TOSTRING |
Description Converts a value to a string.
Returns A string.
Category Conversion functions, String functions
Function syntax
    ToString(value[, encoding])
See also ToBase64, ToBinary, CharsetEncode; Chapter 35, "Using XML and WDDX," in ColdFusion MX Developer's Guide
History ColdFusion MX: Changed Unicode support: ColdFusion supports the Java UCS-2 representation of Unicode character values 0-65535. (ColdFusion 5 and earlier releases supported ASCII values 1-255.) Added the encoding parameter. Added ability to convert an XML document object to a string.
Parameters
Usage This function can convert simple values and binary values that do not contain Byte zero. If this function cannot convert a value, it throws an exception. This function can also convert an XML document object to a string XML representation. Macromedia recommends that you use the CharsetEncode function to convert binary data to a string.
Example
    <h3>ToString Example</h3>
    <!---- Initialize data. ------>
    <cfset charData = "">
    <!----- Create string of ASCII characters (32-255) and concatenate them. ---->
    <cfloop index = "data" from = "32" to = "255">
       <cfset ch = chr(data)>
       <cfset charData = charData & ch>
    </cfloop>
    <p>The following string is the concatenation of characters (32 to 255)
    from the ASCII table.<br>
    <cfoutput>#charData#</cfoutput></p>

    <!------ Create a Base64 representation of this string. ---->
    <cfset data64 = toBase64(#charData#)>
    <p>
    The following string is the Base64 representation of the string.<br>
    <cfoutput>#data64#</cfoutput></p>
    <!---- Create a binary representation of Base64 data. --->
    <cfset dataBinary = toBinary(data64)>

    <!---- Create the string representation of the binary data. ----->
    <cfset dataString = ToString(dataBinary)>
    <p>The following is the string representation of the binary data.<br>
    <cfoutput>#dataString#</cfoutput></p>

VALUE |

Value to convert to a string; can be a simple value such as an integer, a binary object, or an XML document object.

ENCODING |

The character encoding (character set) of the string. Optional for binary data, Generates an error if used for a simple value or XML document object.

The following list includes commonly used values:

- utf-8
- iso-8859-1
- windows-1252
- us-ascii
- shift_jis
- iso-2022-jp
- euc-jp
- euc-kr
- big5
- euc-cn
- utf-16

For more information on character encoding, see:www.w3.org/International/O-charset.html.

The default value is the encoding of the page on which the function is called. See cfcontent.