Adobe Dreamweaver CC 2015 - Manual (Page 615)

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Dynamic sites, pages and web forms
Last updated 6/3/2015
Building ColdFusion forms
Note: Support for ColdFusion is removed in Dreamweaver CC and later.
About ColdFusion forms
ColdFusion forms provide you with several built-in mechanisms to validate form data. For example, you can check
to make sure a user has entered a valid date. Some form controls have additional features. Several do not have
HTML counterparts, and others directly support dynamically populating the control from data sources.
Dreamweaver provides a number of enhancements for ColdFusion developers who use ColdFusion MX 7 or later as
their development server. These enhancements include more Insert panel buttons, menu items, and Property
inspectors so that you can rapidly build and set the properties of ColdFusion forms. You can also generate code that
validates the information provided by site visitors. For example, you can check that the e-mail address provided by
a user contains the @ symbol, or that a required text field contains a certain type of value.
Enable the ColdFusion enhancements
Some of these enhancements require that you define a computer running ColdFusion MX 7 or later as a testing
server for Dreamweaver. For example, the Property inspectors for form controls are available only if you specify the
correct testing server.
You define a testing server only once. Dreamweaver then automatically detects the testing server version and makes
the enhancements available if it detects ColdFusion.
1 If you haven’t already done so, define a Dreamweaver site for your ColdFusion project.
2 Select Site > Manage Sites, select your site from the list, and click Edit.
3 Select the Servers category and specify a computer running ColdFusion MX 7 or later as the testing server for your
Dreamweaver site. Ensure that you specify a valid Web URL.
4 Open any ColdFusion document.
You won’t see any visible changes to the Dreamweaver work space until you open a ColdFusion document.
Create ColdFusion forms
You can use a number of Insert panel buttons, menu items, and Property inspectors to rapidly create ColdFusion forms
and set their properties in Dreamweaver.
Note: These enhancements are available only if you have access to a computer running ColdFusion MX 7 or later.
1 Open a ColdFusion page and place the insertion point where you want the ColdFusion form to appear.
2 Select Insert > ColdFusion Objects > CFForm > CFForm, or select the CFForm category from the Insert panel and
click the CF Form icon.
Dreamweaver inserts an empty ColdFusion form. In Design view, the form is indicated by a dotted red outline. If
you don’t see this outline, make sure that View > Visual Aids > Invisible Elements is selected.