ColdFusion Tips and Tutorials

I. Comments:

Hope you have a Happy New Year.

Keep Coding,
Nathan Stanford
President/CEO
C.F. Concepts, Inc.
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Make a Home Page
Make a trivial login page that displays a message if the login was bad and accepts a username and password; call it home.cfm. The message, if any, will come from the page used to check the login attempt.

<cfif isDefined("form.msg")>
<cfoutput>#form.msg#</cfoutput><p>
</cfif>
(The username and password must each start with "f" for this example.)<br>
<form name="Entry" action="gate.cfm" method="post">
Username <input type="text" name="Username">
Password <input type="Password" name="Password">
<input type="submit" name="doit" value="Log in">
</form>

Make the Gate with AutoPost
Make a page that will check the login attempt and route the user accordingly; call it gate.cfm. Set variables to the full URL of the pages you might want to go to. Create an almost trivial form for javascript to work with. Then write javascript appropriate to the context: login OK or not OK. Have the javascript submit the form after filling in form variables as desired.

<cfset request.homepage="http://www.futureec.com/context/autopost/login.cfm">
<cfset request.workpage="http://www.futureec.com/context/autopost/work.cfm">

<form name="myFlag" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="msg">
</form>
<cfset Problem=""> <!--- start with none --->

<script language="javascript">
<cfif not isDefined("form.Username") or (len(form.Username) lt 1)>
<cfset Problem="Missing Username">
<cfelseif not isDefined("form.Password") or (len(form.Password) lt 1)>
<cfset Problem="Missing Password">
<cfelseif (ucase(left(form.Username,1)) is not "F") or (ucase(left(form.Password,1)) is not "F")>
<cfset Problem="Login is not correct">
<cfelse>
document.myFlag.action=<cfoutput>"#request.workpage#"</cfoutput>;
document.myFlag.submit();
</script>
</cfif>
document.myFlag.msg.value=<cfoutput>"#Problem#"</cfoutput>;
document.myFlag.action=<cfoutput>"#request.homepage#"</cfoutput>;
document.myFlag.submit();
</script>

Make a Work Page
It doesn't matter what this page contains as long as it's not empty. Call it work.cfm.

This represents the first work page inside your application.

Try it Out; Use the Concept
Go to login.cfm. Try logging in wrong to see what happens. Try logging in right.
Once you're sure this works, include the idea in your sites. Replace the trivial login test with database queries. Set cookies for site navigation and protection. Let the login page pass variables such as page loading time or the refering page to the gate for logging. Let the gate pass such information through to the heart of your site as form variables. The sky's the limit.
=Marty=