User Guide

192 Chapter 11 Preventing and Handling Errors

Debug Settings in the ColdFusion Administrator

ColdFusion can provide important debugging information for every application

page requested by a browser. When you enable debugging, the output displays in a

block following normal page output.

For detailed information on the debugging and logging settings in the ColdFusion

Administrator, see Advanced ColdFusion Administration.

Note

By default, when you enable any of the debugging and logging options, debug output

becomes visible to all users. To restrict debug output to specific IP addresses, use the

Debugging IPs page of the ColdFusion Administrator to specify the addresses that

can receive debugging messages.

Generating debug information for an individual page

You can view the parameters and CGI environment variables for an individual

application page without turning on the global debug settings in the ColdFusion

Administrator. Simply append the parameter mode=debug to the end of the URL:

www.myserver.com/cfdocs/test.cfm?mode=debug

Note

If you do not restrict access to debugging information, any browser can use this

parameter to get debugging information. To restrict access to specific IP addresses,

use the Debugging IPs page of the ColdFusion Administrator to specify the addresses

that can receive debugging messages.

Generating debug information for an individual query

You can view debug information for an individual query by putting the debug

attribute into the opening

cfquery tag:

SELECT * FROM TestTable

</cfquery>

When this query runs, it places the debug information into the output page where

the query is placed.

Error messages

If ColdFusion is unable to fulfill a request because of an error, it displays a diagnostic

message in the user’s browser. The message includes a link that allows the user to

e-mail a report of the error to the site administrator. You enable the mail link feature

in the Mail Logging page of the ColdFusion Administrator. Errors are written to a log

file for later review.