Question

I have a remote CFC that returns a structure. It is called using cfajaxproxy. I want the JSON returned to be in order i.e. first into the structure first into the JSON object. However, the JSON that is returned is in a mixed up order.

Here’s the remote function.

<cfcomponent displayname="validation" hint="">
    <cffunction name="validateForm" displayname="validateForm" hint="" access="remote" verifyClient="yes" returntype="struct">

        <cfargument name="formVals" type="struct" required="yes">

        <cfset errors = StructNew()>

        <cfif formVals.project neq "project">
              <cfset errors["project"] = "Invalid project name." />
        </cfif>

        <cfif Len(formVals.description) eq 0>
             <cfset errors["description"] = "Please enter a description." />
        </cfif>

        <cfif StructIsEmpty(errors)>
            <cfset errors["message"]["type"] = "success">
            <cfset errors["message"]["text"] = "Client and server-side validation passed successfully.">
            <cfset errors["areErrors"] = false>
        <cfelse>
            <cfset errors["message"]["type"] = "validation">
            <cfset errors["message"]["text"] = "Please fix the errors, and resubmit.">
            <cfset errors["areErrors"] = true>
        </cfif>

        <cfreturn errors />

    </cffunction>
</cfcomponent>

This is the cfajaxproxy that I have set at the top of my form page.

<cfajaxproxy cfc="validation" jsclassname="validation">

Here’s the call made to the remote function in the onSubmit handler of my form.

var v = new validation();
v.setHTTPMethod("POST");
var errors = v.validateForm(o);

Here’s the data (o variable above) that is sent to the function in the post request.

{"formVals":{"project":"","description":""}}

Here’s the JSON response returned from the function.

{"message":{"text":"Please fix the errors, and resubmit.","type":"validation"},"description":"Please enter a description.","project":"Invalid project name.","areErrors":true}

I want the response to be in the same order as the structure was created which would look like this.

{"project":"Invalid project name.","description":"Please enter a description.","message":{"text":"Please fix the errors, and resubmit.","type":"validation"},"areErrors":true}

That way when I iterate over the response I can set the focus to the first form field with an error in it.

var focusSet = false;

$.each(errors, function(key, val){
    //alert(key + ': ' + val);
    if(key != 'message' && key != 'areErrors') {
        var fi = $('#' + key).parents('.formItem').filter(':first');
        fi.addClass("inError");
        fi.find('.err').filter(':first').html(val);
        if(!focusSet) {
            $('#' + key).focus();
            focusSet = true;
        }
    }
});

Right now this places focus in the second field of the form, description, instead of in the project field.

Answer 1

The keys of a ColdFusion struct are never stored in any particular order. However, I found one post that shows how you can create a java LinkedHashMap (which is the java underneath a CF Struct) to store and retrieve keys in a specific order.

<cfset pets = CreateObject("java", "java.util.LinkedHashMap").init()>
<cfscript>
pets["Cat Name"] = "Leo";
pets["Dog Name"] = "Meatball";
pets["Fish Name"] = "Lil Fish";
pets["Bird Name"] = "PePe";
pets["Snake Name"] = "Sizzle";
</cfscript>
<cfloop collection="#pets#" item="key" >
    <cfoutput>
    #key#: #pets[key]#<br/>
    </cfoutput>
</cfloop>

EDIT: Dan’s solution (array instead of struct) would probably be much easier.