ColdFusion Builder Workbench Basics

ColdFusion Builder is an Eclipse-based development environment that allows you to develop Adobe ColdFusion applications and run them on ColdFusion servers. You use it to develop ColdFusion applications using coding and debugging tools.

About the workbench

The ColdFusion Builder workbench is a full-featured environment for developing Adobe ColdFusion applications. Much of the basic functionality of the ColdFusion Builder IDE comes from Eclipse. The ColdFusion Builder plug-ins add features and functionality for creating ColdFusion applications. The plug-ins also provide tools for modifying the IDE user interface and supply some core functionality to support application building.

Workbench The workbench is the ColdFusion Builder development environment.

The workbench contains three primary elements: perspectives, editors, and views. You use all three in various combinations at various points in the application development process. The workbench contains all the tools you use to develop applications.

Perspective A perspective is a group of views, editors, menus, and toolbars in the workbench. Essentially it is a special work environment that helps you accomplish a specific type of task. For example, ColdFusion Builder contains two perspectives. You use the ColdFusion Builder Development perspective to develop applications and the ColdFusion Debugging perspective to debug them.

For more information about perspectives, see About ColdFusion Builder perspectives.

Editor An editor allows you to edit various types of files. The editors available to you vary according to the number and types of Eclipse plug-ins installed. ColdFusion Builder contains editors for writing CFML, HTML, JavaScript, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) code. For more information about code editing in ColdFusion Builder, see ColdFusion Builder editors and Code Editing in ColdFusion Builder.

Views A view typically supports an editor. For example, when you edit CFML, the Outline view and Snippet view are also displayed in the ColdFusion Builder Development perspective. These views support the development of ColdFusion applications and are therefore displayed when a CFML file is opened for editing.

Some views support the core functionality of the workbench itself. For example, the File Explorer view allows you to manage files and folders within the workbench. The RDS Dataview and RDS Fileview display data sources, files, and directories on both remote and local servers.

The term view is synonymous with the term panel as it is used in Adobe Dreamweaver® and other Adobe development tools.

For more information about the views in the ColdFusion Builder Development perspective, see ColdFusion Builder Development perspective.

For more information about the views in the ColdFusion Debugging perspective, see ColdFusion Debugging perspective.

Workspace Not to be confused with workbench, a workspace is a defined area of the file system. The workspace contains the resources (files and folders) that make up your application projects. A workspace can contain multiple projects. You can work with only one workspace at a time; however, you can select a different workspace each time you start ColdFusion Builder. For more information, see Managing Projects.

Resource The general term resource applies to the files and folders in the projects in a workspace. For more information, see Add ColdFusion pages, interfaces, and components and Add other files.

Project All the resources that make up your applications are contained within projects. You cannot build an application in ColdFusion Builder without first creating a project. For more information, see Managing Projects.

Workbench menus and toolbars

You access workbench commands through the menu bar, right-click context menus, toolbars, and keyboard shortcuts.

Workbench menus

The ColdFusion Builder workbench contains the following main menus:

File menu

The File menu lets you create, save, close, print, import, and export workbench resources and exit the workbench.

Navigate menu

The Navigate menu lets you locate and navigate through resources in your workbench.

Project menu

The Project menu lets you manage projects in the workbench.

Window menu

The Window menu lets you display, hide, and manage the various views, perspectives, and actions in the workbench.

Toolbars

Workbench toolbar

The workbench toolbar contains buttons for important and frequently used commands. These commands are also available from various ColdFusion Builder menus.

Workbench toolbar

The following buttons appear in the workbench toolbar (shown left to right):

CFML Editor toolbar

The CFML Editor contains buttons that are user interface shortcuts to frequently used commands. These commands are also available from various ColdFusion Builder menus. Some buttons in the toolbar are shortcuts to frequently used code elements, and are context sensitive to the code that you enter in the CFML Editor.

CFML editor toolbar

About ColdFusion Builder perspectives

A perspective is a group of editors and views that support the completion of a task. ColdFusion Builder contains two perspectives: the ColdFusion Builder Development perspective and the ColdFusion Builder Debugging perspective.

Open and switch perspectives

When you open a file that is associated with a particular perspective, ColdFusion Builder automatically opens that perspective. That is, perspectives change automatically to support the task at hand. For example, when you create a ColdFusion project, the workbench displays the Development perspective. Similarly, when you start a debugging session, ColdFusion Builder switches to the Debugging perspective.

By default, perspectives open in the same window. To open a perspective in a new window, do the following:

1. Select Window > Preferences
2. In the tree view structure, select General > Perspectives.
3. Under Open a New Perspective, select In The Same Window.

You can manually switch perspectives by doing one of the following:

• Select Window > Open Perspective > Other from the main menu.
• Use the perspective bar in the main workbench toolbar.

Eclipse provides many predefined perspectives. So, if you use the plug-in configuration of ColdFusion Builder, you sometimes have additional perspectives.

You can access the other Eclipse perspectives by doing one of the following:

• Select Window > Open Perspective > Other from the main menu.

• Click  in the perspective bar in the main workbench toolbar and select Other.

Set a default perspective

1. Select Window > Preferences.
2. In the tree view structure, select General > Perspectives.
3. Under Available Perspectives, select the perspective that you want to set as the default, and click Make Default.
4. Click OK.

The default perspective has the word "default" in parentheses after the perspective name.

ColdFusion Builder Development perspective

You use the ColdFusion Builder Development perspective to create, edit, configure, and run ColdFusion applications in ColdFusion Builder. In addition, you can configure and manage local or remote ColdFusion servers.

The ColdFusion Builder Development perspective includes these views:

Outline view

The Outline view displays a hierarchy of elements in the file that is currently open in the editor. For example, it displays the functions in a CFC file and the tags in an HTML file.

You use Outline view to inspect and navigate the structure of your CFML, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS pages. If a page contains multiple code elements, you can use the Outline view to see a hierarchical view of the code structure of the page.

You can sort the elements in Outline view alphabetically or in the order of their definition in the page. You can choose to view all the code elements or view only specific code elements.

• The Outline view displays the structure of your CFML code. For example, each item in the Outline view can represent a CFML tag.
• Double-click an element in Outline view to directly go to that element in the editor, instead of scrolling through the entire code. When you select an item in Outline view, that item is highlighted in the editor, which makes it easier to navigate your code.
• Use the filter to search for a tag or element in the Outline view. Enter the name of the tag or element to search for in the Filter field. The matching strings are displayed in the Outline view.

To specify the CFML tags to be displayed in an Outline view, select ColdFusion > Editor profiles > Editor > Outline. Then select, add, or remove tags, as required.

RDS FileView and RDS DataView

To use Remote Data Services (RDS), enable RDS while installing the ColdFusion server. ColdFusion Builder provides views to access files and data sources on a remote server.

The RDS FileView displays the files and directories on both remote and local servers. The RDS DataView displays the data sources configured in a remote server.

When you add a ColdFusion server instance in ColdFusion Builder, it automatically becomes available in RDS FileView and RDS DataView.

Configure a remote server for RDS FileView

If you want to configure a remote server manually and then access its files and directories using RDS FileView, do the following:

1. Click RDS FileView in the upper-right corner of the ColdFusion Builder perspective.
2. Right-click in RDS FileView and select RDS Configuration.
3. Click New.
4. Specify remote server information such as the host name, port number, user name, and password.
5. Select Prompt For Password.
6. Click Test Connection to check that the RDS configuration is correct. Then, click OK.
7. Select the remote server from RDS FileView.
8. Specify the password for the remote server to view its files and directories.

Configure a remote server for RDS DataView

To configure a remote sever and access data sources from the remote server using RDS DataView:

1. Click RDS DataView.
2. Right-click in RDS DataView and select RDS Configuration.
3. Click New.
4. Specify the server information such as host name, port number, remote server user name, and password.
5. Select Prompt for Password.
6. Click Test Connection to check that the RDS configuration is correct. Then, click OK.
7. Expand the new server in RDS DataView to view data sources.

RDS Query viewer

The RDS Query viewer lets you create and run queries on a selected data source.

The RDS Query Viewer is available in the RDS DataView toolbar. To create and execute a query using the RDS Query viewer, do the following:

1. Click  in RDS DataView to open RDS Query Viewer area.
2. Type the query in the blank area. You can also build a query by dragging tables and columns from the RDS DataView view into the RDS Query Viewer.
3. Select the server and data source from the drop-down list.
4. Click Execute Query. The results of the query are displayed in the RDS Query Viewer area.

1. RDS query viewer

Right-click a table in the RDS DataView view and select Show Table Contents. You can view all the records of the selected table in the RDS Query Viewer.

Navigator view

The Navigator view displays ColdFusion projects and other projects, and allows navigation through the project’s files and folders.

File view

The File view displays files and directories on the local computer where ColdFusion Builder is installed and allows you to create new files.

If you edit a file outside ColdFusion Builder, you can automatically refresh the file in ColdFusion Builder. To do so, select Window > Preferences > General > Workspace, and select Refresh Automatically.

The File view also lets you add FTP sites and browse files on the FTP server. ColdFusion projects can be associated with FTP connections so that you can easily upload, download, and synchronize files. For more information, see Deploy projects over FTP and Secure FTP connections.

Servers view

Displays the details of ColdFusion servers including server name, status, description, server type, server host, and port. You can use the Server view to perform these tasks:

• Add and delete a ColdFusion server
• Start and stop a server
• Launch Server Monitor
• Launch ColdFusion Server Administrator
• Open server log

For more information, see Managing Servers.

Source view and Default Browser view

The Source view displays the source code for files. The Default Browser View displays the output in an HTML or CFML page.

Console view

The Console view displays the status of the ColdFusion server and any messages from the ColdFusion server.

TailView view

The TailView view displays the Server log and Workspace log, and lets you easily navigate through the logs. To automatically display the logs, RDS must be configured and enabled.

After selecting a server, you can open logs from the shortcut in the button bar of the Server Manager. Select the log to open it in the TailView view. By default, the TailView view opens the Exception log. When you are in Server view, you can open the Exception log by right-clicking and selecting Open Log.

To manually open the logs, right-click in the TailView view and select Add. Browse to and select a log file on your computer’s file system.

The Tailview view toolbar contains the following buttons (left to right) that let you manage multiple logs in different tabs.

TailView toolbar

Services Browser view

The Services Browser view lists the servers added in the Server Manager and lets you browse through ColdFusion components (CFCs), web services and their methods.

Browse ColdFusion components

The Services Browser view lists the following components:

• Components that the ColdFusion component browser lists. The ColdFusion component browser is located at cf_root/wwwroot/CFIDE/componentutils/componentdoc.cfm
• Components that are located in any directories specified in the ColdFusion Administrator Mappings page
• Components that are located in any directories specified in the ColdFusion Administrator Custom Tag paths page

The Services Browser view toolbar contains the following buttons (left to right) that let you filter methods in CFCs based on the access type - remote, public, package, and private.

Services browser toolbar

Manage web services

The Services Browser view lets you manage a list of web services by adding or deleting WSDL URLs from a list.

• To view the list of web services, click  in the Services Browser view.
• To add a web service to the list, click  , enter a valid WSDL URL, and click OK.
• To delete a web service, select the web service, and click  .

When you are editing a ColdFusion file, you can use the Services Browser view to generate CFML code to run a web service or to create a web service object. Similarly, when you are editing an ActionScript file, you can use the Services Browser to generate ActionScript.To run or create a web service, do the following:

1. Place your pointer where you want to insert the code.
2. View the list of web services.
3. Highlight a web service or a method in a web service, right-click, and select:

• Insert CFObject to insert a web service.
• Insert CreateObject to create a web service.

Extensions view

You use the Extensions view to perform the following tasks:

• Install and uninstall extensions
• Import and reload extensions

The Extensions view also displays details like the extension name and description of the installed extension.

The Extensions view toolbar contains the following buttons (left to right) that let you manage extensions in the Extensions view.

Extensions view toolbar

Snippets view

A code snippet is a piece of text that you can insert and reuse in your files, without having to type the text each time. You use the ColdFusion Snippet view to create and save code snippets, variables, and plain text. You can add code snippets to an existing or new document.

The Snippet view toolbar contains the following buttons (left to right) that let you manage code snippets in the Snippets view.

Code snippet toolbar

Create a code snippet

1. In the Code Snippet area, click .
2. In the New Snippet dialog box, specify the snippet name, and the start and end blocks of code.
3. Click OK to create the code snippet.

Insert a code snippet

1. Move the cursor to the desired insertion point.
2. Select the code snippet from the Code Snippet area.
3. Click  in the Code Snippet toolbar.

If you select code in the editor, and then insert a snippet, the snippet is wrapped between the start and end block of the selected code. If you insert a snippet without selecting code in the editor, the snippet is inserted at the current caret position. caret is the marker in the CFML editor that indicates where the next character appears.You can also edit or delete an existing code snippet or an entire code snippet package from the Code Snippet area.

Using trigger text to insert snippets

You can insert snippets in the CFML editor using trigger text. For example, you create a snippet and give it the trigger text "abc." To insert this snippet in the editor, you type abc and press Ctrl + J (Windows) or Command + J (Mac). The text abc is replaced with the associated snippet.

Specify the path to store snippets

Snippets are stored in a snippet’s directory as an XML file. By default, snippets are stored in the workspace/.metadata/snippets directory of your project workspace. To specify a different directory, do the following:

1. From the Windows menu, select Preferences.
2. In the tree view structure of the Preferences dialog box, select ColdFusion > Snippets.
3. Specify the path to the directory in which to store snippets.

System-defined snippet variables

Snippet variables are case sensitive. The following system-defined variables are available.

For example, to insert the current date, use the following system-defined variable:

User-defined snippet variables

User-defined variables prompt you for the variable name and default value. For example, the following user-defined variable prompts you to enter the author’s name:

ColdFusion Debugging perspective

The ColdFusion Debugging perspective contains tools to debug your ColdFusion applications. There are different views that let you add breakpoints to your code, step into or over functions in your code, and examine and evaluate expressions. The editor works with the debugging tools to locate and highlight lines of code that need correction.

The ColdFusion Debugging perspective contains the following views:

Variables view

The Variables view toolbar contains the following buttons (left to right) that let you show the current variables, including the variable scope.

Variables view toolbar

Debug Output Buffer view

The Debug Output Buffer contains two panes:

Browser Displays what appears in the browser during application execution. Specify the URL of the page that you want to debug.

Server Output Buffer Displays the Debugger output in two views - source view and HTML view.

The Server Output Buffer pane displays an output only when the Debugger is suspended at breakpoint. The output that appears is only up to the suspended breakpoint.

Breakpoints view

The Breakpoints view toolbar contains the following buttons (left to right) that let you manage breakpoints during a debugging session.

Breakpoint view toolbar

Expressions view

The Expressions view lets you create expressions using variables and functions; you can inspect, evaluate, and watch these expressions. The Expressions view also lets you evaluate and watch variables that you selected in the Variables view.

The Expression view toolbar contains the following buttons (left to right) that let you create, evaluate, and watch expressions.

Expressions view toolbar

Outline view

The Outline view displays the current source file’s content in outline form. For more information, see Outline view.

Debug View

The Debug view keeps the results of each debug session. The Debug view shows the stack trace when the page execution is suspended at breakpoint or when stepping into or over code.

The Debug toolbar contains the following buttons (left to right):

Debug toolbar

Edit view

The Edit view displays the stacked source tabs, one tab for each source file that you have open.

Servers view

The Servers View lets you start, stop, and manage servers in ColdFusion Builder. You can also launch the ColdFusion Server Monitor and ColdFusion Server Administrator from the Servers View.

Servers view toolbar

The Servers view toolbar contains the following buttons (left to right) that let you manage servers.

For more information about managing servers and using Servers view, see Using Servers View.

Console view

Console view displays the output from trace statements placed in your CFML code and also feedback, like status, warnings, and errors from the debugger itself.

The Console view toolbar contains the following buttons (left to right) that let you view and manage the trace statements in the Console view.

Console toolbar

Problems view

As you enter code, the ColdFusion Builder compiler detects syntax and other compilation errors, and displays the errors in the Problems view. The Problems view shows errors only for CFML files that are open in ColdFusion Builder.

TailView view

The TailView view displays the server logs. For more information, see TailView view.

Add views to the workbench

The workbench contains views besides the views associated with ColdFusion Builder’s default development and debugging perspectives. These additional workbench views help you streamline the application development process.

1. To add a view to the workbench, select Window > Show View > Other > General

These optional views are categorized by type and are associated with distinct workbench functionality or with specific Eclipse plug-ins.

Several workbench views, like the Tasks, Bookmarks, and Search views, are valuable aids as you develop your applications in ColdFusion Builder.

ColdFusion Builder editors

Editors are associated with resource types. As you open resources in the workbench, the appropriate editor is opened. The workbench is a document-centric (and project-centric) environment for developing applications.

Use the CFML editor to edit CFML files. For more information, see Code Editing in ColdFusion Builder.

Use the HTML editor to edit HTML code and the JavaScript editor to edit JavaScript code. The CSS editor lets you display and edit Cascading Style Sheets; you can then apply styles to the visual elements of your applications.

You can use the Link with Cursor feature to switch between the different editors based on the type of code you are editing. The editors provide many features, including code colorization, code assist, and Outline view, that help you navigate through your code and keep it valid.

As you enter CFML, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS code, hints are displayed to help you complete your code. This feature is called Code Assist. For more information, see Code Assist.

Customizing a perspective

You can configure the layout of your perspective; that is, you can configure the views and editors that are visible in the perspective. For example, you can configure the Tasks view to be visible in one perspective, and hidden in another perspective. You can also configure several other aspects of a perspective, such as the following:

• File > New submenu items
• Window > Perspective > Other submenu items
• Window > Other Views submenu items
• Action sets (buttons and options) that appear in the toolbar and in the main menu

Create a customized perspective

1. Open the perspective to modify.
2. Select Window > Customize Perspective.
3. Select the Shortcuts tab or the Commands Groups Availability tab, depending on the items that you want to add or remove in your customized perspective.
4. Use the check boxes to select the element that you want to be visible on menus and toolbars in the selected perspective.
5. Click OK.
6. Select Window > Save Perspective As.
7. In the Save Perspective As dialog box, enter a name for the modified perspective and click OK.

Delete a customized perspective

You can only delete perspectives that you created. You cannot delete perspectives that are delivered with the workbench.

1. In ColdFusion Builder, select Window > Preferences.
2. In the Preferences dialog box, you see a tree-view structure on the left side.
3. In the tree-view structure, select General > Perspectives.
4. Under Available Perspectives, select the perspective that you want to delete.
5. Click Delete, and then click Yes to confirm the delete action.
6. Click OK.

Reset a customized perspective

After you have modified a perspective, you can restore it to its original layout.

1. In ColdFusion Builder, select Window > Preferences.
2. In the Preferences dialog box, you see a tree-view structure on the left side.
3. In the tree-view structure, select General > Perspectives.
4. Under Available Perspectives, select the modified perspective that you want to reset.
5. Click Reset, and then click OK.