System information

18 Chapter 2: CFML Basics
The following figure shows the cfpage.cfm page in the browser:
2. Do the following tasks:
a View the source code that was returned to the browser. In most browsers, you can view the
source by right-clicking on the page, and then selecting View Source.
b Compare the browser source code with the source code that appears in your editor. Notice
that the CFML tags were processed on the page but did not appear in the source that was
returned to your browser.
As described in Chapter 1, “Introducing ColdFusion MX,” on page 11, ColdFusion
processes all the instructions (CFML tags and functions) it receives on a page, and then
returns the results of the instructions that your browser can interpret and display.
About CFML elements
CFML consists of two primary language elements: tags and functions. Ta g s let you perform
operations such as accessing a database. Functions can return data and do other operations like
retrieving the system date. Almost everything that you want to accomplish with ColdFusion
involves using tags and functions.
You use another important element known as a variable. Variables are an important part of most
programming languages and are equally important with CFML. Variables let you store
information in memory and enable you to pass data.
The following sections describe how to use these three elements.
Tags
You can think of tags as commands that you use to instruct the ColdFusion server to perform
operations. These operations might include selecting data from a database, reading a file that
resides on the server, or showing the results of processing.
Tag syntax
As discussed in Chapter 1, “Introducing ColdFusion MX,” on page 11, ColdFusion tags are
similar to HTML tags. ColdFusion tags are enclosed in angle brackets and often have a start and
end tag. The start tag encloses the tag name in brackets, like this:
<tagname>