Chapter 14: Using Web Elements And External Objects; Using Xml And Wddx - Adobe 38043740 - ColdFusion Standard - Mac Development Manual

Chapter 14: Using Web Elements and
External Objects

Using XML and WDDX

You can use Adobe ColdFusion to create, use, and manipulate XML documents. You can also use Web Distributed
Data Exchange (WDDX), an XML dialect, for transmitting structured data, including transferring data between
applications and between CFML and JavaScript.
About XML and ColdFusion
XML has rapidly become the universal language for representing documents and data on the web. These documents
can extend beyond the traditional concept of a paper document or its equivalent. For example, XML is often used to
represent database or directory information. XML is also commonly used to represent transaction information, such
as product orders or receipts, and for information such as inventory records and employee data.
Because XML represents data in a tagged, textual format it is an excellent tool for representing information that must
be shared between otherwise-independent applications such as order entry and inventory management. No
application must know anything about the other. Each application only must be prepared to get data in a format that
is structured according to the XML DTD or Schema. For example, in a distributed order processing application, the
order placement component, order fulfillment component, inventory management component, and billing
component can all share information with each other in XML format. They could use a common XML DTD, of
different components could communicate with each other using different DTDs.
After an application parses the XML document, it can then manipulate the information in any way that is appropriate.
For example, you can convert tabular XML data into a ColdFusion recordset, perform queries on the data and then
export the data an XML document. For example, the code in
page 1080 takes a customer order in XML, converts the data to a recordset, and uses a query to determine the order
cost. It then prepares a receipt as an XML document.
ColdFusion provides a comprehensive and easy-to-use set of tools for creating and using XML documents.
ColdFusion lets you do the following with XML documents:
• Convert XML text into ColdFusion XML document objects.
• Create new ColdFusion XML document objects.
• Modify ColdFusion XML document objects.
• Validate XML against a DTD or Schema
• Transform XML using XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation).
• Extract data from XML documents using XPath expressions.
• Convert ColdFusion XML document objects to text and save them in files.
ColdFusion can also represent forms that you create using the
the XML and process it using an XSLT skin to generate output for display, or ColdFusion can generate XML text and
place it in a variable for further processing. For more information on XML Forms, see
Forms" on page 783
"Example: using XML in a ColdFusion
tag as XML. You can have ColdFusion generate
cfform
Last updated 1/20/2012
application" on
"Creating Skinnable XML
1058