Francis Scott's Blog

CF_Implements improved!

2005-11-04T20:02:24-04:00

Very close to pseudo interfaces for Coldfusion CFCs.

Did some rework on the CF_Implements tag. Now it allows you to take the interface type for a function call. It still has some issues working with multiple inheritance with each sub level of inheritance implementing interfaces and/or multiple inheritance of interfaces. If anyone would like to help with this... let me know.

Please only use in a testing environment for now... sometimes it acts weird.

Also I decided to do away with the CFC version, it didnt make sense to me calling a CFC to run a tag like keyword.

I put up a page to show you how the CF_Implements could be used, you can see it working live here.

You can download the tag from here , remember to copy it into your CustomTags directory.

Enjoy

CF_Implements

2005-11-02T17:07:08-04:00

I got bored last night and decided I would try to come up with a way to have an "Implements" keyword in ColdFusion.

The download contains four files

implements.cfm - If you want to use the custom tag version, copy this to your CustomTags directory.
implements.cfc
iComponentCache.cfc - a sample interface
ComponentCache.cfc - a sample class using the "Implements" keyword.

Useage:
For the Custom Tag, at the very top of your CFC put a

<cf_implements interfaces="full.path.to.interface1,full.path.to.interface2,etc,etc" />

It will throw an error if the class does not implement all the methods in the interfaces provided.
Example:

For the implements.cfc, You can use the object's init method to check the interface for an object anywhere. To force a cfc to implement something, use

Example:

If you want to make sure an instance passed to a function uses a certain interface, replace "this" with "arguments.whatevertheinstancevariableis".
Example:

There are a couple other things.

To set the custom tag to "production" mode. put <cf_implements mode="production" /> in your application.cfc/.cfm
To set the implements.cfc to "production" mode, you must pass the argument "mode" with the value of "production" to the init method.
You can also pass in your own CacheManager to the implements.cfc, the passed in CacheManager must implement iComponentManager.

I havent tested this in a production environment, and hardly tested in a testing environment... but would like some feedback before I try to improve this.

Can download it here

Enjoy

Editable CFGrids

2005-10-28T18:38:45-04:00

Had the hardest time making an editable CFGrid go into edit mode after a DataGrid.insertRow() was done. It appears that the insertRow() does not fire the onChange event even though it selects the new row for you. Also if you try to focus on the column in your button's onClick event, something ends up overriding it after the function is done and just the new row ends up being selected.

After quite a bit of time I came up with the following: (I know VERY little about flash)

<cfform action="someaction.cfm" method="post" format="flash" skin="haloblue" name="myform" onload="onFormLoad()" height="500" width="500" >
          <cfformitem type="script">

function onFormLoad(){
      var btnlistener:Object = {};

      //put the controls in scope to avoid calling _root
      var nameList:mx.controls.DataGrid = namelist;
      var insertbtn:mx.controls.Button = Insertbtn;

      btnlistener.click = function(evt):Void {
            var myInterval:Number;
          function doselect() {
              clearInterval(myInterval);
              nameList.focusedCell = {columnIndex:2, itemIndex:nameList.selectedIndex};
          }

          GridData.insertRow(nameList);
          myInterval = setInterval(doselect, 500);
       };

      insertbtn.addEventListener('click',btnlistener);
}
        </cfformitem>
          <cfgrid rowheaders="true" name="namelist" colheaders="yes" selectmode="edit" height="280" width="300">
            <cfgridcolumn name="id" display="no"/>
            <cfgridcolumn name="firstname" display="yes" select="yes" header="First Name" width="75" />
            <cfgridcolumn name="lastname" display="yes" select="yes" header="Last Name" width="75" />
            <cfgridrow data="1,First Name,Last Name" />
        </cfgrid>
    <cfinput type="button" value="Insert" name="Insertbtn" />

</cfform>

Not sure if this is the cleanest way but it seems to work.

Couple other things:

even if you dispatchEvent("change") in your onClick for your button, the event fires and you can set focus but... it only sets focus for a second until something else selects the newly inserted row.
Also learned that the doLater() function seems to be ignored in flash forms.

CFMX7 WebService gotcha?

2005-08-01T20:37:19-04:00

Not exactly sure what ended up causing this but...

Scenario:

One Coldfusion MX7 instance running for multiple virtual hosts on the same server.
CFMX7 Standard Edition
IIS 6 / Win2k3.
Worked on CFMX 6.1

Problem:
    I have a <cfcomponent displayname="Survey"> with a few <cffunction access="remote" ....>s in it. Only problem is... when invoking the component from any client that can consume a webservice, I get some type of error about an invalid webservice.
    Trying to invoke using a <cfinvoke webservice=""> I get something along the lines of "Can not generate stub objects".

Fix:
   After talking with my hosting provider and them talking with Macromedia, I get a response saying delete everything under "<CFMX7 install directory>\stubs". Modify the CFC to show <cfcomponent displayname="Surveys"> and restart the CFMX service.

Not sure what exactly happened but... now I can invoke the webservice with no problem. Is "Survey" a reserved word in CFMX7?

Stats plugin ported to Model-Glue

2005-07-26T19:06:21-04:00

Ive been wanting to learn some about Model-Glue for a while now. I figured I may as well convert the Fusebox plugin for stats so it will work with Model-Glue. Model-Glue seemed like a good fit since all requests come in through one page, like Fusebox.

Doing this gave me a quick look at how controllers and config beans worked... mission accomplished.

You can download the "plugin" here. Unzip the file and look at the readme for instructions on how to configure Model-Glue to use this.

Basically it creates parsed files named by the Event name, and one viewstate variable that you reference in your layout file. The viewstate variable contains script to request three images from the server so the request gets logged in your stats program.

Using a method like this, you can exclude index.cfm from your pageviews report and you should see <EventName>.cfm requests.

One thing I couldnt figure out was.... is it possible to pass coldfusion variables from a BeanConfig.xml file?

Fusebox Plugin for stats... take two already!

2005-07-25T22:04:40-04:00

Sorry, I do this alot but I was thinking about ways to change the plugin on the way home from work...

Got to thinking that site paths still would not work or quite a few other things. In order to be more flexible I changed things around to where it creates a parsed file and the invisible image will be served from the parsed file.

So when you look at your stats now, you will see that circuit.fuseaction.cfm was hit and then they went to anothercircuit.anotherfuseaction in your site paths. Also doing this, your stats program does not have to support reports by query strings.

Here is the modified code, if anyone has a better way of checking/creating the parsed files... please let me know.

<cfsilent>

<cfset plugin.statsdir = "#application.fusebox.rootdirectory#fbstats\" />

<cfset plugin.statsrelpath = "/fbstats/" />

<cfset plugin.fullimagepath = "#application.fusebox.rootdirectory#images\spacer.gif" />

<cfset plugin.currentfusefilename = myfusebox.originalcircuit & "." & myfusebox.originalfuseaction & ".cfm" />

<cfset plugin.clientresolutionfilename = "clientresolution.cfm" />

<cfset plugin.clientviewableresolutionfilename = "clientviewableres.cfm" />


<cfset plugin.imageout = "">
<cfset plugin.imageout = plugin.imageout & '<cfcontent file="#plugin.fullimagepath#" type="image/gif" deletefile="no" />' />


<cfif not(directoryexists(plugin.statsdir))>
   <cfdirectory action="create" directory="#plugin.statsdir#" />
</cfif>
<cfif not(fileexists(plugin.statsdir & plugin.currentfusefilename))>
   <cffile action="write" file="#plugin.statsdir & plugin.currentfusefilename#" output="#plugin.imageout#" />
</cfif>
<cfif not(fileexists(plugin.statsdir & plugin.clientviewableresolutionfilename))>
   <cffile action="write" file="#plugin.statsdir & plugin.clientviewableresolutionfilename#" output="#plugin.imageout#" />
</cfif>
<cfif not(fileexists(plugin.statsdir & plugin.clientresolutionfilename))>
   <cffile action="write" file="#plugin.statsdir & plugin.clientresolutionfilename#" output="#plugin.imageout#" />
</cfif>
<cfsavecontent variable="request.fbstats">
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

</script>
<cfoutput>
<img src="#plugin.statsrelpath##plugin.currentfusefilename#" height="1" width="1" border="0" />
</cfoutput>
</cfsavecontent>
</cfsilent>

One thing to remember... If you use the application.cfm from the Fusebox downloads, you must allow the directory through the filter.

Something like:

application.cfm

Add it to your fusebox.xml.cfm. I have mine as a preFuseaction plugin, but should work in preProcess also.

Then just reference request.fbstats in your layout file.

You can download the zipped version here.

Fusebox plugin for log based stats programs

2005-07-25T17:46:03-04:00

So I was reading on Pete Freitag's blog about the most common screen resolutions...

It got me interested in what my websites were being viewed at. Come to find out my hosting provider's new stats engine does not support this natively. I think quite a few Coldfusion people use HostMySite which recently dropped using Deep Metrixs and went to SmarterStats, so I hope this plugin will be useful to others.

First thing, the plugin could be integrated directly into the layout file but I decided to use a plugin instead. I put this into the PreProcess stage. The javascript came from a few places on the internet.

<cfsavecontent variable="request.clientstats">
<script>
var screenW = 640, screenH = 480;
if (parseInt(navigator.appVersion)>3) {
screenW = screen.width;
screenH = screen.height;
}
else if (navigator.appName == "Netscape"
    && parseInt(navigator.appVersion)==3
    && navigator.javaEnabled()
   )
{
var jToolkit = java.awt.Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();
var jScreenSize = jToolkit.getScreenSize();
screenW = jScreenSize.width;
screenH = jScreenSize.height;
}

var innerwidth= 640, innerheight= 480; // defaults
if (self.innerHeight)
    // all except Explorer
    {
    innerwidth= self.innerWidth;
    innerheight= self.innerHeight;
    }

    else if (document.documentElement && document.documentElement.clientHeight)
    // Explorer 6 Strict Mode
    {
    innerwidth= document.documentElement.clientWidth;
    innerheight= document.documentElement.clientHeight;
    }

    else if (document.body)
    // other Explorers
    {
    innerwidth= document.body.clientWidth;
    innerheight= document.body.clientHeight;
    }
<cfoutput>
document.write('<img src="clientresolution.htm?resolution=' + screenW + 'x' + screenH + '" height="1" width="1" />');
document.write('<img src="fusebox.htm?fuseaction=#myfusebox.originalcircuit#.#myfusebox.originalfuseaction#" height="1" width="1" />');
document.write('<img src="clientviewableres.htm?resolution=' + innerwidth + 'x' + innerheight + '" height="1" width="1" />');
</cfoutput>
</script>
</cfsavecontent>

Then I <cfoutput>ed #request.clientstats# in the body section on my layout files.

In order to not generate a bunch of 404 errors in the server logs, I also created empty htm files for clientresolution.htm,clientviewableres.htm and fusebox.htm.

Now in SmarterStats I can run a custom report on querystrings for the files above that show client resolutions and the original fuseaction that is called per view (useful if any/all of your fuseactions are not URL submitted).

Oh and so far the results on my main website show only 16% of the requests coming in use 800x600 or lower.

ActiveWidgets datagrid control

2005-07-22T09:24:15-04:00

This is mostly for myself but others feel free to use this.

Coldfusion Custom tag for ActiveWidgets datagrid control. Reminder that a commercial license is needed for ActiveWidgets with anything other than opensource projects.

More info and examples at http://www.franciswscott.com/activewidgets

Old quote but still funny

2005-06-30T10:31:46-04:00

Pretty old but someone just sent this to me today.

“The difference between the Pope and your boss... the Pope only expects you to kiss his ring”

Updates to the DAO, Bean and Gateway generator

2005-06-15T12:44:04-04:00

After a few suggestions coming by the way of emails, I decided to put them into the distribution of the CFC DAO, Bean and gateway creator for Coldfusion MX 6/7 . Also, it should correctly work with Microsoft SQL server.

Changes:

Bean's setter functions now have two additional optional arguments: isNull and Validate
Now the bean controls the length of fields and if something is nullable. Initially the generator will create the configuration for you but you can modify later by changing the setBeanConfig() function inside the bean CFC.
The bean setter functions perform validation on the data passed in according to the specs from bean config.
Each property of the bean has an isNull{property name} function
All data coming from the database is considered trusted and will not be validated when passing it back to the bean setters.

To see the changes in action, view the demo.

You can download it here. The downloadable version contains a transformsbasic directory that contains the original transforms.

I am not sure I will put any other changes in the distribution as other suggestions were more specific and could be implemented in other ways. But, remember you can incorporate your changes just by modifying the XSL files. If you need some help, just contact me via the email address in the readme file.

Faking a null value

2005-06-09T15:19:00-04:00

The more and more I am generating code with the CFC Bean, DAO and gateway creator

The more I am noticing the need to support a null value and I am trying not to go in and write work arounds for each bean / dao / gateway CFCs to support nulls.

So, would defining a default bogus null value per bean be the way to go?

Example:

Now in the DAOs have something like:

    <cffunction name="update" returntype="void" output="false" hint="CRUD method">
        <cfargument name="myBean" type="myBean" required="true" />
        <cfset var myBeanUpdate = 0 >
        <cfset var numericNull = arguments.myBean.getNumericNull() />
        <cfset var DateNull = arguments.myBean.getDateNull() />
        <cfset var StringNull = arguments.myBean.getStringNull() />
        <cfset var BinaryNull = arguments.myBean.getBinaryNull() />

        <cfquery name="myBeanUpdate" datasource="#variables.dsn#" >
            UPDATE myBean
            SET
               myBeanValue1 =
                <cfif arguments.myBean.getmyBeanValue1() NEQ stringNull>
                    <cfqueryparam cfsqltype="cf_sql_vchar" value="#arguments.myBean.getmyBeanValue1()#" maxlength="10" />
                <cfelse>
                    <cfqueryparam cfsqltype="cf_sql_vchar" null="yes" />
                </cfif>
WHERE
   id = <cfqueryparam cfsqltype="cf_sql_integer" value="#arguments.myBean.getmyBeanID()#" />
        </cfquery>
    </cffunction>

I uploaded new transforms to the demo CFC Creator script to reflect these changes if you want to see how a fully generated CFC looks using the above.

Thoughts?

Think I should use the new transforms in the downloadable version of CFC Creator?

Adding a blogger ping utility to BlogCFM

2005-06-07T21:47:35-04:00

Since MXNA is aggregating my feed now, I needed to have BlogCFM notify MXNA when a new post was done.

Previously , I showed how to add your own configuration options to BlogCFM. This time I added a PING_ON_UPDATE configuration option, along with adding the field to the admin screen.

My SendPings function is very simple but could use some work for error checking and stuff. Perhaps I will work in some error checking later but since it is only me using this function currently, I know I will type in the correct ping URLs.

I added the following to the BlogCFM.cfc but could be used in any blog really. It accepts one argument, a list of URLs to send to seperated by ";"

Next was to tell BlogCFM to send the pings.
I put the following below the notifications area of SaveEntry()

That did it! Now BlogCFM will ping whatever URLs I type into the admin screen (MXNA).

Greasemonkey!

2005-06-07T19:31:34-04:00

Well, this is probably not new technology to most but I just read about it the other evening.

http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/

For anyone that doesnt know what it does, it basically allows you to make any webpage look how you want it to look. Lots of cool examples at http://dunck.us/collab/GreaseMonkeyUserScripts.

Anyways.... after reading over all this stuff I decided I wanted to make something. The best thing I could think of was a minor annoyance I had with some websites not offering their own search feature.

So I figured every site should at least have a google search on it. Now I just needed a decent way to show the form and I found http://www.xs4all.nl/~jlpoutre/BoT/Javascript/RSSpanel/rsspanel.html as a starting point of my project. It offers a user draggable interface for a floating window.

After mangling his code and inserting some of my own, I came up with:

Couple key things added to his code.

It saves the location/visibility of the search box for the site you are currently visiting.
Has a user command to force the search box to show for the current site.
You can restore the default location of the search box via the user command menu.

So, now whenever I visit a site, I can always search the site directly from the webpage. If the webpage has a form that contains the text "search", the search box will not display unless I force the search box to display.

If interested, you can install the Greasemonkey script at http://www.franciswscott.com/downloads/searchthissite.user.js

To sum up Greasemonkey..... very very nice idea!

Adding "Pods" to BlogCFM

2005-05-26T12:22:57-04:00

Adding a "pod" (side item) to BlogCFM proved to be very easy.

All you have to do is duplicate one of the pods in the "pod" directory and modify the contents.

To finally include it on your webpage open up the below.cfm and add an

<cfinclude template="#variables.mapping#pods/<podfilename>.cfm">

Next pod I add will be a managed pod probably containing links stored inside the database. We shall see how that goes.

CFC DAO Generator: Take two

2005-05-23T17:50:13-04:00

Since my first post of the CFC DAO Generator I have made a few changes.

Reorganized my CFCs to read table information.
Added a tableindex CFC to hold an index of a table.
Interface now generates a gateway CFC for the table based on indexes.
Added the ability to save the generated CFCs.

With the above changes, I am now able to automatically generate all my database CFCs with little to no changes. The gateway CFC now contains querys based on every index of the table being shown, so assuming I built the table correctly, all searchable fields should have a query generated for them.

Also, this should work with all databases supported by ColdFusion which makes it a big plus.

Again, you can demo the CFCCreator here and download the source here.

Please read the README file inside the zip for installation instructions.

Any further suggestions to make this better, leave some comments.

First experience with BlogCFM

2005-05-19T22:43:07-04:00

Bugs found:

FckEditor shipped with BlogCFM would not work with Firefox with the default toolbar turned on.
Couldnt edit a post over a certain length. (damn typos)
If blogCFM is not installed to the root of your website and/or the site does not have access to /CFIDE all the cfform validation will fail and will generate tons of 404 errors in the web server log.

Fixes:

Downloaded and installed the latest version of FCKEditor. It was simple, the only changes I had to make were in the FCKEditor config files so it would work with ColdFusion.
lines 857-858 of blogcfm.cfc had the wrong cfsqltype, had to change it to cfsqltype="cf_sql_longvarchar"
Had to modify all cfform tags and add an attribute of scriptsrc="#variables.blogConfig.webRoot#/CFIDE/scripts/cfform.js". This sounds bad but Dreamweaver's advanced find and replace makes it easy.

Now that I had everything fixed that I found wrong. It was time to do see how easy it was to make modifications.

First thing I didnt like was to have the basic toolbar show by default for the FCKEditor and I couldnt find an option to change the default. This seemed like a great first experiment.

ALTER TABLE blog_config ADD HTML_EDITOR_DEFAULT_STYLE varchar(25)
Added HTML_EDITOR_DEFAULT_STYLE to the getBlogConfig query in blogcfm.cfc
Added HTML_EDITOR_DEFAULT_STYLE=<cfqueryparam cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" value="#arguments.details.HTML_EDITOR_DEFAULT_STYLE#"> in the update statement of saveblogconfig()
changed <cfparam name="toolbarSet" default="#variables.blogConfig.HTML_EDITOR_DEFAULT_STYLE#"> in entry_edit.cfm
added <cfparam name="FORM.HTML_EDITOR_DEFAULT_STYLE" default="Basic"> under the isDefined("form.blogConfig") in edit_entry.cfm
added
<br>
<b>HTML Editor Options</b><br>
Default style: <select name="HTML_EDITOR_DEFAULT_STYLE">
<option value="Basic"<cfif blogConfig.HTML_EDITOR_DEFAULT_STYLE IS 'Basic'> SELECTED</cfif>>Basic</option>
<option value="Default"<cfif blogConfig.HTML_EDITOR_DEFAULT_STYLE IS 'Default'> SELECTED</cfif>>Default</option>
</select>
to admin/index.cfm

That was all I had to do to make a new setting show up in the admin screen and have it be applied to every instance of the blog entry editor/creator.

Considering I knew nothing about BlogCFM before, these changes were easy to make and find where to put the correct new code.

Next on the list will be creating a Links section, will keep you posted on how that works out.

CFC Generator and my first real use

2005-05-19T22:18:51-04:00

So, I thought the CFC generator would be a perfect match for my coding needs till I started coding with the generated CFCs. I found myself having to create a gateway CFC for each table.

I knew I would need gateway objects but at first I did not think I could automate what I needed. Then I noticed that most of my gateway querys were based on indexes created in the database.

Well, the CFC Generator already can read all indexes on a database but I was only taking advantage of the primary key index. So, I just had to add a new class of tableindex and feed the other indexes into the class. I already have some changes made to my private version of the generator and will upload them to my site soon.

Can already tell you that the table to XML structure has changed a little.

It now looks like

<table>
    <name>tablename</tablename>
   <dbtype>Database type</dbtype>
   <columns>
<column>
<name>column name1</name>
<length>column length</length>
etc
            etc
            etc
        </column>
<column>
<name>column name2</name>
<length>column length</length>
etc
            etc
            etc
        </column>
     </columns>



   <indexes>
<index>
   <name>Index name</name>
   <type>index type</type>
       <columns>
    <column>
    <name>column name1</name>
    <length>column length</length>
    etc
                etc
                etc
            </column>
    <column>
    <name>column name2</name>
    <length>column length</length>
    etc
                etc
                etc
            </column>
         </columns>
      </index>
   </indexs>
</table>

I imagine the default generated gateway CFC will have functions something like:

and a getAll function to read all rows from the table.

Also, the next version should work with any database supported by CF with no changes made to code.

CFC DAO Generator

2005-05-19T12:27:26-04:00

Since my blog was not up while developing this application I will not go into the details of what all I had to overcome, only why I created this application.

Why?
I am in the process of migrating an existing application that has over 200 tables in the database. We do not have any of the queries or access to the source code of the existing application. The closest thing I could find that would do something similar, did not support my database type.

What I needed:
The ability to generate DAO/Bean CFCs from analyzing a table structure.

What I came up with was:
A multi-database CFC DAO generator. Its all based on XML and is easy to generate a CFC if you know XSL.
I have uploaded a demo here, the demo only runs off the cfsnippets datasource and the downloadable version displays all datasources registered with CF Admin.

Results:
Amazing for me, I was able to generate over 45 files in about 10 minutes. These CFCs fitted the database structure we were working with and allowed me to create a standard base DAO factory with ease.

If you download this, please make sure you read the README file in the zip file for instructions on installing / customizing. The frontend is nothing to brag about but the results are just great.

Tell me what you think.

Trip to Thailand

2005-05-18T23:52:42-04:00

These pictures are from when I visited Thailand a few months back.

I am in the process of uploading others but I wanted to test out how the photo galleries worked.

Welcome to my new website

2005-05-18T22:51:55-04:00

Well I finally went out and did it.

I bought a domain name for me to use.

You might ask why would I do this?

I wanted a place to post my thoughts.
I enjoy reading other people's blog, so I hope you will enjoy reading mine.
I wanted a place that I could share coding problems and maybe some tips.
I wanted a place that I could test certain code.
I like learning new things and this gives me a reason to learn.

This site is currently running BlogCFM and I must say I am very happy with how easy it was to setup. Next on my list is to dig into BlogCFM and customize the site. I plan to blog my experience so anyone that is curious about BlogCFM stay tuned.

Now to tighten up on my writing skills and get to sharing

Enjoy!