Nov
10CFPresentation and CFFEED Proof of Concept Demonstration

Related Categories: Graphic Design, Multimedia, ColdFusion

One of the powers of the ColdFusion 8 tag CFPRESENTATION is that you can create presentations from dynamic database queries. A type of query introduced in Cold Fusion 8 is the CFFEED tag. This takes a feed (rss or atom) and turns it into a query that you can loop over as needed. Pairing the two together, following is a simple proof of concept that shows a series of slides using an RSS feed as the source.

The source for this example is a feed of Recently Redesigned Websites from the site eduStyle: Inspiration for Campus Web Designers. This was chosen as the source, as the feed output is very uniform, presenting two screenshot images and minimal but predictable text in the source of the feed.

First off, following is the pertinent code showing only the necessary CFFEED and CFPRESENTATION elements:


<cffeed action="read" source="http://feeds.feedburner.com/RedesignedSitesFromEdustyle" query="qryEduStyle">


<cfoutput maxrows="15" query="qryEduStyle">
   <cfpresentationslide
title="#title#"
presenter="ColdFusion 8"
    duration="8">
<h1>#title#</h1>

<div>#content#</div>
</cfpresentationslide>
</cfoutput>

With this, it generates 15 swf slides, each representing a single entry from the feed source. If I want to do this in a week or a month, all I have to do is re-run the ColdFusion file and it will get results live from that point in time.

The best way to view this is to view the demonstration in a new browser window.

Alternately, you can also view an inline version of this presentation here.