Sean, Thanks for discussing this topic with me and with the rest of the list. The reason why this is so important to me is because we have something big that we’re about to launch that makes extensive use of a fairly large custom tag library, and we’ve looked at how to handle them from many different aspects, including things like shared hosting environments, software maintainability, etc. Each technique for calling custom tags had its advantages and disadvantages, but the two main things that got me about CFIMPORT was that you couldn’t use a variable to target the custom tag library location since it’s a compile-time directive, and secondly "importing" the entire library of custom tags at that location, which sounded like a lot of unnecessary overhead on each page request. If only it were named CFMAPTAGNAMESPACE instead. ;)
What absolutely killed CFIMPORT for us was the inability to represent the custom tag library location as a persistent variable that we could set as needed. Without that, our software wouldn’t be easy to deploy in a shared environment where the mapping name you hard-coded into all those CFIMPORT calls during development wasn’t available when it came time to deploy on a box that had a hundred other sites on it-- and one of them got your mapping name first. All this being said, would you seriously consider amending your ColdFusion MX Coding Guidelines regarding the use of CFMODULE? Just from this discussion today, I don’t think the claim of "slow" really holds up anymore, nor does the claim that it "encourages some very unstructured usage." And in light of what I’ve mentioned about maintainability (especially in shared hosting environments), CFIMPORT isn’t "always preferable" to CFMODULE. There is a lot of misleading information about CFMODULE going around, including one I heard recently that "each call to CFMODULE generates its own separate HTTP request." I really want to clear up these rumors, and your very influential guidelines document would be a great place to set the record straight. Respectfully, Adam Phillip Churvis Member of Team Macromedia Advanced Intensive ColdFusion MX Training ColdFusion MX Master Class: September 22 - 26, 2003 http://www.ColdFusionTraining.com Download CommerceBlocks V2.1 and LoRCAT from http://www.ProductivityEnhancement.com The ColdFusion MX Bible is in bookstores now! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm?link=i:4:137793 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm?link=t:4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm?link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4 Signup for the Fusion Authority news alert and keep up with the latest news in ColdFusion and related topics. http://www.fusionauthority.com/signup.cfm
