In my continued attempts at learning ColdFusion, I've stumbled upon an area of components which has me asking more questions than the book is answering, so I am looking for clarification if possible. (Please correct me if I'm wrong)
A component has a VARIABLES scope. This scope is private to the component and its methods. It also has a THIS scope, which contains variables which can be accessed by other components. Each method within the component has a LOCAL scope, which are variables that are seen by that method only. Hopefully I'm on the right track.
I just got into a lesson on Accessors. So, these are get___() and set___() methods which are created once we put the accessors="true" attribute on our component. And they look at properties that are defined to determine which accessors to create. So, I've tested and I can call a component from another location, like: REQUEST.coms.response.getPropertyName() and sure enough, it returns the value. I can also do the set() equivalent and all is good there as well.
So what I've yet to figure out, is how do these properties differ from public THIS-scoped variables which can be both accessed and modified by other locations? What are your deciding factors as to why you'd have a value be stored as a property of a component vs a variable?
