Getting Started Building ColdFusion MX Applications
Preparing to Build the Sample Application

Developing the sample application

Given the application functional requirements and the database provided, you are ready to use ColdFusion to develop the Trips Maintenance application. The remaining lessons in the tutorial will step you through the process of constructing this application. When you are done, the main page for the Trip Maintenance application will appear as follows:

The main application page is where users will come to view information about trips and to navigate to other ColdFusion pages to add, edit or search for new trips.

The following lessons, explain how to do these tasks:

• Develop a trip search facility (Lesson 2).
• Build the main application page (Lesson 3).
• Implement browsing and trip maintenance functions (Lesson 4).
• Write code to enforce Compass Travel business rules (Lesson 5).
• Develop the trip add and update pages (Lesson 6).

How to proceed

Each lesson in the tutorial is designed to let you proceed at your own pace. At any time, you can stop and later return to that place in a lesson so that you can complete all the sections in the lesson.

Each lesson guides you through a scenario to enhance the Compass Travel Trip Maintenance application. Sections within a lesson present basic programming concepts that you need to understand before completing the section exercise(s).

Depending on your programming experience, you can read the entire lesson then proceed to the hands-on exercises, or you can skip some information in the lesson and proceed directly to the exercises.

Working directories

The following table describes the working directories for this tutorial:

Directory	Description
my_app	You will save all your source code in this directory.
solutions	You can find solutions to all the exercises in this directory.
db	You will use this directory as the working directory for the Compass Travel database. Note: As discussed earlier in Chapter 4, you should verify that the Compass Travel database file residing in the db directory is the original file supplied. This file should have the same date as the file in the new_user_db directory. If date on the file in the db directory is different, replace the file in db directory with a copy of the Compass Travel database file that is located in the new_user_db directory.
photos	You will use this directory to access existing trip photographs.
images	You will use this directory to access application image files.

Locating the working directories

You can locate the working directories for this tutorial under your web root directory. For example, the directory path on your computer might be:

(on Windows NT) <mywebserverdocroot>\cfdocs\getting_started

(on UNIX) <mywebserverdocroot>/cfdocs/getting_started

You can view ColdFusion application pages on your local computer by opening a web browser and entering one of the following URL:

Configuration	URL
For local third-party web server configuration	http://localhost/cfdocs/getting_started/my_app/<pagename>.cfm
For standalone ColdFusion web server configuration	http://localhost:8500/cfdocs/getting_started/my_app/<pagename>.cfm

For more information about the tutorial file structure and the location of the getting_started subdirectories, see "Verifying the tutorial file structure".

Requirements

To use this tutorial, you must have the following components installed:

• ColdFusion Server  For information on how to install ColdFusion Server, see Installing ColdFusion MX.
• Database Management System  A database management system can be installed on the same computer as the ColdFusion Server or on a separate computer. For the purpose of this tutorial, a Microsoft Access database file for MS Windows users and a PointBase database file for UNIX users has been provided. For information about how to configure the Compass Travel datasource, see "Configuring Your Development Environment". For additional information about configuring a data source, see Installing ColdFusion MX.
• Web browser  You can use Internet Explorer (4.0 or later) or Netscape Navigator (6.0 or later).
• Text editor or IDE  (Interactive Development Environment) Macromedia recommends that you use Dreamweaver MX. However, you can use HomeSite+, ColdFusion Studio, any text editor, or IDE. In the exercises in this tutorial, the term editor means Dreamweaver MX, HomeSite+, ColdFusion Studio, or any text editor or IDE of your choice.

  Note:   The default file extension used for ColdFusion application pages is.cfm.

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