Raymond Camden's ColdFusion Blog

Quick example of jQuery/ColdFusion 9 multifile uploader

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:09:00 -0500

I was talking to a reader earlier today about ColdFusion 9's new multi-file uploader. I mentioned my earlier blog post which goes into details about the "multiple post" nature of this control, specifically if you have other form fields involved. He came back with an interesting scenario. How would you handle allowing for metadata about each file upload. By that I mean imagine the following: You've got a form with a few basic fields in (name, email, etc), and then you have the multi-file uploader. For each file you upload you want to ask the user to enter data about the file, like perhaps a nicer name. How could you handle that? Here is one simple example that makes use of jQuery. I wrote this very quickly so please forgive the ugliness. [More]

Friday Contest - Time for the smack down

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:26:00 -0500

Ok, let me start off by saying that I do not condone knocking other languages. I do it - in jest - mainly because I've had to deal with so much in return. I figure if we ColdFusion developers can take it, we can, from time to time, "vent" a bit and deal it back. As it stands, we get our code down in half the time anyway so we have the opportunity to goof off. A few weeks back I held a "You are CF Dude" contest. Jim Leether won that with this beauty: Today its time to reverse it, go Bizzaro, or however you want to say it. Today's contest is "You are Not CF Dude". As an example... Submit your best picture (work safe please) and the winner will get another Amazon gift certificate. All languages are open - in fact - if you want to tease ColdFusion a bit, that's fine by me. Just have fun with it. And again - folks - it is in good fun. I don't hate PHP or any other language. If this contest makes your mad, I suggest backing away from the computer and taking a few deep breathes. It's Friday - have fun!

Recording for Intro to ColdFusion 9 ORM

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:21:00 -0500

For those who couldn't make my ColdFusion 9 ORM presentation today, Charlie Arehart has posted the recording:

http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/p73216529/

As I mentioned in the presentation, the slides (for the most part) and code are the same from the MAX presentation. I was able to go a lot longer and show a lot more, but resource wise, everything is the same. Therefore, I'm linking to my previous SlideSix upload below.

Quick Tip - CFLOG and JSON

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:53:00 -0500

As my friends will tell me, I'm something of a cflog fiend. I use logging as my primary debugging tool. It's not perfect, but I find it to be especially effective in Model-Glue applications where one request bounces all over the place from controllers to model files to views. The only problem with cflog though is that it can only log text, not complex data. You can always switch to cfdump for that - don't forget that ColdFusion 8 added the ability to dump to a file. While this works, I prefer the "slimness" of a line of text. So when I need to log some complex data, I just use JSON. For example:


var userData = maf.login(arguments.username, arguments.password);
writeLog(file='picard',text='login good for #arguments.username#');
writeLog(file='picard',text=serializeJSON(userData));
return userData;

New comments policy

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:38:00 -0500

I've found that my blog typically gets spammed between midnight and 6AM daily. This isn't a big deal normally as I just use the "one click delete" feature of BlogCFC to clean up the spam. Last night I got a butt load of spam though so I've decided to simply enable comment moderation before I go to bed. Hopefully this won't bug my non-American readers too much!

jQuery Quickie: Highlighting a table row after selecting a checkbox

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:56:00 -0500

One of the nice little UI features in GMail is how it will highlight an entire table row when you check the checkbox for a particular mail message. It's a relatively simple thing to do but I wanted to whip up a quick sample for myself. Here is one way to do it with ColdFusion and jQuery. [More]

Talking about ColdFusion 9 and ORM Tomorrow

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:08:00 -0500

Tomorrow I'll be giving my "Introduction to ColdFusion ORM" presentation to the Online ColdFusion Meetup. For more details, and to RSVP (please RSVP, it inflates my already prodigious ego into even greater sizes) please see the meetup page. It will be held online - for free (as always!) at 11AM CST. This is a repeat of the session I gave at MAX, so if you can't make it, you can always watch it on Adobe TV: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2009-develop/introduction-to-coldfusion-orm One difference with tomorrows meeting however is that I'll have more time. There were demos I didn't quite have time to cover and I had to skimp a bit on the relationship side. As always this one will be recorded for later viewing.

Ask a Jedi: Round robin display of data

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:36:00 -0500

This came in via my forums today and I thought it was too interesting to not blog about. If you read his post, you can see he needs to support rotating data such that A B C changes to B A C. However, he also has groupings within his data. So imagine now you have ABC in the first group and DE in the second. Your rotation now needs to be "in" group, so on your first iteration you have: A B C D E. On your second you rotate each group to end with: B C A E D. I whipped up the following solution and I'd love to see alternatives. [More]

Looking For: Writing ColdFusion in Visual Studio

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:11:00 -0500

A reader asked me this morning about plugins/extensions/etc for doing ColdFusion development in Microsoft's Visual Studio. He was able to find Flex support (Amethyst and Tofino) and is hoping something may exist for ColdFusion. Anyone have a suggestion?

AIR 2.0 Released to Labs

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:23:00 -0500

Woot! Adobe's AIR 2.0 has now been released to Labs. (Along with the Flash Player 10.1 pre-release.) I'd recommend this excellent blog article by Christian Cantrell for more information: AIR 2 Public Beta Resources. I'd love to know - who out there is using AIR? Either for their business or for fun.

"Pretty Dates" with jQuery (ColdFusion example)

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:44:00 -0500

Just a quick note here to share a jQuery plugin that Todd Sharp shared with me: Prettydate. Prettydate takes dates (which you would hide within your DOM) and formats them in a more generic "time since.." form. So for example, a date within a few seconds will post as "just now", whereas an entry a few minutes old will display as "5 minutes old." The plugin supports dates up to one month old and will automatically update while your users look at a page. This creates a cool effect. They may initially see: But within a few minutes this will be: I created a quick ColdFusion script that demonstrates this. The one thing you have to remember is that you must convert the dates to ISO8601 format. In the following example I've used hard coded dates but obviously you could get this data from a database:













	
	

	
		
		
			#article.title#

			
			Some kind of teaser here...

The screen shots I pasted above show the result of this example. For more docs and examples, see the plugin's home page. Note - this is an update to a plugin John Resig originally created so if you Google, make sure you get the new one.

Home from RIAUnleashed

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:28:00 -0500

I got home from Boston last night after attending RIAUnleashed. I want to thank Brian Rinaldi for asking me to speak there. He ran a tremendous conference. One day - densely packed - and a great combination of server side and client side sessions. I'd highly recommend folks attend next year. I know that not everyone can afford the money and time for the "big" conferences, so you should definitely consider RIAUnleashed. If any of the attendees read this blog, I'd love to hear your feelings as well.

Some notes on CFFILE/UploadAll

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 06:37:00 -0500

Earlier this week I blogged about the new multi-file uploader in ColdFusion 9. While that control handles the front end support for handling multiple uploads, it works hand in hand with a new update to the cffile tag to support multiple file uploads. I did some digging into this and discovered some interesting tidbits. [More]

Exploring CFaaS Presentation

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:27:00 -0500

Hey folks - here are the slides and code from my Exploring ColdFusion as a Service presentation at RIAUnleashed. Please note that these slides and code deserve some explanation. I plan on doing a series of blog posts on CFaaS over the next few days to help others learn about this new ColdFusion 9 feature. This code comes with a license requirement that you don't laugh at my Flex code.

Call for Speakers: CFUNITED and cfObjective

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:36:00 -0500

Two big announcements from two of the largest ColdFusion conferences. CFUNITED has opened its call for speakers for the 2010 year. cfObjective has also opened up their call for speakers. I was a bit surprised to find it not mentioned on the web site. You have to hit up Sean Corfield's blog post to get the form.