User Guide

Using ColdFusion components 221
You can use this syntax anywhere that you can use a ColdFusion function, such as in cfset tags
or surrounded by number signs in the body of a
cfoutput tag.
Invoking component methods in CFScript
The following example shows how to invoke component methods in CFScript:
<!--- Instantiate once and reuse the instance.--->
<cfscript>
tellTimeObj=CreateObject("component","tellTime");
WriteOutput("Server's Local Time: " & tellTimeObj.getLocalTime());
WriteOutput("<br> Calculated UTC Time: " & tellTimeObj.getUTCTime());
</cfscript>
In the example, the three CFScript statements do the following:
1. The CreateObject function instantiates the tellTime CFC as tellTimeObj.
2. The first WriteOutput function displays text followed by the results returned by the
getLocalTime method of the tellTimeObj instance.
3. The second WriteOutput function displays text followed by the results returned by the
getUTCTime method of the tellTimeObj instance.
In CFScript, you use the method name in standard function syntax, such as
methodName().
Invoking component methods in CFML
The following example uses CFML tags to produce the same results as the CFScript example:
<cfobject name="tellTimeObj" component="tellTime">
<cfoutput>
Server's Local Time: #tellTimeObj.getLocalTime()#<br>
Calculated UTC Time: #tellTimeObj.getUTCTime()#
</cfoutput>
Accessing component data directly
You can access data in the component’s This scope directly in CFScript and
cfset assignment
statements. For example, if a user data CFC has a
This.lastUpdated property, you could have
code such as the following:
<cfobject name="userDataCFC" component="userData">
<cfif DateDiff("d", userDataCFC.lastUpdated, Now()) GT 30>
<!--- Code to deal with older data goes here. --->
</cfif>
For more information, see “The This scope” on page 227.
Invoking CFC methods using forms and URLs
You can invoke CFC methods directly by specifying the CFC in a URL, or using HTML and
CFML form tags. Because all HTTP requests are transient, these methods only let you transiently
invoke methods. They do not let you create persistent CFC instances.