
Contents > Developing ColdFusion MX Applications > Building Custom CFXAPI Tags > What are CFX tags?

What are CFX tags?

ColdFusion Extension (CFX) tags are custom tags written against the ColdFusion Extension Application Programming Interface. Generally, you create a CFX tag if you want to do something that is not possible in CFML, or if you want to improve the performance of a repetitive task.

One common use of CFX tags is to incorporate existing application functionality into a ColdFusion application. That means if you already have the code available, CFX tags make it easy to use it in your application.

CFX tags can do the following:

Handle any number of custom attributes.
Use and manipulate ColdFusion queries for custom formatting.
Generate ColdFusion queries for interfacing with non-ODBC based information sources.
Dynamically generate HTML to be returned to the client.
Set variables within the ColdFusion application page from which they are called.
Throw exceptions that result in standard ColdFusion error messages.

You can build CFX tags using C++ or Java.

Note: ColdFusion MX provides several different techniques to create reusable code, including custom tags. For information on all of these techniques, see Reusing Code in ColdFusion Pages.


Contents > Developing ColdFusion MX Applications > Building Custom CFXAPI Tags > What are CFX tags?

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