cfdump

Description

Use the cfdump tag to get the elements, variables, and values of most kinds of ColdFusion objects. Useful for debugging. You can display the contents of simple and complex variables, objects, components, user-defined functions, and other elements. The cfdump now shows component properties defined by cfproperty when you dump a CFC. A new key called PROPERTIES has been added in the component dump, which is expanded, by default. The text format of cfdump also provides this information.

Syntax

<cfdump  
    var = "#variable#" 
    output = "browser|console|file" 
    format = "text|html" 
    abort = "true|false"> 
    label = "text" 
    metainfo = yes|no" 
    top = "number of rows|number of levels" 
    show = "columns|keys" 
    hide = "columns|keys" 
    keys = "number of keys to display for structures" 
    expand = "yes|no"  
    showUDFs = "yes|no">

Note: You can specify this tag’s attributes in an attributeCollection attribute whose value is a structure. Specify the structure name in the attributeCollection attribute and use the tag’s attribute names as structure keys.

Attributes

Attribute	Description	Required	Default
abort	If this attribute is set to "true", it stops processing the current page at the tag location.	Optional	false
expand	yes: in Internet Explorer and Mozilla, expands views. no: contracts expanded views.	Optional	yes
format	Use with the output attribute to specify whether to save the results of a cfdump to a file in text or HTML format.	Optional	text
hide	For a query, this is a column name or a comma-delimited list of column names. For a structure, this is a key or a comma-delimited list of keys. If you specify a structure element that doesn’t exist, ColdFusion ignores it and does not generate an error.	Optional	all
keys	For a structure, the number of keys to display.	Optional	9999
label	A string; header for the dump output. Ignored if the value of the var attribute is a simple types.	Optional
metainfo	For use with queries and persistence CFCs. Includes information about the query in the cfdump results, including whether the query was cached, the execution time, and the SQL. Specify metainfo="no" to exclude this information from the query result. For persistence CFCs, if metainfo="yes", returns property attributes such as getters and setters.	Optional	yes for query no for persistence CFCs
output	Where to send the results of cfdump. The following values are valid: browser console filename The filename must include the full pathname of the file. You can specify an absolute path, or a path that is relative to the ColdFusion temporary directory. You can use the GetTempDirectory() function to determine the ColdFusion temporary directory.	Optional	browser
show	For a query, this is a column name or a comma-delimited list of column names. For a structure, this is a key or a comma-delimited list of keys.	Optional	all
showUDFs	yes: includes UDFs, with the methods collapsed. no: excludes UDFs.	Optional	yes
top	The number of rows to display. For a structure, this is the number of nested levels to display.	Optional	9999
var	Variable to display. Enclose a variable name in number signs. These kinds of variables yield meaningful cfdump output: array CFC COM object file object Java object simple query structure UDF wddx xml	Required

Usage

The expand/contract display capability is useful when working with large structures, such as XML document objects, structures, and arrays.
To display a construct, use code such as the following, in which myDoc is a variable of type XmlDocument:
<cfif IsXmlDoc(mydoc) is "yes"> <cfdump var="#mydoc#"> </cfif> The tag output is color-coded according to data type.
If a table cell is empty, this tag displays “[empty string]”.

Example

<!--- This example shows how to use this tag to display the CGI scope as a structure: ---> 
 
<cfdump var="#cgi#"><!--- This displays information about file objects. ---> 
<cfscript>  
myfile = FileOpen("c:\temp\test1.txt", "read"); 
</cfscript> 
myfile refers to: 
<cfdump var="#myfile.filepath#">

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