Question

In my form I have an element with square bracket:

<input name="bodyIDList[]" id="bodyIDList" value="">

When I pass this page to ColdFusion how is this treated as a form variable? As a list or an array?

Answer 1

Not sure why you are asking this question – it takes literally a few seconds to create a test and find out for yourself!

The code to test it is this simple:

<cfoutput>
    <form action="#CGI.SCRIPT_NAME#" method="post">
        <input name="bodyIDList[]" id="bodyIDList" value="">
        <button type="submit">go</button>
    </form>
</cfoutput>

<cfdump var=#Form# />

Run that, press go, look at the dump.

But, since we’ve now got this question here, I might as well give a full answer, since there is actually an interesting thing to be aware of…

If you run that code on Adobe ColdFusion 9 (or any other version of CF) you will get a string variable named bodyIDList[] – that is Form['bodyIDList[]'] – with a single value.

If you had multiple of these fields you will still get a string with a comma-delimited list.

Since it contains brackets in the variable name, it is not possible to access this field with dot-notation.

All the above also applies for the latest Open BlueDragon.

However, if you use Railo, you will get a different behaviour (copied from PHP) which instead will give you a variable called bodyIDList – i.e. Form[‘bodyIDList’] with no brackets – which contains an array

If you had multiple of these fields you would get a single array with multiple elements.

There is currently no admin configuration option to make Railo compatible with ACF on this, so:
If you are writing cross-engine CFML code, do not use form field names with brackets.
(well, unless you’re aware and willing to deal with the differences).