Macromedia Studio 8 [Electronic resources] : Training from the Source نسخه متنی

Dynamically Populating a Table

The recordset is now available to the page, and you can now output it. The recordset is eventually going to go into a table, but first you'll need to prepare the page with some stati216.

You'll put the table in the blank line between the two sentences you just entered.

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The Application category of the Insert bar contains many common dynamic Web application components. The Dynamic Table is particularly convenient. You tell Dreamweaver which recordset to use, and it automatically outputs all of the records inside the table.

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Dreamweaver generates a two-row table for you. The first row is stati216, and it simply contains the row headings. The second row contains the dynamic data. When you test the page, however, you'll discover that ColdFusion automatically generates as many records as it needs to display all the records in the database.

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You could save and upload the page now, but before you do so there's another convenient feature you can use to test the data in your pages.

The table is populated with live database data. It has a yellow background, which indicates that the data can be edited. (This yellow background won't appear in the actual page; it is just a Dreamweaver visual aid.)

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Notice that the table's headings simply repeat the column names. You can replace the headings with something more descriptive.

This step is mainly cosmetic; no special functionality is added on the server.

The page opens in a browser, and the data appears as expected.

<a href="target_page.cfm">
Clickable link text </a>

Creating an email link is slightly different:

<a >
Clickable link text </a>

As you can see, email links are always prefaced with mailto:.

Lesson 13, ColdFusion outputs dynamic data using the <cfoutput> tag. Return to dante_admin.cfm and toggle Live Data back off by choosing View > Live Data. If you look in the code for the table, you'll see that the email address is coded as follows:

<td>#rs_GetUsers.username#</td>

The <td> tags simply indicate a table cell. Remember, everything inside the pound signs (##) is a variable or expression that ColdFusion should evaluate. The code rs_GetUsers.username means the username variable that belongs to rs_GetUsers (the dot between GetUsers and username, which is called an access operator, indicates ownership; the item on the right belongs to the item on the left).

Now you have to put all that together. As you've probably anticipated, you'll need the following code:

<td><a >#rs_GetUsers.username#</a></td>

<td><a >#rs_GetUsers.username#</a></td>

ColdFusion generates an email link for each user in the database.

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Note

If, after this step, you get an error saying you've made changes to code that is not marked as editable, click Yes and proceed to the next step. This is a known bug with Dreamweaverall the code you're changing is marked as editableand, at least in the context of this book, you can safely ignore it. Your edits will not be affected by future changes to the site template file.

This time, all the email addresses should be hyperlinked. When you click one, your email editor should appear with a new message open, with the selected student already in the To line. (Don't bother sending an email message to any of these recipients, as they're all fake.)