Using CFApplication Inside Of ColdFusion's Application.cfc
Last week, I gave a Nylon Technology presentation on ColdFusion's Application.cfc component. While giving the presentation, it occurred to me - if Application.cfc is a component just like any other and it really just defines a ColdFusion application, I wonder what would happen if you use ColdFusion's CFApplication tag inside of the Application.cfc. To test this, I set up a very simple Application.cfc:
- <cfcomponent>
-
- <!--- Define application. --->
- <cfapplication
- name="CFApp In AppCFC"
- />
-
- <!--- Define page settings. --->
- <cfsetting
- requesttimeout="5"
- />
-
-
- <!---
- Set an application variable just to be
- able to echo something out in our CFDump.
- --->
- <cfset APPLICATION.CFAppTest = "Interesting" />
-
- </cfcomponent>
The Application.cfc does not contain anything Application.cfc-related; it acts merely as a container for the CFApplication tag. It then uses a standard CFSetting tag and attempts to set an APPLICATION variable that we would echo in a later CFDump.
Then, in index page, all I am doing is CFDumping out the APPLICATION scope:
- <cfdump
- var="#APPLICATION#"
- label="CFApplication Test"
- top="10"
- />
Running this page throws the following ColdFusion error:
5 >= 0
Not one of ColdFusion's most intuitive errors (something similar to what is seen when using CFQueryParam and cached database structures), but since I was testing something very specific, I knew what caused it. Apparently, you cannot use the ColdFusion's old CFApplication inside of its new Application.cfc component.
Reader Comments
Which is probably a good thing. ;)
I wonder what happens if you try the same code inside onRequestStart?
I was just wondering the same thing so I tried it out. Moving the code to the OnRequestStart function works just fine.