User Guide

Table Of Contents

Creating and using objects 947

Creating and using objects

You use the cfobject tag or the CreateObject function to create a named instance of an object.

You use other ColdFusion tags, such as

cfset and cfoutput, to invoke the object’s properties

and methods.

The following sections provide information about creating and using objects that applies to both

COM and CORBA objects. The examples assume a sample object named “obj”, and that the

object has a property called “Property”, and methods called “Method1”, “Method2”, and

“Method3”.

Creating objects

You create, or instantiate (create a named instance of) an object in ColdFusion with the

cfobject

tag or

CreateObject function. The specific attributes or parameters that you use depend on the

type of object you use, and are described in detail in “Creating and using COM objects”

on page 951 and “Creating CORBA objects” on page 961. The following examples use a

cfobject tag to create a COM object and a CreateObject function to create a CORBA object:

obj = CreateObject("CORBA", "d:\temp\tester.ior", "IOR", "Visibroker")

ColdFusion releases any object created by cfobject or CreateObject, or returned by other

objects, at the end of the ColdFusion page execution.

Using properties

Use standard ColdFusion statements to access properties as follows:

• To set a property, use a statement or cfset tag, such as the following:

• To get a property, use a statement or cfset tag, such as the following:

As shown in this example, you do not use parentheses on the right side of the equation to get a

property value.

Calling methods

Object methods usually take zero or more arguments. You send In arguments, whose values are

not returned to the caller by value. You send Out and In,Out arguments, whose values are

returned to the caller, by reference. Arguments sent by reference usually have their value changed

by the object. Some methods have return values, while others might not.