What this book covers

Chapter 1, Web Pages—Static to Dynamic is a fast track introduction to what makes CF better than HTML and how to program with CFML.

Chapter 2, Basic CFCs and Database Interaction which makes our code easier to support is done by packaging logic into reusable containers. This chapter will introduce you to CFML-based object coding.

Chapter 3, Power CFCs and Web Forms is a chapter that shows the power you can achieve by packaging things into CFCs. Their features are faster coding, easier support, and simpler to read code with a minor up-front investment.

Chapter 4, ORM Database Interaction talks about the Object Relation Management (ORM) standard in CF9. This is a built in object technology that works with your database without creating SQL specific to each database platform.

Chapter 5, Application, Session, and Request Scope is a chapter that teaches us how controlled sharing will speed up your application and make them easier to build and understand.

Chapter 6, Authentication and Permissions shows us how to manage who can and who cannot do things.

Chapter 7, CFScript in CF9 is the first fully-featured script for CFML. This chapter will help us get familiarized with script and shows how to enjoy its new completeness.

Chapter 8, CF AJAX User Interface covers the tag-based language in CFML that lets us interact with AJAX in ways we can only appreciate. This chapter covers the UI element features in ColdFusion.

Chapter 9, CF AJAX Forms covers how ColdFusion lets us build richer forms with the power of built-in tags.

Chapter 10, CF AJAX Programming will teach us how to work in the browser when we want to use JavaScript to interact with the code. This chapter covers the common interface and how to use it.

Chapter 11, Introduction to Custom Tags shows us how to take advantage of tag-based packaging and how to do it when we desire.

Chapter 12, ColdFusion Powered Views will introduce us to a view tag library that makes forms and view code easier and much simpler to support.

Chapter 13, Control Logic Processing shows us how to interact with the events and view elements from a request controller. This chapter helps us understand a methodology of coding that makes for a logical flow of code where things fit in smartly.

Chapter 14, Guide to Unit Testing covers a growing and very beneficial concept of software development and sustainability—unit testing.

Appendix A, Beyond this Book is based on some additional thoughts from the author. This is a tutorial book and it made sense for me to put in a chapter that shares thoughts about moving beyond the reach of a single book introduction to web development.

Appendix B, Tools and Resources lists some of the tools we use at my company and thoughts on each of them. The number of tools and resources has grown in volume to the point where half of this book would cover this topic alone.