1. Creating and Consuming Web Services with CFML
Chaz Chumley

2. What will be Covered Understanding Web Services Creating Web Services
Consuming Web Services
Error Handling
Best Practices
June 27th- 30th 2007

3. About the Presenter 7 yrs CF Experience
Application Developer – Lucidus.net
Author/Partner – CommunityMx.com
Instructor – University of Nevada Las Vegas
Adobe User Group Manager – Las Vegas
Frequent speaker: Conferences
June 27th- 30th 2007

4. Understanding Web Services
What is a web service
Web based application
Consumed over the Internet
Communicates and exchanges data
Application, platform, syntax agnostic
June 27th- 30th 2007

5. Understanding Web Services
How do web services work?
SOAP – Simple Object Access Protocol
XML based protocol
Send and receive requests and responses
WSDL – Web Services Descriptor Language
Describes arguments accepted
Describes methods & properties returned
June 27th- 30th 2007

6. Creating Web Services What is involved? Simple ColdFusion Component
Method access modifier set to “Remote”
Return data as string
June 27th- 30th 2007

7. Creating Web Services Building a Web Service - Exercise 1
Create a new CFC – hello.cfc
Create new function called “getHello”
Set access = “remote”
Return string value
<cfcomponent output="false">
<cffunction name="getHello" access="remote" returntype="string">
<cfreturn "Hello CFUnited" />
</cffunction>
</cfcomponent>
June 27th- 30th 2007

8. Creating Web Services Testing a Web Service - Exercise 2
Viewing the WSDL
Calling Web Service method via URL
June 27th- 30th 2007

9. Consuming Web Services
How do I call a web service?
CFObject tag
CFInvoke tag
CreateObject() function
June 27th- 30th 2007

10. Consuming Web Services
Using CFObject – Exercise 3
Object representing web service
Referencing Web Service Methods
Dot notation
<cfobject webservice=" name="ws">
<cfoutput>#ws.getHello()#</cfoutput>
June 27th- 30th 2007

11. Consuming Web Services
Using CFInvoke – Exercise 4
Calls an instance of the web service
<cfinvoke webservice="
method="getHello"
returnvariable="ws" />
<cfoutput>#ws#</cfoutput>
June 27th- 30th 2007

12. Consuming Web Services
Using CreateObject() – Exercise 5
Object representing web service
Referencing Web Service Methods
Dot notation
<cfset ws = createObject("webservice"," />
<cfoutput>#ws.getHello()#</cfoutput>
June 27th- 30th 2007

13. Web Services Revisited
Creating a more complex web service
Web services with arguments – Exercise 6
Create new function called “getPersonalHello”
Add an argument called “firstName”
Return argument in a string
<cffunction name="getPersonalHello" access="remote" returntype="string">
<cfargument name="firstName" type="string" default="Insert Name Here" />
<cfreturn "Hello #arguments.firstName#, hope you enjoy CFUnited" />
</cffunction>
June 27th- 30th 2007

14. Web Services Revisited
Calling a web service with arguments
Passing named argument
Using CFInvokeArgument
<cfinvoke webservice=" method="getPersonalHello"
returnvariable="ws">
<cfinvokeargument name="firstName" value="Chaz" />
</cfinvoke>
<cfoutput>#ws#</cfoutput>
June 27th- 30th 2007

15. Web Services Revisited
Consuming Third Party APIs
SOAP based web services
Easy to consume
Type checked
Simply output returned result
REST based web services
Lightweight – not a lot of extra xml markup
Called using CFHttp
Process result using XML functions
June 27th- 30th 2007

16. Web Services Revisited
Consuming Yahoo Search Service
Get an Application ID
Download the SDK
Ray Camden's ColdFusion examples
June 27th- 30th 2007

17. Error Handling Any web service can throw errors
Using a Try, Catch block
Web service stub caching
Any changes won't reflect until refreshed
Using CF Admin to refresh proxy/stub
Programatically refreshing cache
Handling Null Value Arguments
Omit attribute
June 27th- 30th 2007

18. Best Practices Creating a Web Service Alias
Similar to creating a mapping
Reference web service url with friendly name
Limiting access to Web Service
Using isSoapRequest()
June 27th- 30th 2007

19. Additional Resources Adobe Documentation CommunityMX
ColdFusion MX 7 -- Web services -- Version 7
ColdFusion Developer Center
CommunityMX
Consuming RSS Feeds in ColdFusion: Part 1
Using the Google API from ColdFusion
Consuming the CMX Web Service with ColdFusion
June 27th- 30th 2007

20. Summary Simple to expose CFCs as web services
Can consume SOAP and REST services
Powerful prebuilt APIs from Yahoo, etc.
Questions:
June 27th- 30th 2007