
Contents > CFML Reference > ColdFusion Tags > cffile action = "read"

cffile action = "read"

Reads a text file on the server. The file is read into a dynamic, local variable that you can use in the page. For example:

Read a text file; insert the file's contents into a database
Read a text file; use the find and replace function to modify the file's contents

Note: This action reads the file into a variable in the local Variables scope. It is not intended for use with large files, such as logs, because this can bring down the server.

<cffile 
   action = "read" 
   file = "full_path_name"
   variable = "var_name"
   charset = "charset_option" >

cfdirectory

See the History section of the main cffile tag page.

Attribute	Req/Opt	Default	Description
action	Required		Type of file manipulation that the tag performs.
file	Required		Pathname of the file to read. If not an absolute path (starting a with a drive letter and a colon, or a forward or backward slash), it is relative to the ColdFusion temporary directory, which is returned by the `GetTempDirectory` function.
variable	Required		Name of variable to contain contents of text file.
charset	Optional	Character encoding identified by the file's byte order mark, if any; otherwise, JVM default file character set.	The character encoding in which the file contents is encoded. The following list includes commonly used values: utf-8 iso-8859-1 windows-1252 us-ascii shift_jis iso-2022-jp euc-jp euc-kr big5 euc-cn utf-16 If the file starts with a byte order mark and you set this attribute to a conflicting character encoding, ColdFusion generates an error. For more information character encodings, see: www.w3.org/International/O-charset.html.

The following example creates a variable named Message for the contents of the file message.txt:

<cffile          action = "read" 

file = "c:\web\message.txt" 

variable = "Message">

The variable Message can be used in the page. For example, you could display the contents of the message.txt file in the final web page as follows:

<cfoutput>#Message#</cfoutput>

ColdFusion supports functions for manipulating the contents of text files. You can also use the variable that is created by a cffile action = "read" operation in the ArrayToList and ListToArray functions.

Note: If you use this tag to read a file that is encoded using the Windows Cp1252 (windows-1252) encoding of the Latin-1 character set on a system whose default character encoding is Cp1252, and the files has characters encoded in the Hex 8x or 9x range, you must specify charset="windows-1252" attribute, even though this is the default encoding. Otherwise, some characters in the Hex8x and 9x ranges that do not map correctly and display incorrectly.


Contents > CFML Reference > ColdFusion Tags > cffile action = "read"

Version 6.1

Comments are no longer accepted for ColdFusion MX 6.1. ColdFusion 8 is the current version.

Comments

profit11 said on Jul 10, 2005 at 9:46 AM :

If spaces are not allowed in the pathname for the "file" attribute (ex.: C:\My Documents\my file.txt), then the documentation should mention it.

profit11 said on Jul 10, 2005 at 11:30 AM :

Please disregard my last comment. Moderator: please remove it and this one as well. Sorry about that.

Pittsburgh Smelters said on Sep 22, 2005 at 12:44 PM :

"It is not intended for use with large files, such as logs, because this can bring down the server."

What constitutes "large?"

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