User Guide

Returning Results to the User 55

Returning Results to the User

When you return your results to the user, you must make sure that your pages

respond to the user’s needs and are appropriate for the type and amount of

information. In particular you must consider the following situations:

• When there are no query results

• When you want to return partial results

If there are no query results

Your code must accommodate the cases where a query does not return any records.

To determine whether a search has retrieved records, use the

RecordCount query

variable. You can use the variable in a conditional logic expression that determines

how to display search results appropriately to users.

For example, to inform the user when no records were found by the GetEmployees

query, insert the following code before displaying the data:

No records match your search criteria. <BR>

You mst do the following:

• Prefix RecordCount with the query name.

• Add a procedure after the cfif tag that displays a message to the user.

• Add a procedure after the

cfelse tag to format the returned data.

• Follow the second procedure with a </cfif> tag end to indicate the end of the

conditional code.

To return search results to users:

1 Open the page actionpage.cfm in ColdFusion Studio.

2 Change the page so that it appears as follows:

<html>

<head>

<title>Retrieving Employee Data Based on Criteia from Form</title>

</head>

<body>

SELECT Departmt.Dept_Name,

Employee.FirstName,

Employee.LastName,

Employee.StartDate,

Employee.Salary

FROM Departmt, Employee

WHERE Departmt.Dept_ID = Employee.Dept_ID

AND Departmt.Dept_Name = ’#Form.Department#’

</cfif>