Simon Bingham's Web Development Blog - Last 20 posts

Creating a PDF file and forcing a download with CFDOCUMENT

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

When using CFDOCUMENT to create a PDF file by default the file will be output to the web browser. If you want to force the file to download instead you can do the following: <cfheader name=...

DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) programming

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

I'm capturing this here for my own reference, but it may be useful to others. In software engineering, Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY) is a principle of software development aimed at reduci...

Preserving carriage returns when displaying textarea content

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

When displaying textarea content on a web page carriage returns are ignored resulting in the content appearing on a single line. In ColdFusion to ensure the content appears as intended you can ...

Persisting form data as JSON

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

I recently worked on a project where I needed to store a large amount of data from a questionnaire in a database. My initial approach was to create a table with fields corresponding to each of my f...

A constant battle with spam

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Since starting my blog last year I've faced a constant battle with evil spambots adding content to the site in the form of blog comments. I've used a number of approaches to prevent spam wi...

Adding a row to a table containing form fields using jQuery

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The following example shows how to add a new row to a table containing form fields using jQuery. Firstly, create a table and a button that will add the new table row when clicked. <form&g...

My new year's resolutions for 2012

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Beyond making an effort to be happier, nicer to people and less stressed I am not a big fan of new year's resolutions. However, from a programming point of view, there are a few things I plan t...

Importing data from a spreadsheet to a database table using ColdFusion

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

I'm currently working on a project where I need to import a list of products from a spreadsheet into a database table. Here is the ColdFusion script I have writted to complete the task. <...

Converting a string to title case in ColdFusion

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

The following function takes a string and converts it to title case. <cffunction name="titleCase" returntype="string" output="FALSE"> <cfargument name=&...

How to make a telephone number clickable on iPhone or Android

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

To make a telephone number clickable on an iPhone or Android device simply wrap it in an HTML <a> tag. When the link is clicked the device's phone will be activated. Don't forget to p...

ColdFusion ORM paging in FW/1 (Framework One)

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Firstly, in your Handler add maxresults and offset keys to the RC structure and give them some default values. Maxresults is the number of results to be displayed per page and offset is the number ...

Integrating Gravatar with your blog

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Today I integrated Gravatar with my blog so, for commenters who have a Gravatar account, you'll now see an avatar next to their blog post comments. As long as you have a commenter's ema...

Moving page elements using jQuery

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

I'm currently working on a project to convert a web site to a responsive design. On mobile devices I want the primary page content to appear near the top of the page with other (less important)...

Making your web site's navigation mobile friendly

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

I am currently working on a project to convert a web site to a responsive design. The site's navigation has a lot of links arranged in list format so, rather than displaying the navigation in l...

Foundation: Rapid prototyping and building framework

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Today I finished integrating Foundation framework with my blog. Foundation describes itself as 'an easy to use, powerful, and flexible framework for building prototypes and production code on a...

Improving your web site's meta tags with Google Webmaster Tools

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Google Webmaster Tools provides a free and easy way to make your website more Google-friendly. The HTML Suggestions report (Diagnostics > HTML Suggestions) provides information to help you ...

Simple CRUD using CFGRID

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 23:00:00 GMT

I'm currently working on a project where my client needs to be able to create, read, update and delete records in a table displayed on a web page. In ColdFusion CFGRID solves this problem and h...

Replicating Jira's time tracking functionality in ColdFusion

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 23:00:00 GMT

I've been working on a project where I wanted to replicate the time tracking functionality used in Jira. Jira allows you to enter a time period in the format of "4d 12h 30m" (4 days, ...

Converting an array of entities to a list in ColdFusion 9

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 23:00:00 GMT

The following sample code shows how to convert an array of entities to a list in ColdFusion 9. // load an array of category entities categories = EntityLoad( "Category" ); //...

Related selects using jQuery, ColdFusion 9 ORM & FW/1

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 23:00:00 GMT

I'm currently working on a Framework One project where I needed to populate a second select list (contacts) based upon the selection made in the first select list (clients). With some help ...