HostMySite.Com is sponsoring this tutorial, please visit their site today!

Fusebox 4.1 For Beginners Part 2 by: Craig

[Download in PDF Format] [Download in FlashPaper Format]

Fusebox 4.1 For Beginners Part 2

Fuseactions

Now that you have a circuit and an action for that circuit you will want to create the page that will be that action. If you just said "huh?" don't worry it will become clear in a moment. Open up your favorite editor and create a page called dsp_welcome.cfm. In that page I would like you to type the phrase "Hello, I am an action called "welcome"." Save it to the same folder as your index.cfm file is in. Once that is done open up index.cfm in your browser again. Go ahead I'll wait for you.

If you are cursing up a storm because you received a error message that read something like this, "The circuit xml file, circuit.xml, for circuit Main could not be found" you have done everything correct so far and can stop cursing. So what happened? Well the short of it is that we have set up a circuit called main and an action of welcome that is our default fuseaction, but we haven't specified what the action should do. So we want to specify that our action is to open up the dsp_welcome.cfm page. We do this by opening the circuit.xml.cfm document and placing the following text there between the fuseaction tags we added:

<include template="dsp_welcome.cfm" />

Your file should now look like this:

Ok once you have that done save and open up index.cfm in your browser again. Go ahead I promise it will work correctly now. If you have done everything exactly as I have it you should see that the dsp_welcome.cfm is showing. But how is this possible? Everything goes through the index.cfm page. This provides for better security along with easier control. And since main.welcome is your default fuseaction you will always see this page if you type in index.cfm. Go ahead and try to open dsp_welcome.cfm in your browser see what happens. It automatically calls back up the index.cfm page. So how is this possible. Open the application.cfm page.

In it you will see this:

<cfif right(cgi.script_name, Len("index.cfm")) NEQ "index.cfm" AND right(cgi.script_name, 3) NEQ "cfc">
    <cflocation url="index.cfm" addtoken="no">
</cfif>

This keeps any page, but the index.cfm page from being opened providing security for your scripts, because now a user will no long see the name of the page being called! What a great idea!

Ok now that we have a basic hello page lets beef it up. Open up dsp_welcome.cfm we want to make it go to another page call dsp_yourname.cfm, but we want it to actually say a persons name. So we will insert a form. On the dsp_welcome.cfm page type the following:

<form action="index.cfm?fuseaction=main.DisplayName" method="post">
    <input type="text" name="name">
    <input type="Submit" value="submit">
</form>

So your dsp_welcome.cfm page should look like this:

Now look at the form action. We call the index.cfm page and we pass a variable called fuseaction with a value of DisplayName. So how do we call the dsp_yourname.cfm page we are about to make? If you said by placing some script in the circuit.xml.cfm page you are correct and probably should not be reading this tutorial. ;-) Really we want to open the circuit.xml.cfm page and place the following code there:

<fuseaction name="DisplayName">
   <include template="dsp_yourname.cfm" />
</fuseaction>

So now your circuit.xml.cfm looks like this:

Ok now create a new page and name it dsp_yourname.cfm. In it put the following code:

<cfoutput>Hello my name is: #Form.Name#.</cfoutput>

Now open index.cfm in your browser. You should see the newly created form. Type in your name and click submit you should now see your name and the hello message. If so great! You have done everything correct so far. If not go back over your code and match it exactly to mine.

Now it is time to get a little more advanced with this and start experiencing the power behind fusebox. So go to the potty, get yourself your favorite drink, and buckle your seat belts then move on to part three of this series.

HostMySite.Com is sponsoring this tutorial, please visit their site today!

Please rate this tutorial:

Post a new comment on this tutorial
post a new comment on this particular tutorial
Your Name:
Your Email:
Comment Title:
Comments:
Key Phrase: