Understanding Program Flow

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When you create pages that can actually make decisions, you're using a programming technique called program flow. If you were to describe a program's flow in a plain English sentence and from the program's point of view, you might use a phrase like this one:

If a user selects "no" from the pull-down box, record the response in a database and display a confirmation that no action has occurred. If the user selects "yes," open the main registration form.

Program flow describes a series of conditions and what happens as a result of each condition, much like a flowchart illustrates a business process. ColdFusion MX templates handle this type of decision-making with a trio of tags called <cfif>, <cfelse>, and <cfelseif>. By using these tags in conjunction with one or more condition statements, you can create templates to handle a variety of conditions. In the following examples, you learn more about how program flow works and when to use it.

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