Programming ColdFusion MX, 2nd Edition

Writing Output

You can’t directly output text or variable values to the browser within a cfscript block. There is, however a function called WriteOutput( ) that you can use to write directly to the page output stream. This technique can output both variable values and plain text from within a cfscript block. Example 19-1 demonstrates the WriteOutput( ) function.

Example 19-1. Using the WriteOutput( ) function within a cfscript block

<h2>Using WriteOutput Within cfscript</h2>
   
<cfscript>
 x = 1;
 y = 2;
 MyMessage = "Hello World";
 
 WriteOutput("x = #x# <br>");
 WriteOutput("MyMessage = #MyMessage# <br>");
 WriteOutput(x+y); 
</cfscript>

In this case, because there is no way to embed HTML directly within the cfscript block, all formatting is done by embedding the HTML code within the WriteOutput( ) function. Executing Example 19-1 results in the output shown in Figure 19-1.

Figure 19-1. Using WriteOutput( ) within a CFScript block to write to the page output stream

It is also possible to output the value of variables set within a cfscript block outside of the cfscript tags. This is accomplished by using a cfoutput block outside the cfscript block to handle the actual output, as shown in Example 19-2.

Example 19-2. Outputting CFScript variables outside the cfscript block

<h2>Using cfoutput To Output Variables Created Within cfscript</h2> <cfscript> x = 1; y = 2; MyMessage = "Hello World"; </cfscript> ...