In this installment of my CFML 101 series, I'm going to show you how you can read and update a INI file with just a very little bit of code. I'll have to admit, when I first tried to do this I was surprised at how simple it was. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, though. Making hard things easy like this has always been one of the hallmarks of CFML. This is true regardless of whether you're using Adobe ColdFusion, Railo, or Blue Dragon. The CFML language is built in a way that allows you to accomplish a lot of work with just a little bit of code. So many things are just so neatly packaged together that all you have to do is call one tag or function, and it runs a whole whoost of java code behind the scenes for you.

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One thing that always surprises me is the number of CFML developers who either don't use, or don't know about, proper variable scoping. I see it almost every day, whether it be at work, on side projects that I help out with, or even many of the open source CFML applications that I download and use. The lack of proper variable scoping seems to be rampant throughout the CFML world, most especially when it comes to the VARIABLES scope.

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I love lists in CFML. I try to use lists whenever possible. They're efficient, clean, and powerful. I've wished for a long time that SQL Server and Oracle had built in list functions that were as easy to use as the CFML list functions. I'm not going to go over all of the list functions here, but I will cover a few examples and ways they can make your life easier.

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Just as in Rookie Mistakes Part 1, this post will cover mistakes that we've all made at one point or another. These are things that seasoned developers instinctively know to do, but beginners may not realize are better or more efficient. Some of this post is based loosely on Adobe's Coding Best Practices for ColdFusion Performance, with a few of my own personal favorites thrown in there.

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This is the first in what I hope to be a continuing series of CFML 101 articles. My intent is to produce a blog series aimed at the beginning CFML developer, one which helps to explain basic techniques and concepts to those new to the CF world. The topics and examples covered in this series focus on the CFML programming language in general, not a specific application server. So whether you're using ColdFusion, Railo, or Blue Dragon (referred to as CF/R/BD from this point forward) to run your CFML applications, these concepts still apply.

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