And as long as we’re sharing tips for you as a newcomer to CF (and application.cfm/cfc in particular), note that CF’s process of working with them is to run any in the directory of the page being called, and if not found to look in the directory above that, and so on, all the way to the root—not of the site but of the drive. That is changeable as of CF9 (a server-wide setting in the CF Admin).
As for the plethora of such files seeming unusual, I’ll note that there are similar (though not equal) concepts in asp (global.asa), .NET (global.asax and web.config), j2ee (filters), and so on. CF’s application.cfm is among the oldest, and really acted as an “onrequeststart” filter: code to run when a request starts. In fact, a few years later they added literally onrequestend.cfm as its corollary. Then in CF7 they added the application.cfc, which instead defined many methods, among which were an onrequeststart and onrequestend (as well as onerror, to get back to your original question.) BTW, be aware that there is also server-wide error handling, for those apps that don’t setup their own error handling. And there is also try/catch handling, to fine-tune error handling within specific code (rather than the whole application). Indeed, it’s really a nesting of error handling that CF offers, where you can catch them at the most inner level, and if not there then at the next outer level, and so on. I expanded on that (and error handling in general) in a series of articles for the old CF Dev Journal. Though from about 10 years ago, most of the concepts still apply (though it was before CF7 so no reference to app.cfc), starting at: http://www.carehart.org/articles/#2000_10 Hope that helps. BTW, as for that gobbledygook you saw, Mark noted that it “looks like it might be encrypted.” To be clear, there is a feature in CF (a command line tool called cfencode.exe, in [cf]\bin) that can make code not human readable. Note that it’s “cfencode” and not “cfencrypt”. Some do still refer to it as encryption, but it really is just an encoding (that can be broken), so the tool was renamed to “cfencode” several years ago to connote that. (For those interested, CF7 did add support for precompiling templates, which for the most part cannot be reverse-engineered back to source. See [cf]\bin\cfcompile.bat and the CF documentation.) /charlie From: ad...@acfug.org [mailto:ad...@acfug.org] On Behalf Of axunderw...@ups.com Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 3:35 PM To: discussion@acfug.org Subject: RE: [ACFUG Discuss] Error Handling and CF8 Well, here's a quick tip for you - you mentioned you only searched for Application.cfm files, you might want to include Application.cfc to that search. Application.cfc is the "newer" version of Application.cfm and has many more events that can be handled at page/application load times. You might have several of those floating around where you'll want to put in your error handling. _____ From: ad...@acfug.org [mailto:ad...@acfug.org] On Behalf Of Matthew Nicholson Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 3:31 PM To: discussion@acfug.org Subject: RE: [ACFUG Discuss] Error Handling and CF8 Excellent point! I’ll admit, I’m still quite new to working with CF and coming behind a number of developers onto a project with a less than ideal documentation policy… well… you get the idea… :) Thankfully, I love a good challenge. :D Matthew R. Nicholson From: ad...@acfug.org [mailto:ad...@acfug.org] On Behalf Of axunderw...@ups.com Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 3:25 PM To: discussion@acfug.org Subject: RE: [ACFUG Discuss] Error Handling and CF8 :-) That's not uncommon...each Application.cfm or Application.cfc can be used for separate applications, or can be used to help keep directories from being secured, etc. It's just part of the CF framework - wouldn't call it a mess just because there's multiple of them! Might be that it is a mess, but, multiple Application files definitely have their place. Allen _____ From: ad...@acfug.org [mailto:ad...@acfug.org] On Behalf Of Matthew Nicholson Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 3:22 PM To: discussion@acfug.org Subject: RE: [ACFUG Discuss] Error Handling and CF8 Ah Ha! Looks as though I was barking up the wrong Application.cfm… I’ve found one that’s not encrypted and is apparently being used by my application mixed in all the source that I hadn’t noticed before. How many of these “Application.cfm” files are typically built into a single CF server? Oddly enough, I’ve found about 8 on this box. What a mess… Matthew R. Nicholson From: ad...@acfug.org [mailto:ad...@acfug.org] On Behalf Of Mark Bureau Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 3:17 PM To: discussion@acfug.org Subject: Re: [ACFUG Discuss] Error Handling and CF8 looks like it might be encrypted. From: Matthew Nicholson <mailto:matthew.nichol...@soltech.net> Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 3:08 PM To: discussion@acfug.org Subject: [ACFUG Discuss] Error Handling and CF8 Afternoon All! I’m trying to setup error handling for our production environment to be more sophisticated then explosion followed by a crash and burn. With that, I’ve been able to find a wealth of tutorials on how to set templates and all sorts of other goodies but a majority of them require me to modify the Application.cfm or Application.cfc. My server(s) are all running vanilla CF8 and only use the Application.cfm. However, I’m unable to modify the file, I get a whole bunch of goop (with an example below) when I attempt to modify the file in just about every editor I have access to. Example: _____ N _____ P _____ ¶¢**´ Is it encrypted? Am I being thick? Any direction would be greatly appreciated as always! Thanks! ------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, manage your profile @ http://www.acfug.org?fa=login.edituserform For more info, see http://www.acfug.org/mailinglists Archive @ http://www.mail-archive.com/discussion%40acfug.org/ List hosted by http://www.fusionlink.com -------------------------------------------------------------
