[CFCDev] CFC method returning complex value?

[Ken Dunnington]

I am writing some CFC's, one of which is a Contact Manager. In order to 
allow for a large number of fields (and to save myself some typing) I 
am populating the CFC's properties on initialization by looping over 
the query columns, and assigning variables dynamically. This seems to 
work fine; when I dump the instance data, I can see my fields populated 
with the proper values. I have also written a multi-purpose 'get' 
method which will fetch any variable from the instance data. When I try 
to use this method, however, to retrieve a field, say "first", I get a 
'Complex object types cannot be converted to simple values' error. 
However, if I first save the result of the get method into a local 
variable, I can use it as expected (as a string.)

In earlier objects, I've used this get method without problems, the 
difference being I explicitly defined the variables in the instance 
data. Why would I get this error only when accessing the method 
directly?

Here is the code for the get method:
	<cffunction name="get" output="no" hint="Get a variable from the 
instance data">
		<cfargument name="what" type="string" required="yes" hint="Item to 
get">
		<cfif StructKeyExists(variables.instance,arguments.what)>
			<cfreturn variables.instance["#arguments.what#"]>
		<cfelse>
			<cfreturn ''>
		</cfif>
	</cffunction>

And here is the code I use to populate the variables.instance struct:
                <cfquery name="contact" datasource="#variables.ds#">
                        SELECT * FROM contact
                        WHERE id = "#arguments.id#"
                </cfquery>
                <cfif contact.RecordCount GT 0>
                        <cfloop list="#contact.columnList#" index="column">
                                <cfset variables.instance['#column#'] = 
contact['#column#']>
                        </cfloop>
                </cfif>
Note that the get method has no return type, because it is used to get 
both simple and complex values, but the value I am trying to get is a 
string.

Thanks,
Ken
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