Raymond Camden's ColdFusion Blog

ColdFusion/ORM Example - Filtering with a many to many

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:08:00 -0500

Let me be clear - I'm not sure this is the best way to do this - but it worked and as it took me a while to Google up the answer and test it, I thought I'd share. Ok - so imagine an entity that has a many-to-many relationship. A good example is a blog entry with many categories. Any one blog entry may have multiple categories assigned to it. How would you write a query to return all blog entries in a specific category? Here is how I did it (and I apologize for not linking to the post - I forget exactly what I saw this):

Obviously the 4 there is hard coded and would be replaced with a bound parameter.

Friday Contest: You are CF Dude

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:26:00 -0500

Today's contest is 100% non-code based. I've got a 20 dollar Amazon gift cert to the best impersonation of the famous (imho) ColdFusion Dude: I know you guys can do better than this... Contest ends at 5PM CST.

Ask a Jedi: Name conflicts on file rename/move

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:39:00 -0500

Matt asks:

My question is - is there a simple way to check for nameconflict on cffile action=rename like there ins on cffile action=upload. I have an application where I want to rename whatever they upload to match their order number. It's fine if they just upload one image, but not cool if there is more than one. I'm just checking to see if there is an easier way than some kind of fileexists, then add a 1 to the filename before the rename.

Unfortunately there isn't a simpler way, not that I'm aware of. Your solution is one I used myself very recently. Here is a live working example of code that is run after I used cffile/upload and did security checks. That portion is done and now I just need to copy it to the storage directory. [More]

ColdSpring Presentation - Slides and Code

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:24:00 -0500

I've embedded the SlideSix version of my ColdSpring presentation from yesterday. This does not include the recording URL. I am working on that. When I get it working, I'll edit it at SlideSix and will not update this entry (but I may post a comment). Enjoy - and sorry for the delay. Don't forget - you can download the code by clicking the Menu button.

Demo: Using jQuery and perserving UI state

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:06:00 -0500

This week I had an interesting (email) conversation with a reader. Jason is a .Net developer using jQuery to build a simple form. On his page he had a UI feature where one of two DIVs were displayed. He had no problem with handling the logic of showing one div or another on the client side, but he was interested in how he could persist that change when he submitted his form. I worked up a simple demo of one way that this could be handled. [More]

Checking for updates to tags/functions in ColdFusion 9

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:06:00 -0500

Just a quick tip here. If you want to find out what changed in ColdFusion 9 at a tag/function level, there are three places you need to check. All of these may be found within the CFML Reference. 1) The first place is the listing of new tags and new functions. This one is kind of obvious. 2) The second place is the Tag changes since ColdFusion 5 and Function changes since ColdFusion 5 pages. This provides a list of all changes since ColdFusion 5. In my opinion, that's a bit much. Adobe should probably limit this to the previous past two versions. But in general, this is another place where you can find out about updates. 3) Finally - there is a third place. Unfortunately, the "Tag/Function changes..." pages do not have a complete history/listing of all changes. A good example of this is the cfgridcolumn tag. Notice how it has a History section? Notice how ColdFusion 9 added a bunch of new types? This was news to me until earlier today when Sam Farmer twittered about the date format. What this means is - it may make sense to run through all of the tags and functions and check the history section for things you may have missed. Unfortunately, even this isn't quite enough. The cfdump page does document the new abort attribute, but it isn't listed in the History nor in the "Tag changes..." page. Edit: Note - sometimes in the History field, the ColdFusion 9 stuff is at the bottom, not the top of the history!

Interesting CFDUMP Bug

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:26:00 -0500

I thought I was going crazy for a minute but I've discovered an interesting bug with CFDUMP under ColdFusion9. Create two components, like so: test.cfc

test2.cfc

Notice that both CFCs have different methods. (I'll explain why test is commented out in a second.) Now put both CFCs in an structure (arrays also demonstrate this bug):

The result is interesting - look at what is in test2 dump: Yep - the methods from test.cfc "leaked" into the second one. If you use an array you see the same results. If you dump each component by itself, however, you do not see a problem. Also - if you uncomment the test method in the second component, the display for that particular method is correct. In other words, it shows the string return type of string, not array. I've filed a bug report for this so hopefully it will get corrected in the next update.

ColdSpring Presentation (Warning - Rough Draft)

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:02:00 -0500

I'm going to give a rough draft presentation today covering ColdFusion and ColdSpring. This is something I've been asked to do for my main contract gig and I'd like to get some feedback on how I can improve the presentation before I give it to them. So with that being said, if you already know ColdSpring, I'd greatly appreciate some constructive feedback on what I can cover better. The presentation will be over Connect at 11:00 AM CST. The URL is: https://admin.na3.acrobat.com/_a204547676/r97288139/. If you can make this, please RSVP by leaving a comment below. I believe I'll be able to record it as well but I'm not sure I will. Depends on how well things go I guess. ;)

BlogCFC 5.9.5 Released (with video)

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:45:00 -0500

I just released BlogCFC 5.9.5 to RIAForge. The readme describes all the changes, but the major focus in this release on improving the editor (lots of jQuery love!). I took a quick video demonstrating some of the new features. I know I need to get a better way of embedding videos on here, but for now the image below will take you to the SWF file directly. Sorry for the all the "uhs" and junk. For some reason I tend to clench up when doing Jing videos. I blame the software. It can't be my fault!

Adobe offering Flex training for ColdFusion developers

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:57:00 -0500

This is pretty cool - Adobe will be starting a multi-city tour this month offering free training in Flex and Flash Builder 4. This training is specifically targeted to experienced ColdFusion developers. Did I mention it was free? Yep - 100% free. The tour begins on November 13 in Texas and ends on the 20th in San Francisco. You can find a complete list, and more details, here: http://www.ce1.com/adobe/2009/flextrainingforcfdevelopers/. It looks like registration is required and limited, so get to it!

Fixing the CFFORM Mask/Scroll problem

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:17:00 -0500

Dave asks:

I have a question regarding masks.

I'm using which includes a few phone number entry fields. I'm applying a mask of "999-999-9999" (since it's all US phone numbers). The resulting HTML includes a CF generated script that focuses the cursor on any fields that contain a mask in order to apply it to the initial value.

Is there a way to disable this but retain the mask? My client is saying that the page "jumps" to the phone number fields instead of loading at the top of the page.

[More]

ColdFusion Administrator Extension - Searcher

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:40:00 -0500

Many moons ago, I released a simple one page CF Admin extension that allowed you to perform searches against Verity collections defined on a ColdFusion server. With Solr now being able in ColdFusion 9 I thought I'd update it. I've reworked it now to support ColdFusion 9 (although it should still run in earlier versions) and I gave it quite a bit of jQuery love as well. Hopefully people find this helpful. In case folks are curious - to provide support for earlier versions of ColdFusion while also enabling it to use new ColdFusion 9 attributes, I simply split the ColdFusion 9 code into a separate include that is only loaded when a ColdFusion 9 server is detected. You can download the bits from the RIAForge project I set up: http://cfadminsearcher.riaforge.org/

Quick ColdFusion Builder Tip - Make it recognize HBMXML Files

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:27:00 -0500

I'm currently fighting (ok, not fighting - debugging - it just feels like a fight) an issue with a ColdFusion 9 site that makes heavy use of ORM. I thought it might help to take a look at the Hibernate config files generated, so I added this to my ormSettings structure in Application.cfc:

I reloaded my application and confirmed that in every folder containing my entity CFCs there was now a file named cfcname.hbmxml, where cfcname matched the name of the CFC. Ok, so far so good. Back in ColdFusion Builder I refreshed my project so I could see the files. But since the extension wasn't recognized, CFB didn't know how to handle it. I had previously opened up HBMXML files with TextMate, so CFB recognized that and sent all requests for such files to TextMate. I wanted to see them within CFB instead so this is what I did. (And to be clear, this should work for any Eclipse product, not just CFB.) I opened up my Preferences and went to General/Editors/File Associations. Click add and specify *.hbmxml for the file type. Lastly - click Add under Associated editors. Select CF Builder XML Editor. Hit Ok to dismiss the preferences panel and you are done.

Some basic Solr/Verity Differences

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:13:00 -0500

For the past week or so I've been working on the updated full-text searching chapter of the ColdFusion Web Application Construction Kit. We are totally removing all mention of Verity (outside of that fact that it used to be the only engine supported) and focusing entirely on Solr. While working through the chapter I ran across a couple of "gotchas" that I thought I'd share for anyone considering migrating to ColdFusion 9 and taking the initiative to also update to Solr. This is by no means a complete list - it's just what I encountered. Comments, corrections, and additions are welcome. Edited: Let me stress - Solr and Verity are very different products. The point of this article is to focus on the differences at the ColdFusion level only. [More]

Ask a Jedi: Add a "Show All" button to CFGRID

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:01:00 -0500

Brett asks:

I was wondering if you have come across anything that would allow me to have a "Show All" feature on a cfgrid. Basically I want to set the page size equal to the recordcount. I have seen some options on the web, but nothing that works for a CF8 html grid that binds to a cfc. Any info you can give me would be great.

Before I answer this - a quick warning. Don't forget that ColdFusion 9 has an entirely updated version of the embedded Ext controls. The code I show here works fine in ColdFusion 9, but has not been tested in ColdFusion 8. Ok, with that out of the way, here is the solution I found. [More]