Where to Go From Here

If you've been thinking of ways to leverage advanced custom tags in your own applications now that you know how to design them, don't hesitate. Start experimenting!

Try incorporating some of the following functionality into what you've already created in this chapter:

• Add formatting functionality like that used in the examples IntelligentForm.cfm and IntelligentInput.cfm in this chapter.

• Change the focus-first-field script to use the AssocAttribs technique we used in IntelligentForm.cfm and IntelligentInput.cfm.

• Add client-side validation to DisplayField.cfm.

• Add server-side validation to DisplayField.cfm.

• Create additional form-control custom tags, such as select menus and radio button groups.

After you've done some or all of the above enhancements to your custom tags, add more of the Company table's columns to your forms by just duplicating one of the calls to <cf_DisplayField> and changing its attributes. Now do you see the power of creating advanced custom tags? How long would it take you to adapt all of an application's forms to a modified database schema using custom tags like these? A few minutes at most? This should prove that it's definitely worth the time and effort to learn about and build a library of custom tags to serve your application development needs.

And finally, if you come up with a killer set of custom tags, make sure to share them with the ColdFusion community through your local ColdFusion User Group, discussion lists, blogs, and anywhere else frequented by ColdFusion developers. Everyone will be glad you did.