Converting CFML Data to a JavaScript Object

The following example demonstrates the transfer of a CFQUERY result set from a CFML template executing on the server to a JavaScript object that is processed by the browser.

The application consists of five principal sections:

Running a data query
Including the WDDX JavaScript utility classes
Specifying the conversion type and the input and output variables
Calling the conversion function
Outputting the object data in HTML

This example uses a registered ColdFusion datasource and can be run from ColdFusion Server.

<!--- Create a simple query  --->
<CFQUERY NAME = 'q' DATASOURCE ='snippets'>
    SELECT Message_Id, Thread_id, 
    Username, Posted from messages
</CFQUERY>

<!--- Cache the JavaScript so that subsequent requests will --->
<!--- use the cached version rather than making additional --->
<!--- requests to the server --->

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"
    SRC="/CFIDE/scripts/wddx.js"></SCRIPT>

<!--- Bring in WDDX JS support objects
     A <SCRIPT SRC=></SCRIPT> can be used instead
     wddx.js is part of the ColdFusion distribution --->
    <CFINCLUDE TEMPLATE='/CFIDE/scripts/wddx.js'>

    <!--- Use WDDX to move from CFML data to JS --->
    <CFWDDX ACTION='cfml2js' input=#q# topLevelVariable='q'>

    <!--- Dump the recordset --->
    q.dump(true);
    
</SCRIPT>

Note

To see how CFWDDX Action="cfml2js" works, view the source to the page.

Developing Web Applications with ColdFusion
Chapter 15 : Interacting with Remote Servers