Ben Nadel © 2008.
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Just a quick little ColdFusion path explanation. Sometimes I get confused about some path stuff, so I thought I would jot it down to help imprint in my grey matter. All path demonstrations use the following directory structure:
./index.cfm
./sub/sub.cfm
Additionally, we never call the sub.cfm page directly. Sub.cfm is included by index.cfm so that we can see how included sub-directories work with ColdFusion paths:
This creates an absolute path using a path relative to the directory of the currently executing page. This does NOT necessarily mean the currently executing template. If we run:
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... in both of the template, index.cfm and sub.cfm respectively give us:
D:\sites\kinky_solutions\site_v1\testing\paths\
D:\sites\kinky_solutions\site_v1\testing\paths\
Notice that regardless of the template from which it was called, ExpandPath() gives us an absolute path based on index.cfm, the currently executing page. This is one of the trickiest things for me when I deal with uploading files. I always have to remember that ExpandPath() is NOT relative to the action page I am processing - it is relative to my front controller.
This returns the absolute path of the currently executing template. The currently executing template is the one in which the code is being called from, not necessarily the path in the browser URL. If we run:
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... in both of the templates, index.cfm and sub.cfm respectively give us:
D:\sites\kinky_solutions\site_v1\testing\paths\index.cfm
D:\sites\kinky_solutions\site_v1\testing\paths\sub\sub.cfm
This is a really useful function when you need to get a path relative to the current template. To get the directory of this template, you can always use GetDirectoryFromPath(). If we run:
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... in both templates, index.cfm and sub.cfm respectively give us:
D:\sites\kinky_solutions\site_v1\testing\paths\
D:\sites\kinky_solutions\site_v1\testing\paths\sub\
This combination of ColdFusion methods can help us get "ExpandPath" functionality bases on the currently executing template, NOT the currently executing page.
This returns the absolute path the base template. This is the path of the template that maps to the currently executing page. If we run:
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... in both templates, index.cfm and sub.cfm respectively give us:
D:\sites\kinky_solutions\site_v1\testing\paths\index.cfm
D:\sites\kinky_solutions\site_v1\testing\paths\index.cfm
As you case see, it gives us the absolute path of index.cfm (the currently executing page) regardless of which template it is called from. This is akin to running:
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... which will get an absolute path to the currently executing page.
This takes a path of any kind and returns the a path that maps to the final directory in the given path. This is a utility function and does not rely on an existing path. If we run:
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... we get:
"/test/"
We just made up the path "/test/page.cfm" to prove that this has nothing to do with the physical file structure. This method will always leave a trailing slash and will not check to see if the current path is a directory. So, be caution, if you run:
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... and do NOT include a trailing slash, it will return:
"/"
... because it doesn't care what is actually at the end of the given path if it is not a slash. So basically, this function removes every trailing character until it hits a slash or runs out of characters and then returns a path with a trailing slash.
This takes a path of any kind and returns the file at the end of the path. If we run:
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... we get:
page.cfm
In this case, we used an obvious file name; however, this method really only returns everything it can starting at the end of the given path until it hits a slash. If we ran:
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... where "test" is actually a directory, it will still return:
"test"
... since it is the most appropriate choice for a page (the path element located after the final path slash).
This gets the absolute path of the directory that ColdFusion uses for temporary files. This can be handy for uploading files:
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This will upload the given file into the temp directory.
Creates a temporary file (.tmp file) in a directory whose name starts with (at most) the first three characters of the given prefix. What took me a while to understand is that this actually created the physical file, it doesn't just create the file path. I suppose it does this so that no two calls to the same directory one after the other will return the same file path (that would be conflicting).
This can be nicely used in conjunction with GetTempDirectory():
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This will create a .TMP file in ColdFusion's temp file directory and try to use given the prefix. Now, the help docs say that this will use at most the first three characters of the prefix, but in my experience, this method usually uses the entire passed in prefix regardless of length.
There is nothing built into ColdFusion that makes traversing a file path very intuitive. In order to move up the directories in a path, I usually use one of three methods: List manipulation, a combination of path methods, or a regular expression.
If you look at a list, it's pretty much a path with the slash as the list item separator. Using this view, you can move up a directory by removing the last two items in the path - remember, the last item in the path is the file. This however can be awkward and if the last element is a slash (there is no file), list manipulation will not use the final empty element as a list item.
I find it best to use a combination of path methods to move up a directory:
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This gets the current template path. Then, it gets the current directory of that path. Remember, GetDirectoryFromPath() always leaves us with a trailing slash. I then use a regular expression to delete that final slash. Then, I call GetDirectoryFromPath() on the resultant slash. This returns the path to the parent directory.
Then, there is the regular expression approach:
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This takes gets the directory of the current template path and then removes a single path item and trailing slash from the resultant path. If you want to move up more than one directory, you can replace the {1} with a {N} where N is the number of directories you want to move up in the path. This method is nice because it is short and can handle multiple directories in a single command. However, if you are super concerned with performance, running this regular expression will be slower than running the combo-option several times in a row. And, the more directories you want to move up in the path, the slower the regular expression becomes.
The CGI object gives us several paths to work with.
This gives us the absolute path of the currently executing page. This is the same as running:
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This also returns the absolute path of the currently executing page. I am not sure what is the difference between this and cf_template_path.
This returns the web-page that is currently being executed.
So that's how ColdFusion paths work and a bit on how they can be manipulated. I hope that helps.
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Amazing there are no comments for this but maybe because its written so well. For those that have read this please bookmark it! Ben's work with programmatic configuration has done wonders for me. I've been able to have my applications figure out all my file paths so I don't have too and it was possible using these functions. They are very handy. Sorry I didn't notice this earlier Ben as I was on vacation. Bookmarked!
Posted by Javier Julio on Mar 26, 2007 at 10:46 AM
@Javier,
Thanks a lot for the kind words :) No worries about the bookmarking - it was only posted a few hours ago ;) Glad all the programmatic config stuff is working out for you.
Posted by Ben Nadel on Mar 26, 2007 at 10:50 AM
Doh! I thought this was one of your older posts. You see I go through your blog daily and I thought when I opened this in a new tab that it was a post from a few days ago, not this morning. I didn't get a chance to read it right away. Still though what I said about bookmarking this still stands! :) Well done.
Posted by Javier Julio on Mar 26, 2007 at 11:10 AM
Pretty nice Ben.
I already have a similar thing for myself written down in my "CF cookbook".
Posted by William from Lagos on Mar 26, 2007 at 2:42 PM
Sounds tasty ;)
Posted by Ben Nadel on Mar 26, 2007 at 2:48 PM
Awesome regex for traversing up paths structures, thanks!
Posted by Kerr on Jul 25, 2007 at 10:11 PM
I'm assuming this only works on Windows and not Linux or Unix?
Posted by jim collins on Dec 20, 2007 at 4:44 PM
@Jim,
These are ColdFusion functions - they should be system independent (I think)? I know that there used to be some issues with the slashes, but I believe ColdFusion has done a better job of abstracting that in the most recent versions.
Posted by Ben Nadel on Dec 20, 2007 at 4:48 PM
correct these work on linux as well....
just make sure that you have permissions to write to the directory on the linux box....something you not even think twice about when using windows unless you have it locked down...
Posted by Chris Ellem on Jun 14, 2008 at 3:02 AM
Ben... Ben... dude... Thank you!
#GetDirectoryFromPath(
GetCurrentTemplatePath()
).ReplaceFirst(
"([^\\\/]+[\\\/]){1}$", ""
)#
The getDirectoryFromPath with the regex to delete.... Ohh Thank you!
Posted by John Allen on Oct 7, 2008 at 7:43 PM
@John,
Glad you like :)
Posted by Ben Nadel on Oct 8, 2008 at 8:32 AM