Posted At : July 21, 2010 9:43 AM | Posted By : Bob Silverberg
Related Categories:
CFUnited
I just finished updating my CFUnited schedule for next week's conference, now that all of the Saturday sessions are available. If you are going to be
attending this year's conference, the organizers are requesting that you enter your schedule into the
online scheduling app to help them determine room sizes for each session.
I must say I am very impressed with this year's lineup. I had no trouble finding sessions that were of great interest to me in practically every
time slot, and the repeat sessions that take place on Satrurday are going to enable me to see virtually every session that I want. If you're
interested to know which sessions I've chosen, see the table below, which was generated by the CFUnited scheduler app:
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Posted At : July 19, 2010 3:56 PM | Posted By : Bob Silverberg
Related Categories:
Eclipse,ValidateThis,CFBuilder
Although ValidateThis, my validation framework for ColdFusion objects, can accept metadata in a number of formats, my preferred method is via an
XML file. This file defines all of the validation rules for a particular object, and can, obviously, be created using any text editor.
If, like me, you are using Eclipse as your IDE (which includes users of ColdFusion Builder), you can enable code assist thanks to the
XML Schema Definition (XSD) that I created for ValidateThis. This post will describe how to enable that feature.
What is an XSD?
XSD stands for XML Schema Definition. It is the successor to the Document Type Definition (DTD), providing a description of the required structure of
a particular type of XML document. XSDs are themselves written in XML, which makes them both machine- and human-readable. They are therefore an
excellent source of documentation about the type of XML document that they describe, and they can also be used to validate an XML document and to
enable code assist when editing an XML document.
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Posted At : July 19, 2010 9:47 AM | Posted By : Bob Silverberg
Related Categories:
ColdFusion,CF ORM Integration,ValidateThis,CFUnited
As I'm sure many of you are aware, the final CFUnited will be starting in a little over a week.
Although I did attend a couple of CFUN's in the past (when they were a one-day event), this will be my first CFUnited, so I'm pretty excited
about it. It will be great to meet even more people than I usually do at other conferences, such as cf.Objective() and NCDevCon, and I wanted
to give a final plug to my sessions, as I think they will be of interest to a lot of developers. As well, I've made some last minute changes to
both sessions to cover some new material.
What Your Mother Never Told You About CF9 ORM
The ColdFusion team at Adobe have done an outstanding job with ColdFusion ORM, which now provides ColdFusion developers with access to
Hibernate, an enterprise-ready, open source, industry-standard Java ORM. The documentation on how to use CF ORM in the ColdFusion docs is also quite
good, providing most of what you need to know to make use of the features. The problem, however, is that Hibernate is a pretty complex tool, and in
order to use CF ORM successfully you really need to understand certain things about Hibernate. This session is designed to teach you some of those
things - it will cover material that is not included in the ColdFusion documentation, but that is essential to understand when working with the ORM.
Topics covered will include Hibernate Session Management, Understanding Object States, Working with Detached Objects, Concurrency and
Using a Base Persistent Object. We'll also be looking at the new Transaction Management model in the recently released ColdFusion 9.0.1.
If you plan on working with CF ORM and are not already familiar with these concepts I think you'll really benefit from this session. It is,
however, an advanced session, so if you are totally unfamiliar with CF ORM you may find it a bit confusing.
The session is scheduled for 5:30pm (ouch!) on Wednesday, July 28th.
Automagic Validations for ColdFusion Objects
This session will provide an overview of, as well as a detailed how-to about a Validation framework for ColdFusion. The title is
a slight misnomer, as, although the framework was originally written to work inside an object-oriented application, and remains an ideal solution for
that, it has recently been enhanced to work with simple ColdFusion structures as well. This means that anyone who is looking for a better way of
addressing their validation requirements, both on the client side and on the server side, can now benefit from the framework, even if they are not
using objects.
The main benefit of the framework is that it will automatically generate all of your client-side and server-side validations for you, from a simple
set of metadata. This frees you from the drudgery of writing similar validation code over and over again, and also eliminates the possibility of adding
bugs into your application via your validation code. The framework, called ValidateThis, is being actively developed by myself and a number of
other contributors, so not only is it extremely functional and flexible right now, but new features are being added continually. If you are
interested in finding out more about it, including exactly how to implement it in a new or existing application (and it's dead easy), I encourage
you to attend my session. It will be held at 3:15pm on Friday, July 30th, and is being repeated at 2:45pm on Saturday, July 31st.
I hope to see you at one, or both, of my sessions. If we haven't met before please come by and say hi.
Posted At : July 13, 2010 11:34 PM | Posted By : Bob Silverberg
Related Categories:
ValidateThis
Since the release of version 0.96 of ValidateThis, my validation framework for ColdFusion objects, there have been a few bug reports which I have tried
to be quick to address. This has resulted in the release of versions 0.96.1 and 0.96.2 of the framework. If anyone has downloaded a copy of 0.96 or
0.96.1, I advise you to grab a copy of 0.96.2 from the RIAForge project page.
I'm hoping that 0.96.2 will be as rock solid as most of the previous releases, and I want to thank John Whish
and Matt Quackenbush for bringing the bugs to my attention.
Posted At : July 13, 2010 11:48 AM | Posted By : Bob Silverberg
Related Categories:
ColdFusion,CF ORM Integration
ColdFusion 9.0.1 is now available for download at http://www.adobe.com/go/getcf901,
and, in addition to fixing a number of issues with ColdFusion 9.0, it's packed full of goodies as well. The details of all the new features
can be found in the New Feature Notes,
and the bug fixes and outstanding items can be found in the Release Notes.
I think my favourite single new feature is the ability to do a for - in loop with an array, as looping through an array using script has
always been a pain. I'm also very happy with some of the improvements to ORM.
Here's a high-level summary of the new features, followed by some details on the ORM changes:
- Language enhancements - including for-in loops for arrays.
- New script functions implemented as CFCs - including dbinfo, imap, pop, ldap, and feed.
- Caching enhancements - including the ability to get a handle on the ehCache session.
- Support for IIS 7
- ColdFusion Ajax enhancements - including updates cfmap, cfgrid, file uploading and JavaScript functions.
- ORM enhancements - more details below.
- Amazon S3 support - the ability to use Amazon S3 storage with most tags and functions that use a file or directory as input or output.
- Various other enhancements covering areas such as Spreadsheets, AIR Integration, Flash Remoting, Blaze DS, Solr, Logging, Server Monitoring, and more.
ORM Enhancements
Here's a summary of the ORM enhancements in ColdFusion 9.0.1, followed by some details about each one:
- Support for Multiple Datasources
- Transaction Management Improvements
- skipCFCWithError Flag in ormSettings
- mappedSuperClass Attribute for Components
- Use EntityNew to Populate a New Entity
- Support for HQL in cfquery
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Posted At : July 5, 2010 4:34 PM | Posted By : Bob Silverberg
Related Categories:
ValidateThis
I've just released version 0.96 of ValidateThis, my validation framework for ColdFusion objects.
I guess I'm going to have to come up with a new tagline, because, as of this release, ValidateThis is no longer only for objects.
This update includes a bunch of new enhancements, the most significant of which is that you can now use VT to validate a structure.
That's right, you no longer need to be working with objects to make use of the framework. More details on that enhancement, and others, can be found
following the summary of changes:
- You can now use VT to validate a structure, not just an object.
- Metadata can now be supplied in an external JSON file, as an alternative to the standard XML file.
- You can now have multiple forms on the same html page for the same object, with different contexts.
- A John Whish inspired package of enhancements has been added to the jQuery client-side validations.
- A bug fix reported and patched by a user was implemented.
As always, the latest version can be downloaded from the ValidateThis RIAForge site. Details of the enhancements follow:
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Posted At : June 25, 2010 12:01 PM | Posted By : Bob Silverberg
Related Categories:
ValidateThis
I've just released version 0.95 of ValidateThis, my validation framework for ColdFusion objects. This update includes some community contributions, as well as a number of features that
were prompted by community requests. Here's a summary of the changes, followed by the details for each one.
- Numerous enhancements were made to the Result object, as well as the ability to easily substitute your own Result object for the one that is built into the framework,
and the ability to automatically inject the Result object into your business object.
- Client-side validations have been enhanced so that missing form fields will not generate JavaScript errors.
- Client-side validation code has been refactored, and includes a fix from Martijn van der Woud for the equalTo validation type.
- More refactoring to set the stage for future enhancements.
The latest version can be downloaded from the ValidateThis RIAForge site. Details of the enhancements follow:
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