Platinum Edition Using HTML 4, XML, and Java 1.2
(Publisher: Macmillan Computer Publishing)
Author(s): Eric Ladd
ISBN: 078971759x
Publication Date: 11/01/98

One nice feature about ColdFusion debugging information is that you can restrict the delivery of the information to a specific set of IP addresses but not to every user. Thus, if you and/or your development team all have fixed IP addresses, you can insert these addresses into the IP Address listing you see in Figure 34.7. That way, your developers will see debugging messages, but regular application users will not.

	If your IP addresses are dynamically assigned, you may want to do your ColdFusion development and testing on a separate server and then port the finished application to a production server when you are done. You can then turn on debugging for the development server without restricting the output to specific IP addresses, and your developers will still be able to get debugging feedback.

Using ColdFusion with a Mail Server

You can send electronic mail messages from your ColdFusion applications after you have ColdFusion configured to work with your mail server. Figure 34.9 shows the Mail portion of the ColdFusion Administrator. Here you can tell the ColdFusion Application Server the name or IP address of your mail server, which server port it should use (typically port 25), and a connect timeout value. You can also verify the connection to your mail server by clicking the Send button under the Verify Mail Server Settings heading on the page.

FIGURE 34.9  Telling ColdFusion some things about your mail server is an important prerequisite for sending electronic mail through ColdFusion applications.

Setting Up Logging

Like many applications, ColdFusion will log any errors in encounters while processing your templates. Under the Logging section of the ColdFusion Administrator, you can tell ColdFusion the directory where you want the ColdFusion logs stored and provide an email address for the server administrator so that users can mail any error occurrences to the administrator (see Figure 34.10).

FIGURE 34.10  ColdFusion Application Server errors are logged in files stored in a directory of your choosing.

You can also log any mail-related errors ColdFusion encounters when composing and sending email messages. You can log mail server messages by their severity (Information, Warning, or Error) and you can choose to log the content of every email that ColdFusion sends.

	If you opt to log all email messages, make sure you archive the contents of the file periodically so it does not become so large as to become unmanageable.

Restricting File-Related Tags and Using Custom Tags

Some CFML tags can manipulate files, and an ill-intentioned user could exploit these tags to upload content to, modify content on, or delete content from your server. To prevent this from happening, you can choose to enable or disable these tags from the Tags section of the ColdFusion Administrator. As you can see in Figure 34.11, you can activate the <CFDIRECTORY>, <CFFILE>, <CFCONTENT>, and <CFOBJECT> tags by checking the box next to each one.

FIGURE 34.11  If you’re administering a ColdFusion server and are concerned about file security, you will probably want to disable the file-related CFML tags.

Another of ColdFusion’s many great features is that you can develop your own tags when existing CFML tags won’t do the job. Custom ColdFusion tags can be developed in CFML or in more complicated programming languages such as C++. After you have developed a custom tag, you need to register it with the ColdFusion Administrator. To do this, you enter the tag’s name in the text field you see under the Registered CFX Tags heading in Figure 34.11 and then click the Add button. You then need to specify a few additional pieces of information, such as the supporting DLL file, procedure, whether to keep the DLL loaded in memory, and a description of the tag.

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NOTE:  All custom tags that you write in C++ must begin with CFX_. Custom tags written in CFML begin with CF_ and can reside in the same directory as your other application templates.

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Setting Up Mappings

Sometimes it’s much easier to set up a logical path or alias to a long directory path than type out that path again and again. You can do this through the ColdFusion Administrator’s Mappings page (see Figure 34.12). To set up a directory mapping, enter the logical path in the first text field, then enter the actual directory path into the second text field and click the Add Mapping button.

	It’s easier to use the built-in Java applet to browse the server when specifying the directory path. It also reduces the chance of your making a mistake while typing in the path.

FIGURE 34.12  You can shorten long, tedious directory paths by setting up aliases in the ColdFusion Administrator.

Scheduling ColdFusion Templates

The ColdFusion Scheduler will submit templates for processing at intervals you specify. This might be useful, for example, when developing a survey application. As part of the application, you could write a daily summary template that looks at the survey entries for a 24-hour period and emails a summary of the day’s results to the survey administrator.

To schedule a template, you first need to go to the Scheduler page of the ColdFusion Administrator. There you type in the name of the task you want to schedule and click the Add New Task button. When you do, you’ll see a screen similar to the one shown in Figure 34.13.

When scheduling the task, you will have to provide information such as

•  Start and end dates for the task (ColdFusion will assume no end date if none is specified).

•  The frequency of the task (once, daily, every 45 minutes, and so on).

•  The URL of the template and any login and proxy information needed to invoke the template.

•  Where to write the output from the template, should you choose to record it.