does this violate good form for components?

As we my development team has started coding our web sites using cfcomponents, we have found that our component libraries have become extremely long.   We have broken down our model into as many cfc's as we can.  So for example one of our sites may have website, customer, product, appmodule, etc... cfc's.  And in those cfc's our function library starting growing fairly large and finding functions was getting overwhelming.   So, we starting using <cfinclude> to include those functions, however, we are wondering if this is poor form and if we are breaking any major rules with this.  Our lives have become much simpler within our web sites, but if this is discouraged due to securiy or OO design, we would willingly change.   Any feedback: CODE EXAMPLE: <cfcomponent displayname="customer" extends="cf_components/user" hint="I represent a customer.  My functions support actions that a user takes while utilizing the application.">        <cffunction name="initializeObject" access="public" output="yes" returntype="any">          <!--- Attempt to run the function code --->       <cftry>                    <!--- set some default variables for the customer--->       <cfscript>                ... various init routines ....                </cfscript>       <!--- If something went wrong with the function code... --->       <cfcatch type="Any">               <!--- Run the error handling routine --->         <cfinclude template="/cf_includes/cfcatch.cfm">                  <cfreturn "1">                </cfcatch>                  </cftry>            </cffunction>      <!--- Methods to access and manipulate customer object information --->   <cfinclude template="customer/method1.cfm">   <cfinclude template="customer/method2.cfm">   <cfinclude template="customer/method3.cfm">   <cfinclude template="customer/method4.cfm">   <cfinclude template="customer/method5.cfm">      .... more functions would be included .....       </cfcomponent>

Here is what I do. 1. d:\wwwroot\components setup a mapping to this directory called components or something. 2. each website has it's own folder for components under this directory. For example. d:\wwwroot\components\myweb1 3. In d:\wwwroot\components there is also a file that is used by all applications for my udfs. cfcremotedocumenter.cfm is also in this directory. d:\wwwroot\components\udfs.cfc 4. Inside that folder I have one folder and two files. The first file is a config.xml file. The second is a factory.cfc. 5. The config.xml file contains variables that you would normally setup in your application.cfm file. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>   <config>     <dsn>yourwebsitedsn</dsn>     <mapping>/yourwebsitemapping/</mapping>     <baseURL>http://www.mywebsite.com/</baseURL>;     <mailServer>mail.myserver.com</mailServer>   </config> 6. The factory.cfc contains the following. <cfcomponent extends="components.udfs">   <!---   **   * Includes file that documents this component.   *   **   --->   <cfset instance.documentedAccessLevels='private,package,public,remote'>   <cfinclude template="../cfcremotedocumenter.cfm">   <!---   **   * Initializes local variables used within this component.   **   --->   <cfset init()>      <cfdirectory action="list"    directory="#getDirectoryFromPath(getCurrentTemplatePath())&'function_includes\'#"     filter="_*_functions.cfm"     name="qry_getFunctionIncludes">           <cffunction name="init" access="public" returntype="struct" output="false"     hint="Global Variables used within component.">          <cfset var initReturn=structNew()>     <cfset var objXML=''>     <cfset var idx=1>          <cffile action="read" charset="utf-8"       file="#replaceNoCase(getCurrentTemplatePath(), listLast(getCurrentTemplatePath(), '\'), 'config.xml')#"       variable="objXML">          <cfset objXML=xmlParse(objXML)>     <cfset objXML=xmlSearch(objXML, '/config/')>          <cfloop from="1" to="#arrayLen(objXML[1].xmlChildren)#" index="idx">       <cfset initReturn[objXML[1].xmlChildren[idx].xmlName]=objXML[1].xmlChildren[idx].xmlText>     </cfloop>          <cfreturn initReturn>   </cffunction>      <cffunction name="getVars" access="public" returntype="any" output="false"     hint="Returns the global vars initialized in the init() function.">          <cfset var getVarsReturn=init()>          <cfreturn getVarsReturn>   </cffunction>   <cfoutput query="qry_getFunctionIncludes">     <cfinclude template="function_includes/#name#">   </cfoutput>    </cfcomponent> 7. There is a function_includes for each application under d:\wwwroot\components\myweb1\function_includes 8. Inside that folder I have all my functions. I split the files up into logical function sets and make them a cfml page that is included by factory.cfc. For example: _calendar_functions.cfm _document_functions.cfm 9. In the root Application.cfm file I have the following. <cfsilent>   <cfapplication name="myweb1" clientmanagement="yes"     sessionmanagement="yes" sessiontimeout="#createTimeSpan(0,0,20,0)#"     applicationtimeout="#createTimeSpan(0,0,20,0)#" loginstorage="session"     setdomaincookies="yes">   <cfscript>     if(not isDefined('application.factory') or isDefined('url.reinit'))  {       application.factory=createObject('component', 'components.myweb1.factory');     }     request.factory=application.factory;   </cfscript> </cfsilent> 10. Now you have access to any function in any page of your application. <cfdump var="#request.factory#">

As for CFINCLUDING into a component I would highly recommend against it. There is a nasty little "feature" to that: when you CFINCLUDE inside a component method CF moves all of your unnamed scope (function local) variables into the variables scope of the CFC. This effectively blows threads safety out of the water and completely invalidates any proper use of "var". I recently had to rewrite a ton of my code to deal with this issue. Jim Davis

That's why I include the function and not the contents of the function into the component. Jim Davis wrote: ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

>That's why I include the function and not the contents of the function >into the component. > >Jim Davis wrote: > >> I recently had to rewrite a ton of my code to deal with this issue. Hi Jim, we had heard that about including inside a function.  The code that I showed to you however does not include the contents of the function, it is an include of the whole function.  So one of those cfincludes would have <cffunction ... arguments ...>            ... code .... </cffunction> does this nasty little var scope / cfinclude issue happen whenever you use cfinclude on a cfc ANYWHERE or just when you use cfinclude inside a FUNCTION itself? Also, do you happen to have any reference to tech notes from macromedia? Thanks a bunch. Michael

My bad - I think that you're correct in that - what you have looks like it should work. I don't know how it works under the covers tho' - in CFMX includes are compiled separately (which is why they have to follow tag consistency and nesting rules inside themselves).  I'm not sure how CFMX is handling "remote" method calls like this. it might hurt performance. Also I'm not sure how good CFMX is above recompiling CFCs when a CFINCLUDED part of them has been updated.  I don't think there's a problem there, but you might want to test it out. I don't know if Macromedia has addressed the scoping issue officially in any way (but since they use CFINCLUDING function bodies as an example in the CFC documentation I really hope they do!) Jim Davis   _____ Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 3:24 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: Re: does this violate good form for components? >That's why I include the function and not the contents of the function >into the component. > >Jim Davis wrote: > >> I recently had to rewrite a ton of my code to deal with this issue. Hi Jim, we had heard that about including inside a function.  The code that I showed to you however does not include the contents of the function, it is an include of the whole function.  So one of those cfincludes would have <cffunction ... arguments ...>            ... code .... </cffunction> does this nasty little var scope / cfinclude issue happen whenever you use cfinclude on a cfc ANYWHERE or just when you use cfinclude inside a FUNCTION itself? Also, do you happen to have any reference to tech notes from macromedia? Thanks a bunch. Michael   _____  

  _____ Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 3:10 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: Re: does this violate good form for components? That's why I include the function and not the contents of the function into the component. Oops - my bad. Jim Davis

Thanks Jim, I will look into some of those compiling issues and go forward with our model.  It works for us so far.  The time we save in development is definitely worth it, it became very hard to read our CFC's as we had so much code in them. Thanks again and to all that posted Michale ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----