You can invoke methods of a component instance directly using CFScript or in CFML tags. To invoke component methods directly, use the CreateObject function or cfobject tag to instantiate the component. Thereafter, use the instance name followed by a period and the method that you are calling to invoke an instance of the method. You must always use parentheses after the method name, even if the method does not take any parameters.
You can use this syntax anywhere that you can use a ColdFusion function, such as in cfset tags or surrounded by number signs in the body of a cfoutput tag.
The following example shows how to invoke component methods in CFScript:
<!--- Instantiate once and reuse the instance.--->
<cfscript>
tellTimeObj=CreateObject("component","tellTime");
WriteOutput("Server's Local Time: " & tellTimeObj.getLocalTime());
WriteOutput("<br> Calculated UTC Time: " & tellTimeObj.getUTCTime());
</cfscript>
In the example, the three CFScript statements do the following:
CreateObject function instantiates the tellTime CFC as tellTimeObj.
getLocalTime method of the tellTimeObj instance.
WriteOutput function displays text followed by the results returned by the getUTCTime method of the tellTimeObj instance.
In CFScript, you use the method name in standard function syntax, such as methodName().
The following example uses CFML tags to produce the same results as the CFScript example:
<cfobject name="tellTimeObj" component="tellTime"> <cfoutput> Server's Local Time: #tellTimeObj.getLocalTime()#<br> Calculated UTC Time: #tellTimeObj.getUTCTime()# </cfoutput>
You can access data in the component's This scope directly in CFScript and cfset assignment statements. For example, if a user data CFC has a This.lastUpdated property, you could have code such as the following:
<cfobject name="userDataCFC" component="userData">
<cfif DateDiff("d", userDataCFC.lastUpdated, Now()) GT 30>
<!--- Code to deal with older data goes here. --->
</cfif>
For more information, see The This scope.