Moving to ASP.net from ColdFusion

This article provides:

1. A link to MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) where you can see some of the ColdFusion® to .net translations that Microsoft has provided


2. Some of my own suggestions that a ColdFusion developer should know when going to .net

This page on MSDN provides some .net translations to some ColdFusion functionality.

1. Topics that MSDN Covers

• Sessions


• Email


• HTTP Request (server-side)


• Date and Time Formatting


• Cookies


• Database Query & Output


• Try/Catch

2. Important Things You Should Know

Strong-Type vs Loose-Type

• .net is a strongly typed language. This means that if you want to put an integer into a variable, the variable has to be declared as an integer type from the beginnning, and you will never be able to put anything other than an integer into that variable.


• ColdFusion is loosely-typed so that you can put any type of object you want into any variable.

Case Sensitive

• When referencing variables or methods in .net you must use the same case.

Methods

• Methods are just another word for functions. (As far as I know.)


• All methods must be declared either public, private, or protected. This is called the "access modifier"


• All methods must specify what type of variable they will return. If it won't return a variable then you must specify "void".


• All arguments must have their type specified.


• Examples:
  [php]
  // Author: Anthony Tietjen
  // Date: April 2009
  
  // This method concatenates two strings and returns the result as a string
  // The "access modifier" of private means that code outside of
  // this file can access this method.
  public String Concatenate(String Text1, String Text2)
  {
  String result = Text1 + Text2;
  return result;
  }
  
  // This method adds two integers and returns the result as an integer
  // The "access modifier" of private means that only code within
  // this file can access this method.
  private int Add(int Number1, int Number2)
  {
  int result = Number1 + Number2;
  return result;
  }
  
  // The "access modifier" of protecteds means that only a class that
  // inherits from this class can call this method.
  protected void Save(String FirstName, String LastName)
  {
  // Process code here
  
  // Don't return anything
  }
  [/php]

Inheritance

• ColdFusion Example
  [xml]<cfcomponent name="User" extends="DatabaseObject">
  <cffunction name="Add">
  ...
  </cffunction>
  </cfcomponent>
  [/xml]


• .net Example
  [php]public class User : DatabaseObject {
  public int Add(int Number1, int Number2){
  ...
  }
  }[/php]