User Guide

ToString 725
ToString
Description
Converts a value to a string.
Returns
A string.
Category
Conversion functions, Other functions, String functions
Function syntax
ToString(any_value[, encoding])
See also
ToBase64, ToBinary
History
ColdFusion MX:
• Changed Unicode support: ColdFusion supports the Java UCS-2 representation of Unicode
character values 0–65535. (ColdFusion 5 and earlier releases supported ASCII values 1–255.)
• Added the encoding attribute.
Parameters
Usage
This function can convert simple values and binary values that do not contain Byte zero. If this
function cannot convert a value, it throws an exception. This function can convert an XML
document object to a string representation.
Note: You can use this function to reverse Base64 encoding of a string. Convert the Base64
encoded object to a binary object, then use this function to convert the binary object to a string.
Parameter Description
any_value Value to convert to a string
encoding The character encoding (character set) of the string. 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
For more information on character encoding, see:
www.w3.org/International/O-charset.html.
Default: the encoding of the page on which the function is called. See cfcontent
on page 87.