Variable Scopes in CFCs
Since CFCs are modular software components that are accessed by other components within an application, it is very important to consider the scope within which data are placed when developing CFCs. The main scopes used (or not used in the case of a particular scope!) within a CFC are the "this" scope, the variables scope, and "var-scoped" variables.
the "this" scope
The this scope is a global scope within the CFC. Any this scoped variables are accessible directly both inside and outside the CFC. For example, if the firstName attribute in the Person CFC was placed in the this scope, it could be accessed directly by using dot notation.
Let's create an instance of a Person CFC called bob. The firstName attribute can be accessed as follows: <cfset bobsFirstName = bob.firstName />. In addition, the firstName value can be set as follows: <cfset bob.firstName = "Bill" />
Although the above code may be convenient, it provides no data protection whatsoever. If the getter and setter functions are eliminated, there is nothing to stop someone from doing this: <cfset bob.firstName = "Bill" />. This cfset statement would execute without throwing an error. Without using a setter function to protect the data, Bob's birth date could easily be set to a string value. This type of code makes debugging difficult because the error will be unknown until the value "Bill" is accessed and used as a date.
The this scope is common in all OO languages. The this scope in CFML, however, functions quite differently than it does in other OO languages, such as Java. It is important to remember that the this scope in a CFC is completely public. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that the "this" scope never be used. Many large-scale object-oriented CFML applications have been built since the addition of CFCs to CFML without ever using the this scope.
the "variables" scope
Unlike the this scope, the variables scope is private to the CFC. For example, <cfset bob.firstName = "Bill" /> cannot be called to set the firstName attribute on the bob instance of the Person CFC. Instead, the getter and setter methods that are made available need to be used. The variables scope not only provides a simple API for the outside world to access the Person CFC's data, but it also encapsulates functionality that the Person CFC does not want or need to expose.
Consider the birthdate attribute again. If a developer used a setBirthdate() method that explicitly specifies the expectation to receive a date value as an argument, calling <cfset bob.setBirthdate("Bill") /> would throw an error. This kind of error is helpful because it tells developers that functions are not getting what they expected, which makes debugging much easier.
Note that variables-scoped variables are available throughout the CFC. Any function within the CFC can access variables in the variables scope, but variables-scoped data are not accessible directly to any code outside the CFC itself.
the "var" scope
Var-scoped variables are declared within cffunction tags, in Open BlueDragon you may use the var keyword anywhere within your functions. Unlike variables in the variables scope, var-scoped variables are local to the cffunction within which they are declared.
To highlight the importance of the var keyword, consider the following example. Assume there is a CFC containing two functions, both of which contain a cfloop with an index variable of i. Keeping the variable i local to the function is crucial; otherwise, the value of i would be available to the two functions simultaneously, which would likely cause unexpected behavior.
Use of the var keyword is also critical to making CFCs thread-safe. Variables that are not var scoped and do not have another scope declared are put into the variables scope, which means they are global to the CFC. As shown by the loop counter example above, this can cause unexpected behavior that is very difficult to debug. Moreover, errors or unexpected behavior may begin to appear only when the application is under heavy load.
It is extremely important for ALL variables in CFCs that are local to functions to be var scoped. This may seem a simple thing to do at first, but keep in mind that this rule applies to all variables that are explicitly created, PLUS variables that are created as a result of calls to functions or the execution of CFML tags.
Some of these cases are obvious, but others are not. The loop counter example is a not-so-obvious case because developers usually do not think about the loop index variable until the cfloop tag is used. Other tags that produce results that must be var scoped include cfquery, cfhttp, calls to custom tags, and UDFs that return variables. Be sure to remember that any variables that are explicitly created, or any variables that are generated by calls to CFML tags, custom tags, or UDFs, must be var scoped.
The following is an example of a cffunction that contains a cfquery and a cfloop and returns a simple string:
<cffunction name="varScopeFunc" access="public" output="false" returntype="string" hint="I am a var scope example"> <!--- cfargument tags come first ---> <cfargument name="foo" type="string" required="false" default="" /> <!--- var scoped variables for the entire function must be declared immediately following the cfargument tags!!! ---> <cfset var i = 0 /> <cfset var myQuery = 0 /> <cfset var returnString = "" /> <!--- now with the var scoped variables declared, we can safely do our work ---> <cfquery name="myQuery" datasource="#myDSN#"> SELECT firstName, lastName FROM person WHERE id = <cfqueryparam value="1" cfsqltype="cf_sql_integer" /> </cfquery> <cfloop index="i" from="1" to="10" step="1"> <cfset returnString = returnString & "Loop iteration #i#<br />" /> </cfloop> <cfreturn returnString /> </cffunction>
Note that the loop counter i, the myQuery variable, and the returnString variable have to be var scoped and be set to a default value before completing the rest of the function. It may seem odd to set the default value of the query to 0, but since the initial value of the variable does not matter, this is a simple way to set default values for complex objects like queries. While this isn't the case in Open BlueDragon, in versions of ColdFusion prior to ColdFusion 9, var-scoped variables cannot be declared anywhere in the cffunction other than immediately following the cfargument tags (trying to do so will throw a compiler error), so developers may need to do some planning before adding new variables to functions.
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