All of the links in the code are surfable. You just drill in through the includes between all of your files. Very cool.

I wonder if there’s an extension to do this in CfBuilder, or from the Eclipse world?

Over the years I haven’t been much of a user of RDS anyways so I usually just left it disabled.

Lately though RDS is starting to have a lot more value to me, I have been using ColdFusion’s Report Builder a lot more in addition to ColdFusion Builder itself, which use RDS a lot more to expose a lot of neat functionality.

ColdFusion Report Builder lets you connect and browse your ColdFusion data sources to build your report either through wizards, or construct (and test) your queries in real time.  Since ColdFusion Report Builder is from what I can tell, a repackaged Jasper Reports binary, it’s actually really nice to have a lot of the CF shortcuts built in.

ColdFusion Builder is something I’ve been using more and more in the past year.  I started slowly with the betas as the CFEclipse worked just fine for me.  As ColdFusion 9 came out though, a lot changed.  The integration between ColdFusion Builder and CF 9 is great.

I ended up having to find a mechanism to enable and disable (if needed) RDS.  Searched high and low, and forgot to check the knowledge base over at Adobe.

Lo and behold the explanation is simple:

1. In the root of your coldfusion path, you have a /wwwroot folder.  inside of it there is a file called web.xml
2. This file is used with the configuration of ColdFusion itself, and not only the internal web server.  So if you use another web server like IIS or Apache, this file is still relevant to edit.
3. When you open up the web.xml to edit, you’ll need to search the text for “RDS” and un-comment two spots where there are RDS services <!– commented out –> .. Both must be un-commented.
4. After you remove the comments and save the file, simply re-start the ColdFusion Server and RDS will be up and alive.  Use the ColdFusion Administrator to set your passwords as needed.

AND RDS WORKS!  Reverse the steps to disable RDS on production servers.

Hope that helps, I know I’ll be back to reading this post when I forget in the future.  The knowledge base article to enable or disable RDS in ColdFusion in this technote.  The ColdFusion MX instructions are applicable to CF 6 and up: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/172/tn_17276.html

I have used the past few months to approach ColdBox in two different ways:

1. Existing Applications - Consider porting, or continuing development in ColdBox.  Like any re-factoring, there are pros and cons to this, the main part being cost in time, and fixing something that isn’t really broken.  So I wait for a reason to do it…
2. New Applications - I’m happy to say that I haven’t regretted using ColdBox for my new projects.  The few times I’ve felt I could get i it done quicker with a framework I already know and have some code built up in is quickly offset by realizing once I figure something out, it’s a one time thing.  Blog about it, and I have my search engine for “how did I do that again?”

This approach has had me learning and playing with ColdBox to learn the best way of how I want to do things, and why.  Along the way I have been writing posts (while coding) to quickly document any discoveries where the examples and documentation was found to be a bit lacking.  My idea was to come in later and ColdBox has excellent documentation but I have found that there could be a lot more examples provided to get developers up and running even quicker.

In the past few months I have written a few dozen tips/discoveries.

I thank everyone who has sent in their questions and responses, please keep them coming and I’ll get through them as best as I can.

I’ll publish this post to the blog but not advertise it until I have a solid few tips that I can publish on a regular basis.

My ColdBox 101:

One that has always stuck out to me is I can’t figure out for the life of me why most IDE’s don’t enable line numbers by default.  No matter what we write, sooner or later we have to refer to the line number.

Luckily for Adobe’s ColdFusion Builder, which is based on Eclipse, the setting is a few simple clicks.

1. Go into preferences
2. Click on General in the left menu bar
3. Click Editors
4. Click on Text Editors
5. You will see the fourth checkbox says “Show line number”.  Click this on to enable it, and then click OK.

Below is a handy screenshot to know exactly where to click.  Enjoy!

Enabling Line Numbers to be visible in Adobe ColdFusion Builder

Here’s the problem… I couldn’t get the ColdBox Platform Extension installed in ColdFusion Builder with the existing instructions in the link above.   I suspect the older version of the ColdFusion Builder allowed you to do it from more than one location.

In any event, you have to Click on Window > Show View > Other > Extensions , and allow the extension pane to appear at the bottom of your screen (as my default installation shows).  Then, click on the (+), select the ColdBox Extension zip file and go through the normal setup.

If you’re interested in a quick screencast, all 1 minute of it is below!

http://screencast.com/t/YzdhMjI1M

The things it helps you handle include (Quoted from page above):

• Create handlers, plugins, interceptors and model objects with awesome wizardry
• Create an event handler and have it auto-generate the views, etc.
• Plugin Wizard
• Interceptor Wizard
• Model Object Wizard.. and more

ColdFusion builder is in late-ish beta and it’s great to see some of the plugins that we have for it already.  It’s nice to see such a tool evolving.

Happy ColdBoxing!

I’ve been playing around with the ColdBox Framework for ColdFusion for a few months.

What lead me to ColdBox was a period of discovering and playing around with the discoveries I made with ColdFusion 9 and it’s killer Hibernate ORM integration.

I could no longer program, ever again until ColdFusion 9 came out.. it made for a slower fall on new projects.  I decided to dust off the old exploration cap and started looking at what was new and developing in the ColdFusion world.

For about as long as I can remember I’ve been using FuseBox and my own frameworks prior to it coming into existence. In my modified FuseBox framework I have a simple, efficient, scalable system that has easily handled anything I’ve thrown at it, and more.  It’s very capable and rightfully so.

FuseBox is ColdFusion’s first major Framework and went on to dominate and inspire a lot of change in the PHP world not only with FuseBox itself, but the other great frameworks that exist in that language and maybe beyond.  Sitting in the ColdFusion world it’s nice to see that the ColdFusion “power with ease” eloquence was able to help spread this kind of empowerment, as much as ColdFusion’s continued track record of doing the best of similar languages and frameworks. No offence intended to any of the other great CF frameworks out there — I just didn’t feel the itch to shop around because I felt I had the good stuff at home.

No language, in my experience, has focused on the developer and their experience as much as ColdFusion.  Happy developers make great software.  I like being happy doing what I do.

I came across ColdBox and remembered seeing an earlier version around 2006 that looked really promising. It looks like it’s been delivering on it’s promises.  In defense of my beloved FuseBox, I haven’t looked at the new version in a few years because the one I use has worked so well!

The first thing that struck me was the sheer volume of documentation available on ColdBox.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.  Someone, actually, seemed, to get the significance of, and anticipate the needs of web application development, and ColdBox was the result.  This was like Allaire/Macromedia/Adobe continuing to anticipate the needs of application developers with ColdFusion. ColdBox looks to this software architect to be the next shining star of ColdFusion, if it’s not already.  It improves both applications and developer’s lives.

We know that application development and application developers are kept happy in some common and unique ways.

At first, I didn’t believe what I was seeing.  Everything I’ve needed to touch or use, with respect to a web application and it’s framework, seemingly, conveniently put in one place.  Internationalization, no problem.  Need role based security?  No problem.  Want to add a doo-dad?  Decide if you want an interceptor or a plug-in.  Next question.

What is a software architect to do when something makes him blink?  Get a second opinion from the smartest developer he knows.

My friend is someone I’ve known for almost 15 years.  We shared a path in school but I went off the ColdFusion deep end while he continued learning everything under the sun… except ColdFusion.

So I asked for his unbiased opinion.  Which he’s known to give.  I asked him, find me every fault in this ColdBox and the language of ColdFusion compared to all the languages you’ve ever used.  As a developer completely fresh to this, tell me if something is better than this, and why, because I might want to switch.

Expecting him to correct ColdFusion, and ColdBox the same way he used to correct the professors, assignments, quizzes, exams, and TA’s in university, he came back convinced that ColdBox and ColdFusion is great for developing web applications.  Not to say something else wasn’t, but if he’d pick something ot build on his own he just might use it, especially with the open-source ColdFusion engines like Railo and Open BlueDragon.

So, I’m not crazy.  That’s good.

Here’s the thing with ColdBox for me.  It does MVC, really well, for the web, for web applications.  Yeah, I know Ruby’s got this, ASP.NET’s got that, and Django has something else that’s great.  I have used them all, either with new projects, or maintaining existing ones.

The thing  that happens with any project, over time, is that it either becomes one you want to work on more and more, or one you don’t want to work on due to increasing complexity to add or modify tasks.

We can argue it’s up to the developer to keep things simple, but inevitable the platform and framework play a huge role in what we do, or don’t have to do, or what we do/don’t deal with.

If we put all the languages, frameworks into one pile, there is one key test I use to see the value of any tool.

It is difficult to make the complex into something simple; and it is easy to make the simple into something complex.  Will this help me make the complex into something simple, without dealing with the language, or framework’s complexities?

ColdBox, with ColdFusion seems to understand that most of us have to build things that are solid, reliable and scalable.  99% of web applications that are remotely successful grow.  We need a way to manage that growth and keep the garden looking nice while it grows.

Web developers often have to solve more than simple problems.  We have to solve complex problems and make them simple.   There is little doubt ColdFusion is the best integration language for the web.  It simply does more out of the box than anything.

I have spent the last 2 days working in ColdBox and my impression is this.

I have been amazed at how much of an application I have built already in ColdBox.  Actual business logic.  Actual problem solving.  Actual “this will make someone’s life easier, more efficient and productive”.

What’s changed?  I didn’t build my own roles based security.  I didn’t have to integrate internationalization.  I didn’t have to extend a framework to do more (or less) than it did.  ColdBox appears to be a framework that can be customized easily, or left alone and just run.

To potentially have the best of both worlds (Rapid dev of FuseBox and the scalability of OO-programing), compared to what was out there before, is more than a little staggering to this software architect.  I don’t care to re-invent the wheel, I want to solve problems and help people that are forced to work with poor software.

Beyond learning the ins and outs of ColdBox, I am slowly realizing it’s feeling much like FuseBox did.. the next tool I will use for possibly a long time.  Just like ColdFusion made web development power with ease, ColdBox takes Web application development to a similar of power with ease.

ColdBox allows you to leverage ColdFusion’s rapid application development in such an improved way that I don’t think has happened in several years.  As much as Fusebox first came out for ColdFusion and then spread to PHP, etc., and pushed the bar so much, I think ColdBox will inspire as well.

What’s most impressive is that such a powerful framework has been kept, if I may, simple, relative to the complexity of everything it handles.  That’s something ColdFusion did first, and better than anyone too.

In the coming few days I will start a Quickstart to ColdBox series to catch my first impressions and experiences of piecing it all together, to help you see for yourself what ColdBox could do for you.

The first time ColdFusion Server was installed, it crashed/timed out.  So we rebooted and uninstalled it.  We reinstalled and everything looked okay.  When we went into the Coldfusion Administrator and tried to create a new collection, we were presented with an error:

Unable to retrieve collections from the Search Service.
Please verify that the ColdFusion Search Server is installed and running

After looking around, the main suggestions were:

1. for Coldfusion MX 7 users was to re-install ColdFusion and it should work.  Okay.  Reinstalled about 8 times, no luck or progress.  I tried it for CF 8 and it didn’t improve.  I did receive a report from one of our developers that he did solve this very problem on CF8 by reinstalling so it might be worth one or two tries, but no more.
2. Download the Verity installer from www.adobe.com/go/verity. You have to enter your CF serial number.  Only drawback is that it seems you need a ColdFusion MX 7 serial number to download it, and the search services that get installed are MX 7 and not 8.
3. This is what worked for me: Run the verity-install batch file located inside your /verity folder where you have ColdFusion installed..  On our server it took a few minutes to run, spewed out a few errors due to a likely partial installation, or partial uninstall, however it ended up creating the “ColdFusion 8 Search services” in the Control Panel > Services.

You might also be interested in the Adobe technote about this for ColdFusion MX 7.

One other thing to note is that the Verity Search services install on an incrementing port number.  So for  ColdFusion MX 7 the install port was 9550.  For ColdFusion 8, the installation port was 9551 and so on.. Likely a good way to run multiple versions of ColdFusion on one server without conflict, good thinking!

After enjoying the alpha and beta testing of Coldfusion 9, it has finally been released to the world to do what no other language for the web can do.

Get more done with less code, out of the box. ColdFusion has been my secret swiss-army knife for the past 10 years, while continuing to work with PHP, .NET and the likes.

Download your copy today at Adobe, in either a fully-functioning trial copy, or a never-expiring developer’s edition here.

One thing I’ve found myself doing more and more in ColdFusion is using it for it’s integration powers to parse data, or do batch performing tasks.  With it’s Java underbelly, ColdFusion does most things great, and if you want even more performance, tie into the Java layer!

I come from the group of people who pursue the dream that computers and technology should make people’s lives easier.  That’s why ruthless automation is at the center of most startups, or businesses that are growing.  Keep people dealing with people — what they do best, and let your system handle the details for you!

1) Maintain a file upload table (Parent table). For every file you upload you should be able to keep a list of each file and what status it is in (uploaded, processed, unprocessed)

2) Temp table to store all the rows of the data file. (child table) Import the entire data file into a temporary table. Attempting to do it all in memory will inevitably lead to some errors. Each row in this table will link to a file upload table entry above.

3) Maintain a processing status – For each row of the datafile you bring in, set a “process/unprocessed” tag. This way if it breaks, you can start from where you left off. As you run through each line, set it to be “processed”.

4) Transaction – use cftransaction if possible to commit all of it at once, or at least one line at a time (with your 5 queries). That way if something goes boom, you don’t have one row of data that is half computed/processed/updated/tested.

5) Once you’re done processing, set the file name entry in the table in step 1 to be “processed”

By using the approach above, if something fails, you can set it to start where it left off, or at least have a clearer path of where to start investigating, or worst case clean up in your data. You will have a clear way of displaying to the user the status of the current upload processing, where it’s at, and where it left off if there was an error.

If you have any questions, let me know.

Other thoughts:

1. You can increase timeouts, give the VM more memory, put it in 64 bit but all of those will only increase the capacity of your system so much. It’s a good idea to do these per call and do it in conjunction with the above.
2. Java has some neat file processing libraries that are available as CFCS. if you run into a lot of issues with speed, you can use one of those to read it into a variable and then into the database
3. If you are playing with XML, do not use coldfusion’s xml parsing. It works well for smaller files and has fits when things get bigger. There are several cfc’s written out there (check riaforge, etc) that wrap some excellent java libraries for parsing xml data. You can then create a cfquery manually if need be with this data.

Coldfusion is power with ease. It gets most anything done faster, cheaper, on time compared to any other language.

The language is no where in decline or dying, it’s used by very large organizations who seem to value CF developers highly. Developers can be hard to find, but on the flip side, its probably the easiest language to learn for the web and easily among the top in terms of power and ability.

I do a fair amount of PHP work too and all I have to say is that if I have the choice, I use ColdFusion. I have often put in two bids on a project with the Coldfusion bid being 75% the price of the PHP price because it saves so much time. The cost of a CF license has never been an issue, and now there’s plenty of great open source engines.

In the 10+ years I have been with ColdFusion, I have only had more and more work, and focus on it almost exclusively when I have a chance. It is the programming language I think in, and thankfully so, as it’s pretty simple.

The wealth of built in features it comes with, standardized from Adobe can’t be matched by any other language that I’ve found so far. You would end up buying a lot of third party libraries to work with PDF’s, etc., that all comes built in to CF.

There’s a lot of other great points that have been made here. What do you have to lose? Try it out for a few months, you can always move to something else, but I don’t think you’ll look back.