dans.blog

Using Eclipse to find queries that aren't using <cfqueryparam />

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:13:14 -0400

With all the chatter about recently SQL injections attacks, I thought I'd try and whip up a regex I could use in Eclipse/CFEclipse to find <cfquery> tags that have exposed variables (strings wrapped in #...#) that don't use the <cfqueryparam /> tag.

Well I'm far from a regex master, here's what I came up with:

<cfquery\s[^>]*>([^#]*(((?<!value=")#[^#]*#)))((?<!</cfquery)[^>]*?)</cfquery>

The query does not explicitly check for the token <cfqueryparam, but instead checks to make sure that CF variables are preceded with the string value="—which is the attribute used in <cfqueryparam />.

The query isn't perfect and may pick up occasional false positives, but from my testing it seems to work pretty well. If you have some improvements to the regex, make sure to post a comment and I'll update the post with the most recent version.

Dream Theater to appear in Rock Band 2

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:12:56 -0400

I was just looking over the song list announced for Rock Band 2 and the inclusion of Dream Theater really caught my eye. While I would have picked a song different from Panic Attack, I'm giddy to see Dream Theater show up in a game like this.

Some other song that caught my eye were:

AC/DC - Let There Be Rock
Alice in Chains - Man in the Box
Billy Idol - White Wedding Pt. I
Foo Fighters - Everlong
Kansas - Carry On Wayward Son
Megadeth - Peace Sells
Metallica - Battery
Ratt - Round & Round
Rush - The Trees

For a complete song list, see Gizmodo's coverage of Rock Band 2.

Important shortcuts for Eclipse & CFEclipse

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:53:55 -0400

[UPDATED: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 at 8:06:45 AM]

Two great posts by Mike Henke and John Whish over the past week cover some really important keyboard shortcuts for Eclipse & CFEclipse. They cover the gamut of some of my favorites (like CTRL+SHIFT+R) and some ones I always forget about (such as CTRL+DEL and CTRL+BACKSPACE.) These are definitely shortcuts you should be memorizing to make you work more efficient.

General Eclipse Shortcuts

[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[L]: A list of all keyboard shortcuts (not mapped by default in CFEclipse--you can create a copy of this shortcut in the Keys preferences and map to [CTRL]+[ALT]+[K] which is open in CFEclipse.)
[CTRL]+[K]: Finds the next occurrence of the highlight text. (NOTE: This is one of the best ways to jump around your document.)
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[K]: Finds the previous occurrence of the highlight text.
[CTRL]+[H]: Brings up the Search & Replace dialog.
[CTRL]+[D]: Delete the current line.
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[DEL]: Deletes to the end of the current line.
[CTRL]+[DEL]: Deletes the next word.
[CTRL]+[BACKSPACE]: Deletes the previous word.
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[X]: Converts highlighted text to uppercase.
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[Y]: Converts highlighted text to lowercase. </DD
[CTRL]+[Q]: Goes to the last place you made a change.
[ALT]+[LEFT]: Goes "back" to the last open editor in your viewing history.
[ALT]+[RIGHT]: Goes "forward" to the next open editor in your viewing history.
[CTRL]+[E]: The Quick Switch Editor opens a list of all open editors and allows you to quickly switch to any open file.
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[R]: The Open Resource dialogs allows you to quickly open any files in your workspace. This is one I use all the time.
[CTRL]+[3]: The Quick Access menu pretty much helps you find anything in Eclipse by providing a keyword.
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[E]: The Switch to Editor brings up a list of all open editors (and can even span multiple windows.)
[CTRL]+[ALT]+[UP]: Inserts a copy of the currently highlighted line above the current line.
[CTRL]+[ALT]+[DOWN]: Inserts a copy of the currently highlighted line below the current line.
[CTRL]+[HOME]: Jumps to the beginning of the current file.
[CTRL]+[END]: Jumps to the end of the current file.

CFEclipse Shortcuts

[CTRL]+[3]: Wraps text inside #...#.
[CTRL]+[T]: Edit current tag.
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[A]: Inserts <cfabort/> tag.
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[D]: Inserts <cfdump/> tag.
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[O]: Wraps text inside <cfoutput>...</cfoutput> tags.
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[N]: When focus is inside of an HTML/CFML tag, it will jump to the matching open or close tag.
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[U]: Converts highlighted text to uppercase. (NOTE: I recommend using [CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[X] instead because it's a general Eclipse shortcut.)
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[L]: Converts highlighted text to lowercase. (NOTE: I recommend using [CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[Y] instead because it's a general Eclipse shortcut.)
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[P]: Wraps text inside <p>...</p> tags.
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[C]: Wraps text inside a contextual comment (i.e.  for HTML, /*...*/ for scripts).
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[M]: Wraps text inside  tags.
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[Z]: Opens the color picker.
[CTRL]+[\]: Expands or collapses the current code block (<cfif>, <cffunction>, <cfswitch>, etc.)

In CFEclipse, most of your standard shortcuts for formatting (i.e. [CTRL]+[B] = strong) work as well. Learning keyboard shortcuts can really speed up your development process, so I recommend trying to learn one or two a week and introduce them into your coding habits.

The Pencil Project - Sketching & Prototyping with Firefox 3

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:13:07 -0400

The Pencil Project looks like a pretty interesting tool for sketching out and prototyping a site design. It's based on XUL engine in Firefox 3 and looks to be a pretty impressive little open source application. From the Pencil Project website:

The Pencil Project's unique mission is to build a free and opensource tool for making diagrams and GUI prototyping that everyone can use.

Top features:

Built-in stencils for diagraming and prototyping

Multi-page document with background page

On-screen text editing with rich-text supports

PNG rasterizing

Undo/redo supports

Installing user-defined stencils

Standard drawing operations: aligning, z-ordering, scaling, rotating...

Cross-platforms

Adding external objects

And much more...

Pencil will always be free as it is released under the GPL version 2 and is available for virtually all platforms that Firefox 3 can run. The first version of Pencil is tested against GNU/Linux 2.6 with GTK+, Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Make sure to check out the quick tour/screenshots of the application.

ColdFusion Backup & Disaster Recovery License

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:38:53 -0400

Adam Lehman mentioned this the other day on a mailing list (and now has blogged about the CF 8 EULA change); the ColdFusion license changed in v8.01 and it now allows you to have a copy of CF installed for a warm backup server.

From the ColdFusion 8 EULA (PDF):

2.3 Backup and Disaster Recovery. Licensee may make and install a reasonable number of copies of the Software (ColdFusion) for backup and archival purposes and use such copies solely in the event that the primary copy has failed or is destroyed, but in no event may Licensee use such copies concurrently with Production Software or Development Software. Licensee may also install copies of the Software in a Disaster Recovery Environment for use solely in disaster recovery and not for production, development, evaluation or testing purposes other than to ensure that the Software is capable of replacing the primary usage of the Software is case of disaster.

This is great news for smaller shops that want to have a warm/hot backup server that they can easily push live if their production server runs into hardware problems.

Boba Fett + Flashdance = Fettdance...

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 08:14:12 -0400

A good way to start a Monday morning...

Mandalorian Dance
by PatrickBoivin

After DOM manipulation, form fields won't post...

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:36:25 -0400

This is an issue I first ran into several years ago, but I've recently helped two different people who had the same problem and thought it was worth blogging.

If you ever run into a situation where form fields step getting posted to the server after you've done some DOM manipulation, check to make sure your <form/> tag is in a valid location. If the <form/> tag resides as a direct child of either a <table/> or <tr/> tag, then you're going to have problems when the form once you've modified a child element of the <form/> tag.

This behavior does not occur in IE, but it happens in Firefox and several other browsers (I believe Safari exhibits the same behavior.)

Any of the following will break your form post submission:

<table><form><tr> .... </tr></form></table>

<table><tr><form> .... </form></tr></table>

<table><tbody><form> ... </form></tbody></table>

To correct the problem, just place the <form/> tag outside of the <table/> tag:

<form><table><tr> ... </tr></table></form>

I've usually only seen this type of markup on older sites, where I believe the intent of putting the <form/> tag inside the <table/> was to prevent any margins from being inserted into the document. However, this is invalid markup and will come back to haunt you.

NOTE: You can do <table><tr><td><form> .... </form></td></tr></table>. That's perfectly valid HTML. You just need to make sure the <form/> tag is placed somewhere were visible text is allowed.

Refreshing Eclipse Workspace using ANT

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:49:49 -0400

I was looking for a way to programmatically refresh some specific folders in my workspace anytime I ran my ANT script. Eclipse provides several ant tasks that you can use for various purposes, once of which is the <eclipse.refreshLocal /> tag:

<eclipse.refreshLocal resource="MyProject/MyFolder" depth="infinite"/>
resource is a resource path relative to the workspace

depth can be one of the following: zero, one or infinite

However, when I first tried adding this task to my ANT script, I was getting an error that looked like:

BUILD FAILED
c:\path\folder\build.xml:85: Problem: failed to create task or type eclipse.refreshLocal
Cause: The name is undefined.
Action: Check the spelling.

Needless to say, I was pretty confused. So after some brief research, it turns out I accidentally running ANT outside of the Eclipse JRE. To fix this, go open up the External Tools Dialog (Run > External Tools > Open External Tools Dialog...) and make sure the JRE tab is set to "Run in the same JRE as workspace."

I'm not sure how that setting got changed, but I'm glad I found the fix. This also has sped up the first time execution of my ANT scripts.

Akeem Havens, 14 year old quadriplegic, gets signed as a Steeler

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:11:37 -0400

Here's a video segment about Akeem Havens, a 14 year old quadriplegic who got his wish to play video games with Ben Roethlisberger. The Steelers FO office signed Akeem to a 1 day contract and he even got to practice with the Steelers team.

mcDropdown v1.2 released...

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:36:46 -0400

Addressing some more behavior issues being brought up (and adding a few new features,) Giva just released a new version of the mcDropdown plug-in:

Added focus() method
Fixed autocomplete list from showing dropdown when go back levels in FF3
Fixed autocomplete list corruption in when go back levels after using mouse
Added tabindex="-1" to the dropdown arrow (so it shouldn't recieve focus on tabbing)
Fixed tabbing behavior so hitting [TAB] should go to the next element in the tabindex
Autocomplete no longer shows (by default) if the input is empty and recieves focus (use the setting.showACOnEmptyFocus to control this behavior)
Added setting.showACOnEmptyFocus (used for controlling whether the autocomplete list shows on focus if list is empty; default = false)
Fixed noConflict() bug (where $ wasn't being properly scoped)

jQuery mcDropdown Plug-in updated to v1.1a

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:10:21 -0400

Just a quick note that over the weekend I updated the code to the jQuery mcDropdown Plug-in to v1.1a. The update contains:

Fixed Safari keyboard support
Added mouse support for keyboard autocomplete box
Menu mouseout behavior should be functioning better

Do not trust Google's link: operator

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:37:29 -0400

I've noticed this behavior for a while, but was just asked about this by a co-worker. The Google link: operator does not really work as most people expect and certainly not the way I originally expected it to work. Google has this to say about the link: operator:

The query [link:] will list webpages that have links to the specified webpage. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list webpages that have links pointing to the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "link:" and the web page url.

Notice they don't explicitly say anything about the accuracy or volume that will be returned, just that it will return pages that have links. Well, that's not even really true. Sometimes it will return empty results (even when there are legitimate external links to a page (could be even thousands of links.)

If you're really trying to find external links to your site, the best method Google provides is via their Google Webmaster Tools (see How can I see links to my site?.) Even this method apparently won't reveal all external links, but it's much more accurate.

If you have any great tips for listing external links, make sure to share them in the comments.

Running Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 simultaneously

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:22:00 -0400

I've been running my different versions of Firefox under different profiles, that way I can keep each instance unique. This works great, but I still couldn't figure out how to open both Firefox 2 & 3 at the same time. Turns out I was missing the -no-remote command line parameter in my Firefox 3 shortcut.

Here's a great write up on how to run Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 simultaneously—which provides you with full instructions on setting your shortcuts up so you can run Firefox 2 & 3 at the same time.

Multicolumn Dropdown jQuery Plug-in Released!

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:49:00 -0400

Back in April, I posted a preview of a multicolumn dropdown plug-in I was developing for a project at work. Well today we finally officially released the mcDropdown plug-in. I was hoping to release the plug-in sooner, but other projects took precedence and releasing it just got delayed.

I'm really proud of the plug-in and think it provides a really unique form control.

Here's a list of the features:

Creates a multi-column hierarchical select UI component
Binds a text input field or div element to a list element (included nested lists)
Menus are automatically split into columns as needed
Menus are positioned to always stay on the screen
Autocomplete keyboard entry (only valid options are allowed)
Menu automatically scrolls into viewport when opened

You can view a live example over at the plug-in page.

mcDropdown jQuery Plug-in

If you like what you see, make sure to digg it.

Firefox 2 & 3 custom icons...

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:50:31 -0400

Now that Firefox 3 has been released, I really wanted a couple of icons that I could easily identify as either v2 or v3 for my Windows Quick Launch bar. Since I couldn't find any icons out there, I threw together 2 icons which just add the version as an overlay to the original Firefox icon.

I'm not a designer or artist, so I'm sure I could have selected better colors of green, but the contrast works well for what I needed. I can now clearly see which version of Firefox I'm getting ready to load up.

Hopefully someone else will find the icons useful.