System information

62 Chapter 6: Lesson 3: Retrieving Data

Reviewing the code

The following table describes the code used to build the query:

Exercise 3: Displaying the query result using the cfoutput tag

In Chapter 2, “CFML Basics,” on page 15, you learned that the ColdFusion cfoutput tag is an

easy mechanism to display literal text and the contents of variables. Additionally, the

cfoutput

tag significantly simplifies displaying the results of queries. When used to display the results from

a query, the

cfoutput tag automatically loops through the record set for you. You simply specify

the name of the query in the

query attribute of the cfoutput tag:

All the code between the cfoutput start and end tags is the output code block. The output code

block executes repeatedly, once for each row in the record set. However, if the query returns no

rows, ColdFusion skips the code contained in the output code block.

...output code block...

</cfoutput>

Displaying the column contents from the SQL statement

In CFML you surround variables with number signs (#) to display their contents using the

cfoutput tag. You also use this approach with column names specified in the SELECT statement

of a

cfquery. For example, when you want to display the trip names from the SQL query, you use

#tripName# within the output code block:

#tripname#

</cfoutput>

For additional information about using SQL with cfquery and cfoutput, see ColdFusion MX

Developer’s Guide.

To display the query results:

Modify the triplisting.cfm file by adding the highlighted code so that it appears as follows:

SELECT trips.tripName FROM trips

</cfquery>

<html>

<head>

<title>Trip Listing</title>

</head>

Code Explanation

<cfquery name="TripList"

datasource="CompassTravel">

ColdFusion query named TripList. Submits any SQL statement

between the

cfquery start and end tags to the data source

specified in the

datasource attribute.

SELECT trips.tripName FROM

trips

SQL SELECT statement to retrieve all tripName(s) from the trips

table.