Used with one or more cfcatch tags. Together, they catch and process exceptions in ColdFusion pages. Exceptions are events that disrupt the normal flow of instructions in a ColdFusion page, such as failed database operations, missing include files, and developer-specified events.
<cftry>
Code that might throw an exception
One or more cfcatch blocks
</cftry>
cfcatch, cferror, cfrethrow, cfthrow, onError; Handling Errors in ColdFusion MX Developer's Guide
ColdFusion MX: Changed cfscript to include try and catch statements that are equivalent to the cftry and cfcatch tags.
Within a cftry block, put the code that might throw an exception, followed by one ore more cfcatch tags that catch and process exceptions. This tag requires an end tag.
<!--- cftry example, using TagContext to display the tag stack. --->
<h3>cftry Example</h3>
<!--- Open a cftry block. --->
<cftry>
<!--- Note misspelled tablename "employees" as "employeeas". --->
<cfquery name = "TestQuery" dataSource = "cfdocexamples">
SELECT *
FROM EMPLOYEEAS
</cfquery>
<!--- <p>... other processing goes here --->
<!--- specify the type of error for which we search --->
<cfcatch type = "Database">
<!--- the message to display --->
<h3>You've Thrown a Database <b>Error</b></h3>
<cfoutput>
<!--- and the diagnostic message from the ColdFusion server --->
<p>#cfcatch.message#</p>
<p>Caught an exception, type = #CFCATCH.TYPE# </p>
<p>The contents of the tag stack are:</p>
<cfloop index = i from = 1
to = #ArrayLen(CFCATCH.TAGCONTEXT)#>
<cfset sCurrent = #CFCATCH.TAGCONTEXT[i]#>
<br>#i# #sCurrent["ID"]#
(#sCurrent["LINE"]#,#sCurrent["COLUMN"]#)
#sCurrent["TEMPLATE"]#
</cfloop>
</cfoutput>
</cfcatch>
</cftry>