output variable stored in database - coldfusion

Question

I'm storing the page content in a database table. The page content also includes some CF variables (for example "...this vendor provides services to #VARIABLES.vendorLocale#").
VARIABLES.vendorLocal is set on the page based on a URL string.
Next a CFC is accessed to get the corresponding page text from the database.
And this is then output on the page: #qryPageContent.c_content#
But #VARIABLES.vendorLocale# is showing up as is, not as the actual variable. Is there anyway to get a "variable within a variable" to be output correctly?
This is on a CF9 server.

Answer 1

If you have a string i.e.
variables.vendorLocal = 'foo';
variables.saveMe = 'This is a string for supplier "#variables.vendorLocal#'"' ;
WriteOutput(variables.saveMe); // This is a string for locale "foo"
then coldfusion will attempt to parse that to insert whatever variable variables.vendorLocale is. To get around this, you can use a placeholder string that is not likely to be used elsewhere. Commonly you'll see [[NAME]] used for this purpose, so in this example
variables.saveMe = 'This is a string for supplier "[[VENDORLOCALE]]'"' ;
WriteOutput(variables.saveMe); // This is a string for supplier "[[VENDORLOCALE]]"
Now you've got that you can then later on replace it for your value
variables.vendorLocal = 'bar';
variables.loadedString = Replace(variables.saveMe,'[[VENDORLOCALE]]',variables.vendorLocal);
WriteOutput(variables.loadedString); // This is a string for locale "bar"
I hope this is of help

Answer 2

There are lots of reasons storing code itself in the database is a bad idea, but that's not your question, so I won't go into that. One way to accomplish what you want is to take the code you have stored as as string, write a temporary file, include that file in the page, then delete that temporary file. For instance, here's a little UDF that implements that concept:
<cfscript>
function dynamicInclude(cfmlcode){
var pathToInclude = createUUID() & ".cfm";
var pathToWrite = expandPath(pathToInclude);
fileWrite(pathToWrite,arguments.cfmlcode);
include pathToInclude;
fileDelete(pathToWrite);
}
language = "CFML";
somecfml = "This has some <b>#language#</b> in it";
writeOutput(dynamicInclude(somecfml));
</cfscript>