MACROMEDIA ColdFusion MX, Develop Manual

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168 Chapter 8: Reusing Code in ColdFusion Pages
Although a custom tag and a ColdFusion page that you include using the
cfinclude
tag are both
ColdFusion pages, they differ in how they are processed. When a page calls a custom tag, it hands
processing off to the custom tag page and waits until the custom tag page completes. When the
custom tag finishes, it returns processing (and possibly data) to the calling page; the calling page
can then complete its processing. The following figure shows how this works. The arrows indicate
the flow of ColdFusion processing the pages.
Calling custom CFML tags
Unlike built-in tags, you can invoke custom CFML tags in the following three ways:
•
Call a tag directly.
•
Call a tag using the
cfmodule
tag.
•
Use the
cfimport
tag to import a custom tag library directory.
To call a CFML custom tag directly, precede the file name with
cf_
, omit the .cfm extension, and
put the name in angle brackets (<>). For example, use the following line to call the custom tag
defined by the file mytag.cfm:
<cf_myTag>
If your tag takes a body, end it with the same tag name preceded with a forward slash (/), as
follows:
</cf_myTag>
For information on using the
cfmodule
and
cfimport
tags to call custom CFML tags, see
Chapter 9, “Creating and Using Custom CFML Tags,” on page 173 .