Embeds references to ColdFusion pages in CFML. You can embed cfinclude tags recursively. For another way to encapsulate CFML, see cfmodule on page 557. (A ColdFusion page was formerly sometimes called a ColdFusion template or a template.)

Flow-control tags, Page processing tags

cfcache, cfflush, cfheader, cfhtmlhead, cfsetting, cfsilent

ColdFusion MX: Changed error behavior: if you use this tag to include a CFML page whose length is zero bytes, you do not get an error.

ColdFusion searches for included files in the following locations:

1. In the directory of the current page or a directory relative to the current page
2. In directories mapped in the ColdFusion MX Administrator

You cannot specify an absolute URL or file system path for the file to include. You can only use paths relative to the directory of the including page or a directory that is registered in the ColdFusion MX Administrator Mappings. The following cfinclude statements will work, assuming that the myinclude.cfm file exists in the specified directory:

<cfinclude template="myinclude.cfm">
<cfinclude template="../myinclude.cfm">
<cfinclude template="/CFIDE/debug/myinclude.cfm">

But these will not work:

<cfinclude template="C:\CFusionMX7\wwwroot\doccomments\myinclude.cfm">
<cfinclude template="http://localhost:8500/doccomments/myinclude.cfm">

The included file must be a syntactically correct and complete CFML page. For example, to output data from within the included page, you must have a cfoutput tag, including the end tag, on the included page, not the referring page. Similarly, you cannot span a cfif tag across the referring page and the included page; it must be complete within the included page.

You can specify a variable for the template attribute, as the following example shows:

<cfset templatetouse="../header/header.cfm">
<cfinclude template="#templatetouse#">

<!--- This example shows the use of cfinclude to paste CFML 
or HTML code into another page dynamically. --->

<h4>This example includes the dochome.htm page from the CFDOCS directory. 
The images do not display, because they are located in 
a separate directory. However, the page appears fully rendered 
within the contents of this page.</h4>
<cfinclude template = "../cfdocs/dochome.htm">