Coldfusion and PHP
What is ColdFusion or PHP?
ColdFusion and PHP are server-side or web-application technologies used to connect multiple resources such as databases and web-services to your website to make your content behave more "dynamically." They essentially achieve similar results, just with different syntax, structures and procedures. For instance, these technologies can be used to output your inventory database on Web pages within your site. Furthermore, ColdFusion can be used to process information that your users submit with forms on your website. For example, consider a "Contact Us" form on your Web site that accepts a visitor's name, email address and message. ColdFusion receives that information, checks it for validity, and sends it to an email server which then delivers the message to your office.
What's the difference between ColdFusion and PHP?
Functionally, there is very little difference between ColdFusion and PHP. ColdFusion is a proprietary product originally created by Allaire in the 90's. Allaire was bought out by Macromedia in 2000 which was bought out by Adobe in 2006. ColdFusion is a powerful programming language which provides developers with a host of adaptable pre-built tools and modules. We can achieve more in less time by using these modules instead of building objects from scratch. This makes the process of, for instance, connecting to and retrieving data from a database in data-driven websites. PHP is an open source non-proprietary alternative which has a larger developer base and can scale more reliably for larger projects. We use PHP for projects that anticipate a lot of web-traffic or have unique data-processing needs.
The principles, rules, and methods employed by PHP and ColdFusion are essentially the same. The exact syntax, however, is different. Both environments support tasks such as querying a backend database, posting and getting form data, outputting a database into an XHTML Web page, etc. The programming calls and availability of pre-built objects is the primary difference. We are fully capable of building sites and web-applications in both PHP and ColdFusion. We have tackled problems large and small with both technologies such as multi-threaded processing, secure session routing, security/authentication, and AJAX connectivity, etc.
- What exactly do ColdFusion and/or PHP do in websites?
- Below are a few topics that will shed light about the roles server-side technologies such as ColdFusion and PHP play in websites both large and small. For the sake of conversation, we will use ColdFusion as an example for the following topics.
- Connecting a site to a database
- Many of our websites run on top of databases that store relevant information for the businesses that they serve. These websites are frequently called "dynamic websites" as the data that is displayed on their pages will change depending on the contents of the backend database. ColdFusion is used to send specific requests to the backend database and is setup to handle the results. ColdFusion is then used to step through the returned data and generate HTML structures which are interpreted by a web-browser. That HTML is then sent to the user's browser and the results are displayed. In much the same way, incoming data, i.e. a customer's order, is sent to our ColdFusion server, processed and stored in the database.
- Controlling your website with an easy-to-use admin site
- While this is a powerful concept, an important question should arise. How does the Web site owner control the contents of the database? All dynamic sites that we build are managed by a user-friendly administrative Web site (built with ColdFusion or PHP). This site gives the site owner secure access to retrieve, update and delete records that are stored in the database. For instance, we develop many websites that host resources, a dynamic calendar, announcements and private discussion forums for members. Members gain access to these sites with a secured username and password. Through the admin site, the site owner can view reports of new and expired members, process members' dues transactions, post announcements, post new events and moderate the discussion forum. The admin site is your single point of contact with your website's central database.
- URL parameters
- To illustrate an example of server-side technologies such as Coldfusion and PHP at work, have you ever wondered "what's up with those question-marks and ampersand signs in Web addresses?" These characters allow us to send specific instructions to the ColdFusion or PHP server running in the background. For example: "http://www.mywebsite.com/index.html?ProdID=96607" could be a Web addresses that instructs ColdFusion to send a query request to a database to ask for product identified by the number "96607." These types of addresses are common on Web pages that retrieve or submit information to and from your site's central database.
- Session management
- Many websites use session variables to keep track of who is using a website so that the website can adapt to them individually or remember their information between pages. For example, users identify themselves when they login to a website. A session variable is created temporarily on the application server which uniquely identifies that user. Session variables are temporary, however, and expire after a preset timeout period. Once a session expires, that user is logged off automatically so that other parties using the same machine cannot view pages with potentially private information displayed. Session variables are also used to remember information about a Web user as they click from one screen to another. This is a standard solution to the "stateless" nature of Web applications.
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