.

Each.cfm

To test this ColdFusion custom tag, I set up a simple script that creates an array and a struct and then uses the tag to iterate over each:

As you can see, the Each.cfm ColdFusion custom tag provides a unified interface for looping over both the array and the struct. When we run the above code, we get the following page output:

ColdFusion already has the CFLoop tag which allows us to loop over both structs and arrays quite easily. But each form of the tag has its own interface. In most cases this is not a problem. But, in the few cases where this separation of interfaces leads to logic and code duplication, I think this Each.cfm ColdFusion custom tag will allow me to create more succinct, more maintainable code.

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