The No-Dans Club - ColdFusion

Special Guest Josh Adams Presents ColdFusion Builder in RTP March 30th

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:06:00 -0700

Special Guest, and TACFUG favorite, Josh Adams from Adobe will visit March 30th to present a special session on ColdFusion Builder. Food and drink will be provided and all are welcome. Directions and RSVP are at the TACFUG Home Page Make sure to tell your friends and co-workers about this special event!

I present Making Bad Code Good 2010 to The CFMeetup at Noon Today

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:27:00 -0700

If you can join the Online ColdFusion Meetup today (March 18th) at noon EST, we'll talk about code, code quality and show you some techniques to help you make bad code good. This presentation picks up where my 2009 Making Bad Code Good presentation leaves off. Same great concept with all new code samples and techniques. If you work on a legacy application, or on code built by lots of developers over the years, you likely laugh your way through this presentation. I promise to be thought provoking and challenge the way you write code. In this session, we'll look at lots of code samples and walk through making incremental changes to speed development, reduce errors and make life easier for everyone involved. Ideas and concepts in this presentation will help you improve your existing applications and write more maintainable code.

Why you should submit beginner/intermediate sessions to NCDevCon

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:18:00 -0700

NCDevCon is a free two day conference on ColdFusion, Flash, Flex, AIR, HTML, Javascript and CSS. We've been building on the success of last year, and making bigger moves to grow the community. We are a victim of our own success. What I mean by that is, we've taken some big strides to find developers who aren't typically at Adobe conferences. Last year we held a free ColdFusion training day and also a free Flex training day. These training sessions were well received by the audience and much good was done. This year, the interest for these classes has already quadrupled. We have many more developers who have no exposure to either ColdFusion or Flex. As such, we'd like to ask the community for help. Many of the speaker submissions for NCDevCon are advanced sessions. We want those sessions to be included in our conference. We also want some good beginner/intermediate content as well. Of particular interest to us would be sessions that teach newcomers to ColdFusion, how to do common tasks with ColdFusion. The format for these would be 2 hour hands-on blocks. You provide the content and a step by step process, and we'll provide Teachers Assistants to help you keep the class on track. We'll also take care of making sure the attendees have the right software installed. This is a great way to help your fellow developers and future developers. We promise to give you the star treatment while you are with us! Some examples of sessions we'd like to see are:

How to build a contact form
How to build a dynamic product list
Building a data driven JQuery widget with ColdFusion
Reusing layouts in ColdFusion
Whatever else you can think of

So, if you would like to take part in this unique opportunity, let us know. We thank you in advance for the consideration.

How to customize the ColdFusion AutoSuggest

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 07:11:00 -0700

ColdFusion 8 and 9 have an autosuggest functionality that just couldn't be simpler. If you want to have an autosuggest input on the screen, you can do it with a single line of code:

That snippet will place an autosuggest box on the screen and allow a choice of english, spanish or french. Snazzy yeah? If you want, you can bind the autosuggest to a javascript function, or directly to a CFC, making data retrieval and formatting very simple.

You can also make more complex examples, take a look at the ColdFusion 9 Documentation for Autosuggest for some ideas. All this is possible because ColdFusion used the extensive YUI library under the hood. The control used by the ColdFusion Autosuggest is the YUI AutoComplete widget. Let's say you wanted to do something that the YUI AutoComplete offers, but isn't in the ColdFusion documentation, what do you do? [More]

ColdFusion License Key Invalid?

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:48:00 -0700

I'm having all my servers upgraded to ColdFusion 9. In the process we ran into a situation where a perfectly valid key was not accepted by the ColdFusion installer. The serial number that you entered is invalid After a little troubleshooting, Tim Geist at Viviotech (top notch hosts) found an Adobe KB on Invalid License Keys and Linux:

When installing ColdFusion 9 Standard onto a Linux operating system, you may encounter the issue where the installer does not accept the serial number. When you enter the number into the installer, you will receive a message similar to the following: * The message 'The serial number that you entered is invalid' * A red cross will appear next to the Serial Number text field The installer will not let you progress any further.

Read More Apparently, proceeding with the developer installation, then entering the license key in later fixes the issue. I'm sure this will be remedied in a future point release of ColdFusion.

Hey look, Jamie Metcher is Blogging!

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:35:00 -0700

Jamie Metcher, one of the wild and talented Aussies, is blogging now at http://lagod.id.au/blog/. If you, (like me), wondered what an lagod is, Jamie explains why he chose lagod on one of his pages. Happy blogging Jamie.

So you wanna plan a conference?

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:14:00 -0700

We've just finished up the CFinNC conference and by all digital accounts, it went rather well. Most things ran on time, lunch arrived promptly and the facility at NC State College of Textile was top notch. I've been an attendee, speaker, teacher and a sponsor before, but this was my first time from the OTHER side of the registration desk. I have a newly found appreciation for conferences and conference staff. Since this was our first time planning a conference, we learned a lot. I've heard rumors of other groups wanting to put on a similar conference and I want to share a few things we learned along the way.

It helps to have a whole bunch of committed volunteers that see the vision and will take responsibility for completing tasks.
It helps to have a very generous sponsor providing facilities, manpower, AV and Video recording, which if we'd had to procure on our own would have blown our entire budget.
It helps to have committed financial and contributing sponsors that help provide the budget. There will be more expenses than you may think at first.
It helps to reach out to the illustrious conference diva Liz Frederick and get timely help and advice along the way.
It helps to get an information organization strategy in place, so the team isn't having to dig through mountains of emails, twitters, mailing list and other channels just to get status on deliverables. Maybe use a forum or a collaboration system with ticketing or something for this. Email and Excel are not the answer!
It helps to periodically test your Contact Us form. Or Bad things can happen.
It helps to put out the menu and the schedule as early as possible so you can help folks know what to expect and how to arrange their travel plans.
It helps to overcommunicate with speakers, sponsors and attendees. Seriously.
It helps to go ahead and just make mediocre decisions earlier than wait and try to make great decisions later.
It helps to understand that if you are running the conference, you will not have a single moment to socialize. You probably won't like this and neither will all your friends.
It helps to understand that there will be problems and snags and must be fixed, regardless of how much planning you do. Fix them quickly and no one will know they even happened.

There is plenty more we learned also, but we'd like to hear from you. We put out a Post Conference Survey to get a 360 degree view of the conference and find ways to improve, should we do this again in the near future. Thanks to all the volunteers, sponsors, speakers and attendees who made this event special. We thank you all for honoring us with your presence. DW

Get Free Model-Glue training this weekend!

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:51:00 -0700

As you've probably seen, I'm giving Free Model Glue training this weekend at BFusion/BFlex in Bloomington, Indiana. This will be the last Free Model-Glue training before we start the MG Training Roadshow, which won't be free. (Unless I win the lottery, which could happen). BFusion is a super-mega-low cost event ($10) that has excellent content by excellent speakers. Held on the campus of Indiana University, the vibe at the conference is very open and inviting. If you come, you can get lots of hands on training in ColdFusion and Flex basically for free. Did you know, BFusion was the inspiration for the CFinNC event this past weekend? Yep, good things happen at BFusion/BFlex. Folks get inspired, improve their skills and careers, and forge lasting friendships with really great people. So cancel your weekend plans, get in the car, bus, plane, or train and head down. If you aren't totally impressed with BFusion/BFlex, I'll personally refund your $10. Register for BFusion/BFlex Today! DW

Model Glue:Gesture - Version 3.1 Presentation at CF.Objective(ANZ)

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:53:00 -0700

I'll be presenting on Model-Glue 3, code named Gesture, at the CF.Objective(ANZ) conference, taking place in Melbourne, Australia on November 12th and 13th. I'm glad I'm able to go to this conference because the schedule is packed with quality material by highly decorated speakers. Having interacted with a number of Australian developers through mailing lists and chat, I'm very pleased to meet some of the legends in person and to meet the very vibrant, entertaining ColdFusion community from Australia, New Zealand and Asia. Seats are limited and there are less than 4 weeks until the conference. Register today! I hope to see you there!

CFinNC is close to a sell out

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:30:00 -0700

When we started talking about planning the CFinNC conference, we knew we wanted to provide the best possible training and education for zero cost. This goal was ambitious and required a large dedicated, experienced conference planning team with a large budget. Since we were a small, volunteer, inexperienced group of programmers with zero budget, I've been entertained and surprised at times by the proceedings. For those who don't know, the CFinNC planning team is pretty much the entire Triangle Area ColdFusion User Group. This is the premiere ColdFusion User Group on the planet and anyone who thinks differently can come to CFUnited for a smackdown in the Sumo Ring. Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors and the creativity and dedication of our planning teams, we are set to have the very best Adobe Platform ever, in the state of North Carolina. The good news for us, and the bad news for those who've been delaying their registration, is we are close to sold out. (Editors Note: Can a free conference really sell out?) Conferences generally have two periods of rapid registrations, generally around the first two weeks of registration, and the last 2 weeks of registration. CFinNC starts Oct 17th, so we are definitely in the last 2 weeks. Though interestingly enough and based on highly complicated computer models, we'll have to close registration ahead of schedule. If you've been postponing registration for CFinNC, do it now. As my 9 year old Nephew so eleoquently put it, Snoozers are losers.

So you wanna learn Regex? - Part 5

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:13:00 -0700

Welcome to So You Wanna Learn Regex? Part 5. This is our last part of this series, mostly because I don't know a whole lot more than this. If you want more tutorials about regex, go bug Ben. He knows more about this than I ever will and I hear he has a blog... In our last exercise, we looked at a simple way to add cfqueryparam to a bunch of queries. This was accomplished by making a pattern consisting of 3 groups then using one of the groups to populate a literal string. In this exercise, we are going to clean up some data scripts. Let's suppose you are generating database scripts and your script generator puts the primary key in there. For whatever reason, you want to remove this.

Assume this set of declarations:

INSERT INTO `memberchallenge` VALUES ('11', '1', '19', null, '2008-11-14 14:07:59', '2008-11-14 14:07:59', '1', '2008-11-14 14:07:59', '0');
INSERT INTO `memberchallenge` VALUES ('12', '2', '19', null, '2008-11-14 15:40:51', '2008-11-14 15:40:51', '1', '2008-11-14 15:40:51', '0');
INSERT INTO `memberchallenge` VALUES ('14', '5', '19', null, '2008-11-14 20:14:26', '2008-11-14 20:14:26', '5', '2008-11-14 20:14:26', '0');
INSERT INTO `memberchallenge` VALUES ('15', '1', '20', null, '2008-11-23 18:19:31', '2008-11-23 18:19:31', '1', '2008-11-23 18:19:30', '0');
INSERT INTO `memberchallenge` VALUES ('16', '2', '20', null, '2008-11-23 18:20:09', '2008-11-23 18:20:09', '1', '2008-11-23 18:20:09', '0');
INSERT INTO `memberchallenge` VALUES ('17', '1', '21', null, '2008-11-25 20:32:44', '2008-11-25 20:32:44', '1', '2008-11-25 20:32:44', '0');
INSERT INTO `memberchallenge` VALUES ('18', '2', '21', null, '2008-11-25 20:33:01', '2008-11-25 20:33:01', '1', '2008-11-25 20:33:01', '0');

What we want, is to turn:INSERT INTO `memberchallenge` VALUES ('11', '1', '19', null, '2008-11-14 14:07:59', '2008-11-14 14:07:59', '1', '2008-11-14 14:07:59', '0'); into: INSERT INTO `memberchallenge` VALUES ('1', '19', null, '2008-11-14 14:07:59', '2008-11-14 14:07:59', '1', '2008-11-14 14:07:59', '0'); Note the first value in the VALUES statement has vanished.. this would be the primary key in our dataload script. So as you know, we define this pattern in the gobbledegook of regular expressions. When read one chunk at a time, these actually make sense. We'll go through the exercise, then look at why it worked.

In Eclipse, perform the following:

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So you wanna learn Regex? - Part 4

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:50:00 -0700

Welcome to So You Wanna Learn Regex? Part 4. In our last exercise, we looked at a simple way to clean a whole bunch of strings. This was accomplished by making a pattern, then removing everything according to that pattern. This time we are going to add cfqueryparam to a query. Say for example, that you have a junior developer who has been turned loose on her first application and she's done a good job, except for she didn't use cfqueryparam. You just found this out and the site has to go live in 10 minutes and you have 200 queries to fix. Do you:

a) Download the code to your laptop then pull the fire alarm to stall for time?
b) Start blasting your resume out on Monster.com?
c) Take a fistfull of aspirin, knowing your forearms will ache in the morning?

If you answered d) none of the above, please keep reading.

Assume this set of declarations:

UPDATE plant
	SET 	Symbol = '#form.symbol#',
			SynonymSymbol = '#form.SynonymSymbol#',
     		ScientificNameWithAuthor = '#form.ScientificNameWithAuthor#',
     		CommonName = '#CommonName#',
     		Family = '#Family#'
WHERE PlantCode = '#form.plantCode#'

What we want, is to turn: '#form.symbol#' into: <cfqueryparam value="#form.symbol#" cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar"> So as you know, we define this pattern in the gobbledegook of regular expressions. When read one chunk at a time, these actually make sense. We'll go through the exercise, then look at why it worked.

In Eclipse, perform the following:

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So you wanna learn Regex? - Part 3

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:25:00 -0700

Welcome to So You Wanna Learn Regex? Part 3. In our last exercise, we looked at a simple way to wrap a function argument inside a new function. This was accomplished by making a pattern, defining a group and using a back reference. This time we will look at how to clean some strings. Say for example, that you run a website called The Health Challenge and say for example, you wanted to use some of your fine tax dollar funded research to deliver motivating messages to the members. Well, you could just happen across Small Steps and just use their content. After all, it is in the public domain. So you happily cut a LARGE chunk of these from the web site, but now you have to clean them.

Assume this set of declarations:

(# 11)  	Avoid food portions larger than your fist.
(# 12) 	Mow lawn with push mower.
(# 13) 	Increase the fiber in your diet.
(# 17) 	Join an exercise group.
(# 20) 	Do yard work.
(# 24) 	Skip seconds.
(# 25) 	Work around the house.
(# 26) 	Skip buffets.
(# 29) 	Take dog to the park.
(# 30) 	Ask your doctor about taking a multi-vitamin.
....( 700 more lines)

What we want, is to turn: (# 11) Avoid food portions larger than your fist. into: Avoid food portions larger than your fist. See, we like the content, we don't like the parentheticals nor the whitespace. Do we flex our forearms in preparation for a copy/paste session? Do we call KeyboardsAreUs.com and have 2 fresh keyboards airdropped, knowing we'll wear out some keys? (if you said yes, please delete your hard drive and apply at KFC.) Regular expressions are our friends. A Regex is a pattern matcher, and it can do stuff. We can see our code is repetitive and the pattern we want is: Get rid of the parentheticals and the extra whitespace. (Same stuff we'd do over and over via cut/paste/etc, isn't it? Though in a copy paste, you are talking about 5 keystrokes per line times 700 lines. That is 3500 keystrokes, unless you type like me, in which case it would be nearly 4 million.) So as you know, we define this pattern in the gobbledegook of regular expressions. When read one chunk at a time, these actually make sense. We'll go through the exercise, then look at why it worked.

In Eclipse, perform the following:

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So you wanna learn Regex? - Part 2

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:24:00 -0700

Welcome to So You Wanna Learn Regex? Part 2. In our last exercise, we looked at a simple way to add a new attribute to an HTML tag. This was accomplished by making a pattern, defining a group and using a back reference. This time we will look at a slightly more complicated use case.

Assume this set of declarations:

product.setColor(arguments.color);
product.setSize(arguments.size);
product.setCondition(arguments.condition);
product.setRating(arguments.rating);
product.setReliability(arguments.reliability);
product.setNeedsBatteries(arguments.needsBatteries);

What we want, is to turn: product.setColor(arguments.color); into: product.setColor( htmlEditFormat(arguments.color) ); Normally, this would be a forearm/wrist fatiguing flail on the keyboard, furiously cutting/pasting and generally flapping about. Not so with Regular Expressions. A Regex is a pattern matcher, and it can do stuff. We can see our code is repetitive and the pattern we want is: Take Everything Inside The Parenthesis, and Wrap It In A htmlEditFormat() Function. (Same stuff we'd do over and over via cut/paste/etc, isn't it?) We can define this pattern in the gobbledegook defining a regular expression. When read one chunk at a time, these actually make sense. We'll go through the exercise, then look at why it worked.

In Eclipse, perform the following:

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So you wanna learn Regex? - Part 1

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:18:00 -0700

I've had a set of blog posts stewing in my brain for a while. Steve Nelson, last year, helped me out with a Regular Expression (Regex) and I made it a point to practice my Regex skills more. This series will show how to use Regular Expressions in Eclipse and we'll learn some helpful tips along the way. This series is for you if you are the kind of developer that reads Ben Nadel's blog posts containing Regular Expressions, and has no idea what the heck he is talking about. Seriously Ben, this is unintelligible to us mere mortals:

<cfset blogContent = reReplace( blogContent, "</?\w+(\s*[\w:]+\s*=\s*(""[^""]*""|'[^']*'))*\s*/?>", " ", "all" ) />

(It looks like a catnip crazed kitty went for a prance on a keyboard, doesn't it?) Enough guffaws and such. On with the learning.

Editors Note:

Simply reading these blog posts aren't going to help you. Open eclipse, and copy/paste this stuff into your find/replace dialog. You'll learn more, or your money back!

So, firstly we need a use case. Let's pretend we are going through some old code and looking to add HTMLEditFormat around some arguments so that the forms won't break if there are quotes.

Assume this set of declarations:

<input name="fred" value="willy" />
<input name="bill" value="mickey" />
<input name="erin" value="harry" />
<input name="baz" value="pissette" />

What we want, is to turn: <input name="fred" value="willy" /> into: <input name="fred" id="fred" value="willy" /> Normally, this would be a forearm/wrist fatiguing flail on the keyboard, furiously cutting/pasting and generally flapping about. Not so with Regular Expressions. A Regex is a pattern matcher, and it can do stuff. We can see our code is repetitive and the pattern we want is: make a new attribute called 'id' and populate it with the value from the attribute 'name'... which is what we'd do over and over via cut/paste/etc. We can define this pattern in the gobbledegook defining a regular expression, of course, else I'd be writing this post about Cute LOLCats, not Cute Regexes., wouldn't I? We'll go through the exercise, then look at why it worked.

In Eclipse, perform the following:

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