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Ben Nadel at CFinNC 2009 (Raleigh, North Carolina) with: Matthew Senn and Michael Senn and Phillip Senn
Ben Nadel at CFinNC 2009 (Raleigh, North Carolina) with: Matthew Senn Michael Senn Phillip Senn

ColdFusion Method Definitions Can Come After The Code That References Them

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Published in Comments (5)

Well, not always, but sometimes. I always thing about ColdFusion as a top-down processing system. And, it is. But what I forget is that the page gets compiled before it gets run. Because of that (or at least this is what I am assuming), ColdFusion methods that are declared within a given template can come AFTER the code that references them so long as that reference is also in the same template.

In other words, this runs perfectly well:

<!--- Get some reassurance. --->
#GetReassurance( "Am I good enough?" )#

<cffunction
	name="GetReassurance"
	access="public"
	returntype="string"
	output="false"
	hint="Reassures you that you are good enough.">

	<cfreturn "Look dude, you are the man! Don't fight it." />
</cffunction>

Logically, I would expect that page to fail as the line that calls GetReassurance() is referring to a user defined method that has not yet been defined. But, since this method gets compiled with the page, I guess same-template references do not require a particular order.

If the ColdFusion user defined method was put into a CFInclude, this would fail. This only works if the method is defined IN THE SAME PAGE.

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Reader Comments

30 Comments

Right you are. In fact, even if you put a cfabort after your udf call and before your udf definition, I believe your call well execute successfully under most circumstances. Obviously if your udf references global variables defined after the cfabort, that probably wouldn't be the case.

15,811 Comments

I think UDFs get loaded as actual Java classes right? I guess they get compiled down to separate java byte code before the pages starts running. Of course I know nothing about that aspect, so I may be way off the mark.

30 Comments

Ben, I think you're right. I know that is the case with functions in CFCs, so I would think it would be similar for plain ol' CFM files.

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Ben Nadel