User Guide

cffile 119
cffile action = "read"
Description
Reads a text file on the server. The file is read into a dynamic, local variable that you can use in
the page. For example:
• Read a text file; insert the file’s contents into a database
• Read a text file; use the find and replace function to modify the file’s contents
Note: This action reads the file into a variable in the local Variables scope. It is not intended for use
with large files, such as logs, because this can bring down the server.
Syntax
<cffile
action = "read"
file = "full_path_name"
variable = "var_name"
charset = "charset_option" >
See also
cfdirectory
History
See the History section of the main cffile tag page.
Attributes
Attribute Req/Opt Default Description
action Required Type of file manipulation that the tag performs.
file Required Pathname of the file to read.
If not an absolute path (starting a with a drive letter and a
colon, or a forward or backward slash), it is relative to the
ColdFusion temporary directory, which is returned by the
GetTempDirectory function.
variable Required Name of variable to contain contents of text file.
charset Optional Character
encoding
identified
by the file’s
byte order
mark, if any;
otherwise,
JVM
default file
character
set.
The character encoding in which the file contents is
encoded. The following list includes commonly used values:
• utf-8
• iso-8859-1
• windows-1252
• us-ascii
• shift_jis
• iso-2022-jp
• euc-jp
• euc-kr
• big5
• euc-cn
• utf-16
If the file starts with a byte order mark and you set this
attribute to a conflicting character encoding, ColdFusion
generates an error.
For more information character encodings, see:
www.w3.org/International/O-charset.html.