You can access your model's properties several ways.
Option 1: You can use ColdFusion's built-in getters and setters for persistent properties.
var book = _Book.new();
book.setTitle("The Da Vinci Code"); // setter
var title = book.getTitle(); // getter
Option 2: You can use your model's prop method.
var book = _Book.new();
book.prop("title", "The Da Vinci Code"); // setter
var title = book.prop("title"); // getter
Option 3: You can access each property as a method via onMissingMethod().
var book = _Book.new();
book.title("The Da Vinci Code"); // setter
var title = book.title(); // getter
It can be easier to use either option 2 or 3 when working with relationships as ColdMVC will automatically cast empty values to NULL and handle building relationships for you.
For example, if each Book had a relationship to an Author, here is how you would update a Book with an ID of 2 to have an Author with an ID of 5 for each of the options listed above.
Option 1:
var book = _Book.get(2);
var author = _Author.get(5);
book.setAuthor(author);
Option 2:
var book = _Book.get(2);
book.prop("author", 5);
Option 3:
var book = _Book.get(2);
book.author(5);
As you can see, options 2 and 3 are considerably shorter than option 1.