ColdFusion Includes (cfinclude)

If you've used other scripting environments such as PHP, or even .shtml files, you would be familiar with the concept of "includes".

An "include" is a file that is embedded, or "included" within another file. This can be very useful when you want multiple ColdFusion templates to share the same block of code. A typical example might be your website's header and footer. If your website has a consistent header and footer on every page, you could use an include file for each of these.

ColdFusion provides the <cfinclude> tag for specifying included files.

Tag Syntax

You'll notice that the <cfinclude> tag doesn't have a closing tag — it just accepts an attribute value (the included filename).

Code Example

A common use of ColdFusion includes is to output a consistent header and footer throughout each page of a website. In this example, we're going to create a basic ColdFusion template which uses the cfinclude tag to include two other files.

File 1: index.cfm

File 2: header.cfm

File 3: footer.cfm

Once you've created all of the above files, open index.cfm in your browser. The page should contain the contents of header.cfmat the top, and footer.cfm at the bottom.

Now create a fourth ColdFusion template as follows and open it in your browser.

File 4: about.cfm

Because this template includes the same header and footer file, you will see the same header and footer when displayed in a browser.