Site Visitors don't like to see ugly CF errors, even if they have caused the errors themselves! Here's a Cold Fusion Power User Tip!

A common error occurrs when a user attempts to access a form action page directly without having first submitted the form. Cold Fusion generates error messages when the required form values aren't present. Similar errors also occur when values that don't exist in the underlying database are requested. Eek!

A good CF'er acommodates this scenario in their CF code. A common way to do this is to wrap any CF form processing inside CFIF tags - 'if these form values are present, process the form, if not present a message to the visitor.'

Luckily for the CF'er there's an way they can secure the site better, and reduce errors that are visible to the site visitor, even on pages that have slipped thru. The answer is <CFERROR> and the Application.cfm file.

The CFERROR tag tells Cold Fusion 'if there's an error of this type, show this custom error page, and email the error to the administrator'. It looks like this:
<CFERROR
TYPE="Request" (or Validation)
TEMPLATE="errorpage.cfm" MAILTO="youremail@foo.com">

Easy enough, but what if you need to insert it on every page in your site? Application.cfm to the rescue!

Every time Cold Fusion processes a template (.cfm page) it first looks for a file called Application.cfm - the Application template, and processes it before the requested .cfm page.

To 'protect' all the pages in the site with CFERROR all you need to do is add the CFERROR tag to the Application.cfm file - How cool is that! Instant site wide controls via one file, automatically 'added' to new pages... on the Club site for example that's where we keep our Style Sheet along with other stuff.

Cold Fusion looks for an Application.cfm file first in the same directory as the .cfm page that is being requested, if it's not there it moves up the directory tree on the server looking for one, if one doesn't exist it processes the requested page.

The potential power of the Application.cfm file is enormous - a great place to implement site wide security measures too!

If you are interested in Cold Fusion we thoroughly recommend Ben Forta's Cold Fusion Web Application Construction Kit ($39.99) - it is THE Cold Fusion bible and very useful regardless of what tool you are using to build your CF Applications.

You can purchase the CF books from Amazon thru the Club by clicking the book graphics above to help us keep these Cold Fusion Workshops going.

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