Within my root application.cfc I define this.customTagPaths. This is verified to work on all pages, including those in subfolders. Within one subfolder I have an application.cfc that extends this root application.cfc. Pages within this folder still use the correct custom tags so we know that this is working correctly.
However, when trying to use a custom tag within the [subfolder]/application.cfc file itself I believe it is pulling from a different custom tag path. I added some debug information into the custom tag and it outputs when the custom tag is called from a normal page, but does not output when called from the application.cfc. I do not have access to the server to put debugging information in the other custom tag paths to be sure.
Does code in the application.cfc ignore this.customTagPaths and, if so, how do I use the specific tag I need? This custom tag sets a variable in the caller scope, so it cannot be called with a simple cfInclude.
Edit
I will attempt to address some of the questions in the comments here.
The custom tag in question has been simplified down to this code:
<cfset Caller.groupList = "">
<cfquery name="getGroups">
SELECT id, name
FROM groups
WHERE id = 1
</cfquery>
<cfoutput query="getGroups">
<cfset Caller.groupList = #ListAppend(Caller.groupList, name)#>
</cfoutput>
<cfoutput>Caller.groupList: #Caller.groupList#<br></cfoutput>
The Application.cfc is using this code:
<cfcomponent extends="RootApplication">
............
<cf_groupList>
<cfoutput>request.groupList: #request.groupList#<br><br></cfoutput>
</cfcomponent>
When cf_groupList is called directly from a cfm it writes "Call.groupList: xxxx" out to the page and shows the correct values from the dev database. However, when the Application.cfc runs the custom tag "Call.groupList: xxxx" never appears, but "request.groupList: xxxx" does, and in the latter case it shows the list that we would expect from the live database. Both the live and dev sites are currently on the same server, which we are in the process of changing, but for now I have no debugging information.
The reason I am calling a custom tag from Application.cfc is because this tag is used many other places. Simply copying and pasting the code into Application.cfc would solve the problem, but then we have an issue of duplicated code that we need to remember to update in two places in the future. Using the custom tag in the application.cfc instead of duplicating code seemed like the correct approach.
Mark, you are correct. When placed in the parent Application.cfc the custom tag works correctly. In the child it does not.
Related
Using: CF10 and IIS7.5
I have a section within my website called "Bookings". It is located like this:
c:\inetpub\wwwroot\mysite\bookings
Within this folder will be sub-folders and eventually webpages themselves. Heres an example:
c:\inetpub\wwwroot\mysite\bookings\holidays\new.cfm
c:\inetpub\wwwroot\mysite\bookings\carhire\edit.cfm
I include (using <cfinclude>) another page within each webpage that displays different links depending on which page is calling it. All I want to know is the directory up to the "bookings" folder. Something like this (pseudo code):
<cfset whereAmI = #GetDirectoryFromPath(GetBaseTemplatePath())#>
<cfif #whereAmI# EQ "C:\inetpub\wwwroot\mysite\bookings">
<h1>Booking Section Links</h1>
</cfif>
The above code works only if the user visits the bookings/index.cfm page of the "bookings" folder. But if they go to the bookings/holidays/new.cfm page, it is now in the holidays folder so the <h1> content will not appear. I really only want to check for any page that is in the bookings folder, even if it is within a subfolder within the bookings folder. A bit like in SQL where I could say IF #GetDirectoryFromPath(GetBaseTemplatePath())# LIKE 'c:\inetpub\wwwroot\mysite\bookings%' so it has a wildcard on the end.
I know this question is going to irritate the MVC framework advocates but please excuse me on this!
Here is a quick, easy way to solve your problem (may not work as system expands - but should get you started down the right path).
<cfset whereAmI = GetDirectoryFromPath(GetBaseTemplatePath())>
<cfif whereAmI CONTAINS "C:\inetpub\wwwroot\mysite\bookings">
<h1>Booking Section Links</h1>
</cfif>
Note, I removed the # from inside the cfset and cfif you do not need them there.
You could even scale back the path to use just 'mysite\bookings'.
Ideally, this should be wrapped up into a function so that you can easily pass different paths into it to determine if you are on a given page. Or, possibly, even determine the 'parent' folder in onRequestStart in Application.cfc and set it as a request scope variable.
This will need to be tweaked if you run the code on a *nix based system.
It is more easier with CGI variables. You can use "CF_TEMPLATE_PATH". Try this
<cfoutput>The value of CF_TEMPLATE_PATH is: </cfoutput><cfdump var="#CF_TEMPLATE_PATH#">
In my application I have all my CFC's in a cfc folder. From the site root I can access them without any trouble by simply referring to them in my <cfinvoke> tag as component=cfc.mycomponent method=mymethod
The trouble is, when I want to access the cfc from another page that's not in the root I can't use component=../.cfc.mycomponent to get in touch with that cfc.
What am I doing wrong here?
There are a handful of options for getting this to work. Unfortunately, learning them has taken me a good amount of trial and error. Let me share what I've learned.
First, you can use the classic method of creating a mapping in your CF Administrator. Specify the exact path to your components (e.g. c:\wwwroot\cfc), and the mapping (pseudo-folder) that you want to call it by (e.g. MyCFCs). Now from anywhere in your application, you can reference create a new MyCFCs.mycomponent() (using CF9+'s new keyword, you can substitute for createObject("component","MyCFCs.mycomponent") to be compatible back to CF6).
The downsides to using a server mapping are that you have to configure this on every server your application runs on. I typically have a local development server which has a radically different configuration from my production servers, and making changes on production servers is a pain for me, so I try to avoid server mappings whenever possible.
Second, you can reference your CFCs from a web-root-relative path, meaning that if your application is in the root of your server and the /cfc path is directly off of the web root, you can always do new cfc.mycomponent() from anywhere in your application. ColdFusion 6.1 and up will correctly map to the root of your web site. This is like referencing an image using /images/mypicture.jpg, anywhere in your web site, /images will will go straight to the same directory.
The downside of using the web-root-relative path is that if your application will ever be in a different folder off of the web root, or will ever be in a subdirectory and sometimes be at the web root, the relative path from the web root will change, breaking these links.
Third, you can create an application-specific mapping. This was introduced in CF8 and requires that you have an Application.cfc file. It is simple to add. Raymond Camden has a great reference. The syntax is essentially like this.
<cfset this.name = "MyAppName"/>
<cfset this.mappings = structNew() />
<cfset this.mappings["/cfc"] = getDirectoryFromPath(getCurrentTemplatePath()) & "cfc/" />
The only downside to this method is that your Application.cfc can't extend a CFC in a mapped folder. It's an obscure problem, which probably won't affect you. Also, you will need to have an Application.cfc, which is good practice, but I don't know if you are doing that yet.
Fourth, you can instantiate your CFC into your application scope, probably from within the aforementioned Application.cfc, inside an OnApplicationStart() method. This moves any compile/instantiation time into your application's first hit, and removes it from subsequent hits. The code is very simple.
<!--- from Application.cfc, inside onApplicationStart() --->
<cfset application.myComponent = new cfc.myComponent() />
<!--- from anywhere else in your application --->
<cfset application.myComponent.callMyMethod() />
The downside to this one is that once your component is in Application memory, any changes you make to it while you are developing your application will not be reflected until you clear the application memory or call onApplicationStart() again. It's not hard to get around, but it's just more code, and more to manage.
One final note, you may want to think about moving from <cfinvoke> to createObject("component",...) or, if you are on CF9, new. The cfinvoke syntax is fine, but every time you invoke a component from a path, you are re-instantiating it, and it also is not a very object-oriented way to call your components. Food for thought, take it or leave it :)
You can't use relative paths with components.
What you need is a ColdFusion mapping. There are two ways to do this.
The first is to go into your ColdFusion administrator, go into the mappings section and add a /cfc mapping that points to your cfc folder.
The other way is to use application specific mappings;
In the Application.cfc for your application you can add application mappings as you would under the ColdFusion administrator mapping. At the top of your application cfc add a cfset of this.mappings as an array. In this array set the mapping with the directory path.
<cfset this.mappings["/cfc"] = GetDirectoryFromPath( GetCurrentTemplatePath() )&"cfc">
with the mapping of /cfc to your cfc folder any component calls to cfc.objectname will load the appropriate component in your cfc folder.
You absolutely can extend a cfc with mappings. I had to do it myself.
One of the most frustrating things that I have had to deal with in ColdFusion is trying to create an external application that is open to the general public and having to secure a portion of that site with an application within a subfolder and extending the logic from base application.cfc. I'll walk you through the current approach that developers use to solve this as well as showing you how to additionally use mapping when there may be a hosting provider that uses virtual directories.
This is a rather long article, if you want to jump to the condensed summary, scroll down to the bottom of this page.
Many years ago, the first time that I tried to perform this, I received the following message no matter what I tried: "Could not find the ColdFusion component or interface xxx'. In a nutshell, the problem using this approach is that both the root and the subfolders have the same name, i.e. Application.cfc, and ColdFusion can't properly identify what component to extend. Finally, after some serious investigation, someone came up with the idea to create a proxy.cfc that resides in the same root directory as the root Application.cfc, and the Application.cfc in the subfolder extends an empty proxy.cfc that extends the root cfc like so:
root directory: Application.cfc
This root Application.cfc does not extend anything
Also in the root directory: Proxy.cfc
Proxy.cfc has the following code, it's essentially empty. The only thing that the Proxy.cfc does is to extend the Application.cfc that is in the same directory:
<cfcomponent extends="Application">
</cfcomponent>
Subdirectory such as a folder named admin.
This subdirectory has another Application.cfc. Let's say that this component is responsible for securing the application and has login logic as well as debugging settings for example. This Application.cfc will extend the Proxy.cfc to gain the methods and properties of the Application.cfc in the root directory like so:
<cfcomponent displayname="Admin" extends="Proxy.cfc">
This approach was a godsend and it was heavily blogged about. Ben Nadel has made a number of very helpful posts which I will share at the bottom of this article.
This works quite well unless you're on a hosted domain or a server that uses virtual directories. In this case, we are in the same original boat in which we started from. Now we are back into the "Could not find the ColdFusion component or interface xxx' hell!
There is a solution for this tricky problem though, we need to also use mapping!
It is a common misnomer that you can't use mapping to extend components. I am not quite sure where this misconception originally came about, but it has been proven that this is just not true. There are occasions where we must use mapping to solve some annoying problems, like here.
This particular site is hosted by hostek.com. They are a fine company to deal with, but the server that my site is hosted on has some idiosyncrasies due to the directory structure. Here, when I use the Proxy.cfc method to extend the logic from the base Application.cfc to the Application.cfc in the admin folder I receive the dreaded 'could not find the ... component' error. When I first saw it I was dismayed thinking not this again, so I turned to ColdFusion CFC mapping. Mapping tells ColdFusion where to find the file and what the file relationships are.
Let's review CFC structure that was just discussed. For example, imagine the following directory structure:
root directory: i.e. www.gregoryalexander.com/
subdirectory: www.gregoryalexander.com/admin/
As discussed, we have an Application.cfc and the Proxy.cfc in the root directory, and we have the Application.cfc in the 'admin' subdirectory.
The Proxy.cfc extends the Application.cfc, also in the root directory, and the Application.cfc in the subdirectory (admin) extends the Proxy.cfc in the root directory.
root directory: contains both Application.cfc and Proxy.cfc (that extends the root Application.cfc).
subdirectory: Application.cfc (that extends Proxy.cfc).
Now we need to also add the following mapping in the root Application.cfc. This mapping logic should be near the top of the root Application.cfc, and it should not be within any of the Application.cfc event handlers (onApplicationStart, onApplicationRequest, etc). This mapping code does not need to be anywhere else other than the root Application.cfc:
<cfset this.mappings = structNew() />
<cfset this.mappings["rootCfc"] = getDirectoryFromPath(getCurrentTemplatePath()) />
<cfset this.mappings["adminCfc"] = getDirectoryFromPath( getCurrentTemplatePath() & "/admin" ) />
I used rootCfc to identify the Application.cfc in the root directory, whereas adminCfc applies to the Application in the admin directory. These variables can be named anything. Note that the "/admin" string at the end of the adminCfc mapping points to the 'admin' folder, which is a subdirectory.
Now that we have the mappings in the root Application.cfc, we need to apply them to the extends statement in Application.cfc located in the subdirectory. In the /admin/Application.cfc template use:
/admin/Application.cfc
<cfcomponent displayname="xxx" sessionmanagement="xx" clientmanagement="xx" extends="rootCfc.Proxy">
Of course, rootCfc tells the Application.cfc in the subdirectory to look for the Proxy.cfc template in the root directory. Like other 'extend' statements, you don't need to specify '.cfc' at the end of Proxy.
You don't need to use this 'extend' mapping in either the root Proxy.cfc or Application.cfc templates. They can already find each other as they are both in the same root directory.
/Proxy.cfc
<cfcomponent extends="Application">
</cfcomponent>
Summary
For the sake of absolute clarity:
root Application.cfc
Contains the mapping logic. Has the mappings for both of the root and subdirectory.
Does not use an 'extend' statement
<cfset this.mappings = structNew() />
<cfset this.mappings["rootCfc"] = getDirectoryFromPath(getCurrentTemplatePath()) />
<cfset this.mappings["adminCfc"] = getDirectoryFromPath( getCurrentTemplatePath() & "/admin" ) />
root Proxy.cfm
A simple 'extends="Administrator" works.
No mapping logic.
<cfcomponent extends="Application">
</cfcomponent>
subdirectory Application.cfc
The extends statement must be the mapping variable name of the folder (rootCfc), a dot (.), and finally the name of the Proxy.cfc template without the .cfc prefix (Proxy)
<cfcomponent displayname="Admin" sessionmanagement="yes" clientmanagement="yes" extends="rootCfc.Proxy">
My apologies for being so verbose. I annoyed myself while writing this- but not as annoyed when I was while trying to solve this problem!
Take care!
Make sure if your components extend other components the full path is used.
ie a Products controller
<cfcomponent displayname="Products" hint="Handles all product requests" extends="core.controller.controller" output="false">
I am not a ColdFusion coder. Doing a favor for a friend who ported his CF site from a Windows server to Unix on GoDaddy.
Site is displaying error:
Cannot find CFML template for custom tag jstk. ColdFusion
attempted looking in the tree of installed custom tags but did not
find a custom tag with this name.
The site as I found it has at document root /CustomTags with the jstk.cfm file and a set of files in cf_jstk
My Googling located this:
You must store custom tag pages in any one of the following:
The same directory as the calling page;
The cfusion\CustomTags directory;
A subdirectory of the cfusion\CustomTags directory;
A directory that you specify in the ColdFusion Administrator
So I have:
Tried creating placing /CustomTags in /cfusion/CustomTags
Tried copying /cfusion/CustomTags to above document root
Tried copying jstk.cfm and subfolders into same directory as calling file(index.cfm)
Update: Per GoDaddy support I have also tried adding the following to no effect: <cfmodule template="CustomTags/jstk.cfm">
Can any one give me some tips on this or should I just tell my guy to look for a CF coder?
Thanks!
I don't know how GoDaddy is setup, so as a quick test, please do the following:
Create file test.cfm in the webroot with contents:
<cf_testtag/>
<cfoutput>test</cfoutput><cfabort/>
Create file testtag.cfm in the webroot with contents:
<cfdump var=#ThisTag# />
Then in a browser visit the test.cfm page.
You should get two debug dumps, followed by the 'test'; this will confirm that custom tags in general are working.
If that works move the testtag.cfm to the CustomTags directory, and see if you get the same behaviour or an error.
If this produces an error, for CF8 and above, you can add <cfset This.CustomTagPaths = "/CustomTags" /> inside the Application.cfc file (assuming there is a App cfc and not an Application.cfm) to ensure that directory is checked for tags.
It is possible to convert Application.cfm to Application.cfc - how easy this is depends on how complex the code is in there - might be something you could figure out, or might need an experienced CF dev, it depends.
Depending on the outcome of this, we can attempt to debug why the jstk tag isn't working (unless one of the above solves it).
In an effort to check the simple things before worrying about complex things:
Remember that filenames on *nix systems are case sensitive, but on windows are not.
For example, a windows server will pick up "application.cfm" but a linux server won't. It requires "Application.cfm".
Check to make sure all filenames/paths are the correct case.
Normally, CFML check every custom tags in current directory first, if not found, second is in CFMX8/customtags/.
I have the following two files and would like the second to extend the first:
wwwroot\site\application.cfc
wwwroot\site\dir\application.cfc
However, when I go to declare the component for the second file, I'm not sure what to put in the extends attribute. My problem is that several dev sites (with a shared SVN repository) are running off the same instance of ColdFusion, so I can't just create a mapping in the CF admin like so:
<cfcomponent extends="site.application">
However, ColdFusion doesn't like:
<cfcomponent extends="..application">
or any dynamic input like:
<cfcomponent extends="#expandpath('..').#application">
Creating a runtime mapping (like here) doesn't seem possible either. Creating it in the base application.cfc is useless because that code hasn't yet executed by the time the inheriting cfc is being declared; and I can't create the mapping before the inheriting component is defined because there isn't yet an application to attach it to.
Is there any way I can reference the parent directory to accomplish my extends?
Edit to clarify: The ApplicationProxy solution doesn't work because of the bolded text above. Right now, as a workaround, we're simply not checking the \dir\application.cfc into SVN so that each developer can keep a version that extends his/her own root application.cfc. Obviously, this is not ideal.
Sean Corfield has a blog entry explaining how to extend a root Application.cfc.
Below is the relevant information copied from that entry.
Here's your root CFC /Application.cfc:
<cfcomponent>
<cfset this.name = "cf7app" />
<cfset this.sessionmanagement = true />
</cfcomponent>
Here's your proxy CFC /ApplicationProxy.cfc:
<cfcomponent extends="Application">
</cfcomponent>
It's completely empty and serves merely to create an alias for your root /Application.cfc. Here's your subdirectory CFC /app/Application.cfc:
<cfcomponent extends="ApplicationProxy">
<cffunction name="onSessionStart">
<cfoutput><p>app.Application.onSessionStart()</p></cfoutput>
<cfset session.counter = 0 />
</cffunction>
<cffunction name="onRequestStart">
<cfoutput><p>app.Application.onRequestStart()</p></cfoutput>
<cfdump label="application" var="#application#"/>
</cffunction>
</cfcomponent>
The root of each individual site should have its own Master App:
/site1/Application.cfc
/site2/Application.cfc
/site3/Application.cfc
All these applications are separate individual apps with nothing shared between them.
If any of these individual sites need to have sub-applications, then there should be ApplicationProxy.cfc alonside the Master,
e.g.
/site1/ApplicationProxy.cfc
/site2/ApplicationProxy.cfc
Then, for each sub-application you have the one that extends the proxy:
e.g.
/site1/subA/Application.cfc
/site1/subB/Application.cfc
/site2/subA/Application.cfc
The following code is working for me. One thing I noticed though is that the application.cfc seems to get cached, so changes to the parent application cfc might not be reflected. I got around this by doing a trivial change to the child application cfc.
<cfcomponent output="false">
<cfset variables.higherPath = ReReplace(GetMetaData(this).name,"\.[^\.]+\.[^\.]+$","") />
<cfset variables.extendApp = CreateObject("component", "#variables.higherPath#.Application") />
<cfloop item="variables.key" collection="#variables.extendApp#">
<cfif IsCustomFunction(variables.extendApp[variables.key])>
<cfset super[variables.key] = variables.extendApp[variables.key]>
<cfelse>
<cfset this[variables.key] = variables.extendApp[variables.key] >
</cfif>
</cfloop>
<cffunction name="onApplicationStart" output="false">
<cfset super.onApplicationStart() />
</cffunction>
I know this is an old topic, but I found a way to do it (that seems to work in my testing) without using the CF Administrator mappings.
You can do this by adding a per-application mapping in your child Application.cfc using an expanded relative path:
<cfcomponent extends="cms.Application" output="false">
<cfset this.mappings["/cms"] = expandPath(getDirectoryFromPath(getCurrentTemplatePath()) & "../../../../")>
<cflog text="#getMetadata(this).extends.path#">
</cfcomponent>
Yeah, it feels little hacky, but it seems to work.
Edward, et-al, I referred to your comment in the post below. See https://gregoryalexander.com/blog/2021/1/30/Extending-Applicationcfcs-using-mappings-and-proxies
You absolutely can extend a cfc with mappings. I had to do it myself.
One of the most frustrating things that I have had to deal with in ColdFusion is trying to create an external application that is open to the general public and having to secure a portion of that site with an application within a subfolder and extending the logic from base application.cfc. I'll walk you through the current approach that developers use to solve this as well as showing you how to additionally use mapping when there may be a hosting provider that uses virtual directories.
This is a rather long article, if you want to jump to the condensed summary, scroll down to the bottom of this page.
Many years ago, the first time that I tried to perform this, I received the following message no matter what I tried: "Could not find the ColdFusion component or interface xxx'. In a nutshell, the problem using this approach is that both the root and the subfolders have the same name, i.e. Application.cfc, and ColdFusion can't properly identify what component to extend. Finally, after some serious investigation, someone came up with the idea to create a proxy.cfc that resides in the same root directory as the root Application.cfc, and the Application.cfc in the subfolder extends an empty proxy.cfc that extends the root cfc like so:
root directory: Application.cfc
This root Application.cfc does not extend anything
Also in the root directory: Proxy.cfc
Proxy.cfc has the following code, it's essentially empty. The only thing that the Proxy.cfc does is to extend the Application.cfc that is in the same directory:
Subdirectory such as a folder named admin.
This subdirectory has another Application.cfc. Let's say that this component is responsible for securing the application and has login logic as well as debugging settings for example. This Application.cfc will extend the Proxy.cfc to gain the methods and properties of the Application.cfc in the root directory like so:
This approach was a godsend and it was heavily blogged about. Ben Nadel has made a number of very helpful posts which I will share at the bottom of this article.
This works quite well unless you're on a hosted domain or a server that uses virtual directories. In this case, we are in the same original boat in which we started from. Now we are back into the "Could not find the ColdFusion component or interface xxx' hell!
There is a solution for this tricky problem though, we need to also use mapping!
It is a common misnomer that you can't use mapping to extend components. I am not quite sure where this misconception originally came about, but it has been proven that this is just not true. There are occasions where we must use mapping to solve some annoying problems, like here.
This particular site is hosted by hostek.com. They are a fine company to deal with, but the server that my site is hosted on has some idiosyncrasies due to the directory structure. Here, when I use the Proxy.cfc method to extend the logic from the base Application.cfc to the Application.cfc in the admin folder I receive the dreaded 'could not find the ... component' error. When I first saw it I was dismayed thinking not this again, so I turned to ColdFusion CFC mapping. Mapping tells ColdFusion where to find the file and what the file relationships are.
Let's review CFC structure that was just discussed. For example, imagine the following directory structure:
root directory: i.e. www.gregoryalexander.com/
subdirectory: www.gregoryalexander.com/admin/
As discussed, we have an Application.cfc and the Proxy.cfc in the root directory, and we have the Application.cfc in the 'admin' subdirectory. The Proxy.cfc extends the Application.cfc, also in the root directory, and the Application.cfc in the subdirectory (admin) extends the Proxy.cfc in the root directory.
root directory: contains both Application.cfc and Proxy.cfc (that extends the root Application.cfc).
subdirectory: Application.cfc (that extends Proxy.cfc).
Now we need to also add the following mapping in the root Application.cfc. This mapping logic should be near the top of the root Application.cfc, and it should not be within any of the Application.cfc event handlers (onApplicationStart, onApplicationRequest, etc). This mapping code does not need to be anywhere else other than the root Application.cfc:
I used rootCfc to identify the Application.cfc in the root directory, whereas adminCfc applies to the Application in the admin directory. These variables can be named anything. Note that the "/admin" string at the end of the adminCfc mapping points to the 'admin' folder, which is a subdirectory.
Now that we have the mappings in the root Application.cfc, we need to apply them to the extends statement in Application.cfc located in the subdirectory. In the /admin/Application.cfc template use:
/admin/Application.cfc
Of course, rootCfc tells the Application.cfc in the subdirectory to look for the Proxy.cfc template in the root directory. Like other 'extend' statements, you don't need to specify '.cfc' at the end of Proxy.
You don't need to use this 'extend' mapping in either the root Proxy.cfc or Application.cfc templates. They can already find each other as they are both in the same root directory.
/Proxy.cfc
Summary
For the sake of absolute clarity:
root Application.cfc
Contains the mapping logic. Has the mappings for both of the root and subdirectory.
Does not use an 'extend' statement
root Proxy.cfm
A simple 'extends="Administrator" works.
No mapping logic.
subdirectory Application.cfc
The extends statement must be the mapping variable name of the folder (rootCfc), a dot (.), and finally the name of the Proxy.cfc template without the .cfc prefix (Proxy)
My apologies for being so verbose. I annoyed myself while writing this- but not as annoyed when I was while trying to solve this problem!
Take care!
I want to extend a CFC in a different directory and I have a couple of options, but can't figure out how to do this:
A) Use a dynamic mapping (this will have to be dynamic based on the site, e.g. for the live site it would be cfc.myPackage.MyCFC but on a dev site it would be myCfcRoot.myPackage.MyCFC) - I've tried putting expressions into the extends bit but obviously CF doesn't like that, e.g. :
<cfcomponent name="MyComponent" extends="#config.cfcRoot#.BaseComponent">
or
<cfcomponent name="MyComponent" extends="#GetRealPath(../BaseComponent.cfc)#">
B) Provide a relative path (somehow) to the CFC to extend.
I fear that I can't do this, but I'm hoping that there is something I've missed.
Daniel is basically correct, you need a mapping. However, there are 3 workarounds.
CFCs will pick the current path as a relative root mapping, so if your CFCs are all in the same directory, you can just say
<cfcomponent name="MyComponent" extends="Example">
Or if your components are in subdirectories from the current cfc, you can access it:
<cfcomponent name="MyComponent" extends="subdirectory.Example">
Second, if you are running on ColdFusion 8, you can define a mapping in your application.cfc using the mappings struct like this:
<cfset this.mappings["/MyApp"] = expandPath(".") />
There are two good references for Application.cfc, first, Ray Camden's example Application.cfc which just gives a nice view of what goes where, then the CF8 Live Docs application settings page, which has a section on mappings along with some good comments.
Finally, you can use the built-in mapping of your web root, so if your application is in a subdirectory named "MyApp" off the web root, your root mapping will be "MyApp". Let's say you correctly put your components in:
wwwroot\MyApp\com\MyApp\example.cfc
The mapping to this cfc in this case will be:
MyApp.com.MyApp.Example
And using your example, you can extend like this:
<cfcomponent name="MyComponent" extends="MyApp.com.MyApp.Example">
Anything else, such as if your components are outside of the web root, or if you are not sure what the folder structure of your finished application will be, and you will need to set a mapping in the CF Administrator.
Now this is only tested in cf8 so other engine could differ.
if you want to use relative paths to extend applications you can but your have to start them with a "/.". For instance you can do this to extend an application.cfc from your web root into directory below you webroot:
<cfcomponent output="false" extends="/.application">
<!--- whatever code you have --->
</cfcomponent>
now let's say I have the following paths in my application:
[webroot]/1/1a
[webroot]/2
let's say that the application.cfc in [webroot]/1/1a extends the application.cfc in [webroot]. now I want to place an application.cfc in [webroot]/2 and extend the application.cfc in [webroot]/1/1a. all i would have to do in my [webroot]/2/application.cfc is the following:
<cfcomponent output="false" extends="/./1/1a/application">
<!--- whatever code you have --->
</cfcomponent>
hope this makes sense.
Unless the CFC is in the same directory as the calling script the CFC must be located and referenced from a path relative to a "Mapping".
I have found that sometimes you need to make sure that "/" is mapped to your document root of your webserver and that becomes the base for all relative paths. Or you can setup a mapping for a CFC directory that hold all of your common CFCs.
This screen is found in the ColdFusion Admin under "Server Settings" -> "Mappings".
In regards to Method B. It can be done using an additional file in your example. It's one extra file per cfc that you want to extend per directory that you want to extend from.
The 3 files that are required.
/somepathtobasecomponent/basecomponent.cfc (your base component file)
/pathtoworkingcfc/function.cfc (the file with the extends attribute)
/pathtoworkingcfc/basecomponent_extend.cfc (the new file that will do the extending)
/somepathtobasecomponent/basecomponent.cfc
Nothing to change here. This stays the same.
/pathtoworkingcfc/function.cfc
in the cffunction tag set the extends to extends="basecomponent_extend"
/pathtoworkingcfc/basecomponent_extend.cfc
Sole content of the file is a cfinclude
<cfinclude template="/somepathtobasecomponent/basecomponent.cfc">