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Ben Nadel at the jQuery Conference 2010 (Boston, MA) with: Mike Hostetler
Ben Nadel at the jQuery Conference 2010 (Boston, MA) with: Mike Hostetler

ColdFusion CFQueryParam List / Null Attributes Do Not Require YesNoFormat() (Thanks Elliott Sprehn!)

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Published in Comments (4)

I used to think that ColdFusion CFQueryParam's List and Null attributes required a "Yes" or "No" string. I always thought this was unusual, since so much of ColdFusion Yes/No attributes simply require a boolean value (ex. True, 1, 0, False). And, more than that, I could have sworn that I even tested this and was disappointed to see that true/false values actually threw ColdFusion exceptions!

But, apparently I read that somewhere and just accepted it like some ColdFusion Sheep in the herd. Thankfully, Elliott Sprehn has shown me the error of my ways. He told me that, like most of ColdFusion, the CFQueryParam Null and List attributes can, in fact, take standard boolean values:

<cfquery name="qTest" datasource="#REQUEST.DSN.Source#">
	SELECT
		id,
		name
	FROM
		blog_entry
	WHERE
		date_created =
			<cfqueryparam
				value="2007/07/17"
				cfsqltype="CF_SQL_TIMESTAMP"
				null="#NOT IsNumericDate( '2007/07/17' )#"
				/>
	OR
		id IN
		(
			<cfqueryparam
				value="1,2,3"
				cfsqltype="CF_SQL_INTEGER"
				list="true"
				/>
		)
</cfquery>

When I run that, I get a ColdFusion query returned, not the formerly expected ColdFusion error. This is sweet-ass-sweet news! I always hated using the YesNoFormat() method as it adds so much noise to the already verbose ColdFusion CFQueryParam tag. This is gonna be so much nicer to use!

Want to use code from this post? Check out the license.

Reader Comments

2 Comments

Thank god for Ben Nadel blog posts. I've spent the last 30 mins trying to work out why my query was throwing an error.

Looking at your example I realised I was missing the brackets around the list. School boy error.

Thanks

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Ben Nadel