Is cfinclude'ing from CFCs bad?

[steve@averum.com]

Is it bad to CFINCLUDE a cfm file from a ColdFusion Component?

We have run into some strange problems, which we believe are related to a
shortage of RAM. But it was also suggested that the problem may be that we are
cfinclude'ing files from our CFCs.

Does anyone have any knowledge about whether cfnclude's from cfc's are bad? I
am not so much asking about best practices but rather whether it will cause
unexpected errors.

thanks,
Steven Rubenstein

[externalError]

I never tried that, but tell me ... why do you use CFInclude inside a CFC?

[Adam Cameron]

> Is it bad to CFINCLUDE a cfm file from a ColdFusion Component?

If you're running CFMX 6.1, it's an idea to tread cautiously here.

When you have a <cfinclude> within a <cffunction>, it automatically copies
all your function-local variables to the variables scope. This can create
"unexpected behaviour", especially if you are "caching" a component
instance in a shared scope for ease of re-use.

I believe this has been addressed in CFMX7, but I have not checked yet.

--

Adam

[wubwub]

Ive got a couple of small aps that I use CFINCLUDES inside a CFC. I normally
use CFINCLUDES to shuffle some of the CFFUNCTION blocks off to separate files.

I only use it for full CFFUNCTION blocks, never parts of a block, but it seems
to work just fine for us.

[steve@averum.com]

Just a follow-up after exchanging emails with Sean Corfield, Director of
Architecture at Macromedia.

He said that cfinclude'ing files from CFC functions "is bad practice". I
personally thought it was good practice to simplify the CFCs, but he said that
not using cfinclude's encourages people "to refactor their CFCs into smaller,
more cohesive CFCs."

As for copying "var" variables into the Variables scope in included files,
this is a CFMX 6.1 bug that, according to Sean, is fixed in CF7.

Sean did not specifically say that using cfinclude's will cause errors, but I
am inclined to believe this practice did contribute to our weird errors. Our
errors were unrelated to the Variables scope and I am confident they will be
solved now that we added RAM to our server, but that is not to say the
cfinclude's did not contribute.

CF's documentation does say it is ok to use cfinclude's so we are probably
going to run some tests before moving all of our code into the CFC itself.

[ajpowellatl]

It would make more logical sense to me if you put the code from the template
you're calling in the cfinclude statement into a cfc and then use the
extends="" property of cfcomponent to get it into your component. Just my two
cents.