Must Have Tool For Ajax/Remoting Work!

Posted At : January 7, 2009 11:42 AM | Posted By : Dan Wilson
Related Categories: Rapid Development,Ajax

Nathan Mische, one of the best JavaScript programmers I know, works on the ColdFire project. ColdFire is sort of like Firebug for Firefox, only geared towards ColdFusion.

If you've developed any sort of Ajax functionality, you know testing remote services can often be frustrating. Trying to get a handle on what parameters are being passed, how to send test parameters, knowing what the results of the request were, often mean dealing with a number of problem layers and a lot of confusing Red Herrings.

If you do any Ajax work, take 72 seconds out of your life to watch this quick screencast on the Request Queue in ColdFire.

See how efficient the workflow is? See how quick one can test remote services? How much time would this save you, what with all the cfdumping, the alerts, the aggravation?

What are you waiting for? Download ColdFire Now!

What Is ColdFire?

ColdFire is an extension to Firebug. It provides debug information in a Firebug tab as opposed to the bottom of the page. This lets you debug and keep your site layout intact, since ColdFusion's built-in debug information can sometimes mess with your site layout.

ColdFire currently shows debugging information in the following tabs:

  • General
  • Execution Times
  • DB Queries
  • Traces
  • Timer
  • Variables
  • Request Queue

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Hi Dan, thanks for the link. One thing to note is that, due to the way CF 8 tries to suppress debugging output for AJAX requests, you have to jump through some hoops to get ColdFire to work with CF 8's built in AJAX functionality. If you notice, the example in that video uses Spry and calls a CFM, so ColdFire works. For more on this see the following blog post: http://www.mischefamily.com/nathan/index.cfm/2008/...

Also, did you know you can use ColdFire to debug CF powered Flex apps? Check out this post for more on that: http://www.mischefamily.com/nathan/index.cfm/2008/...
# Posted By Nathan Mische | 1/7/09 12:37 PM
I downloaded and installed Coldfire, but not without some issues.
The install.txt file is garbled, but I was able to decipher the instructions.
The instructions for the debugging setting in CF8 are not correct, and if you
try to customize the reporting options, the Settings Summary will show that
debugging is not enabled. The current version of Firebug for Foxfire 3
is 1.3.0. So, after jumping through all these hoops, I hope Coldfire works!
# Posted By DoctorG | 1/27/09 8:23 AM
@DoctorG: What version of ColdFire are you using? If you are on Windows I would suggest opening with WordPad or a text editor other than Notepad. You are correct that the install.txt incorrectly states Firebug 1.2. ColdFire 1.3 is designed to work with Firebug 1.3.0. so that will be updated shortly. If you find any other parts of the install.txt confusion I suggest opening a bug on the ColdFire project site, or better yet submitting corrections.
# Posted By Nathan Mische | 1/27/09 5:46 PM
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