What Are CFX Tags?

CFX tags are custom tags written against the ColdFusion Extension Application Programming Interface. Generally, you create a CFX if you want to do something that is not possible in CFML, or if you want to improve performance of a repetitive task. CFXs can do the following:

  • Handle any number of custom attributes.
  • Use and manipulate ColdFusion queries for custom formatting.
  • Generate ColdFusion queries for interfacing with non-ODBC based information sources.
  • Dynamically generate HTML to be returned to the client.
  • Set variables within the ColdFusion application page from which they are called.
  • Throw exceptions that result in standard ColdFusion error messages.

You can build CFXs using C++ or Java.


Note

To use a CFX, you must register it in the ColdFusion Administrator, as described in "Registering CFXs".