Bob's Blog - Crafting Software

ValidateThis 1.2 - Some Fixes and New processOn Feature

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 09:56:00 -0400

Just a quick note to announce the release of version 1.2 of ValidateThis, an awesome validation framework for ColdFusion. This version includes a new feature: processOn (described below), as well as some small fixes contributed by John Whish and Dustin Martin.

processOn

This is a feature that was requested by some users which allows you to define a rule which can be processed on either only the server side or only the client side. You do so by adding the processOn attribute to your rule entity and giving it a value of either server or client. The default value is both, so if you leave this attribute off (as all legacy definitions will) it has no effect and your validations are enforced on both the client and the server.

For those of you still not intimately familiar with the framework, here are some resources to help you out:

The main home of the framework is www.validatethis.org, which includes an online demo and links to all of the following.
The framework can be downloaded from the ValidateThis RIAForge page.
Online documentation is available at www.validatethis.org/docs.
API documentation is available at www.validatethis.org/docs/api.
There is a Google group available for asking questions, making suggestions, and general discussion at groups.google.com/group/validatethis.
The source code is hosted at GitHub, and contributions are always welcome.

CFSelenium 1.8 - Improvements to waitFor Methods and Upgrade for Selenium 2.20

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 20:28:00 -0400

A new version of CFSelenium was released today which upgrades the bundled version of Selenium Server to version 2.20.0, and also includes improvements to the waitFor helper methods. Those improvements were contributed by Michael Wilson.

As always, the latest version is available via the CFSelenium RIAForge page and via the CFSelenium GitHub Project.The latter also includes a detailed Readme file which can help you get started using CFSelenium.

Many thanks to Michael for his contribution.

CFSelenium 1.7 - Upgrades for Selenium 2.16 and Firefox 9

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:45:00 -0400

A new version of CFSelenium was released today which upgrades the bundled version of Selenium Server to version 2.16.0, and also provides Firefox 9 (and above) compatibility for the bundled Firefox plugin.

ValidateThis 1.1 - User Contributed Fixes and Features

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:01:00 -0400

Just a quick note to announce the release of version 1.1 of ValidateThis, an awesome validation framework for ColdFusion. This version includes one new validation type, notRegex, which was contributed by John Whish, and a bunch of small fixes, contributed by Greg Moser.

For those of you reluctant to use a 1.0 version of anything, now that we've got 1.1 out the door you can grab it and give it a try! Here are some resources that will help you:

The main home of the framework is www.validatethis.org, which includes an online demo and links to all of the following.
The framework can be downloaded from the ValidateThis RIAForge page.
Online documentation is available at www.validatethis.org/docs.
API documentation is available at www.validatethis.org/docs/api.
There is a Google group available for asking questions, making suggestions, and general discussion at groups.google.com/group/validatethis.
The source code is hosted at GitHub, and contributions are always welcome.

So what's stopping you? Go download the latest and greatest version of ValidateThis and take it for a spin!

ValidateThis 1.0 - A True Community Effort

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 11:52:00 -0400

I am pleased to announce that ValidateThis, an awesome validation framework for ColdFusion, has finally gone gold! That's right, version 1.0 of the validation framework that you've come to know and love is in the wild. While I'm proud of the framework, I'm even prouder of the number of developers who contributed to this release. In addition to me, the following people made a contribution:

Most of went into this release won't be noticeable to the developer, or at least won't affect the way you interact with the framework. Here's a quick summary of the changes in this release:

Upgraded to the latest version of the jQuery Validation plugin, which replaces jquery.validate.pack.js with jquery.validate.min.js. If you are loading this file yourself (as opposed to using a CDN, which the framework does by default), then you should replace that file.
The default generated failure messages are now identical on the client and server, and are based on information in a resource bundle. This means you can easily change the default generated failure messages if you wish, and the changes will be reflected on the client and the server.
Thanks to John Whish (who I have unilaterally appointed as client-side-czar for the framework) the Javascript that is generated has been greatly improved. Many of the changes that John made were based on suggestions from Dan Switzer.
You can now store your definition files in a folder structure that mirrors a dot-based naming scheme for components.
You can now instruct the framework to ignore missing properties in your objects, as opposed to throwing an exception if a property is missing.
A new config option has been added: vtFolder which you only need to use if the framework resides in a folder that isn't called ValidateThis and you are on a case-sensitive system.

The biggest change is the second one mentioned above: the default generated failure messages. If you are currently using the i18n capabilities of the framework this may affect you, so I suggest you read the i18n information available in the online documentation.

If you've been holding off checking out the framework until it reached version 1.0 (silly people), now's the time to get cracking. Here are some resources that will help you:

The main home of the framework is www.validatethis.org, which includes an online demo and links to all of the following.
The framework can be downloaded from the ValidateThis RIAForge page.
Online documentation is available at www.validatethis.org/docs.
API documentation is available at www.validatethis.org/docs/api.
There is a Google group available for asking questions, making suggestions, and general discussion at groups.google.com/group/validatethis.
The source code is hosted at GitHub, and contributions are always welcome.

So what's stopping you? Go download the latest and greatest version of ValidateThis and take it for a spin!

cf.Objective() 2012 - Call For Speakers and Topic Suggestion Survey Now Open!

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 09:13:00 -0400

The Topic Suggestion Survey and the Call for Speakers for next year's cf.Objective() are both now officially open. For more details please check out the announcement at the cf.Objective() site, or if you're keen to get started, visit the Engage app right now to suggest and vote on topics or to propose to speak.

My Adobe ColdFusion Developer Week Session on ORM

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:13:00 -0400

I was very pleased that my CF Dev Week presentation was so well attended and received. I am attaching a PDF of the presentation materials to this post. Once the recording is available, you'll be able to find it at www.adobe.com/devnet/coldfusion/events.html.

CFSelenium 1.6 - Upgrades for Selenium 2.2 and Firefox 5

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 09:20:00 -0400

A new version of CFSelenium was recently released which upgrades the bundled version of Selenium Server to version 2.2.0, and also provides Firefox 5 compatibility for the bundled Firefox plugin.

As always, the latest version is available via the CFSelenium RIAForge page and via the CFSelenium GitHub Project. The latter also includes a detailed Readme file which can help you get started using CFSelenium.

CFSelenium 1.5 - With Some Handy Helper Methods

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:27:00 -0400

A new version of CFSelenium was recently released which includes a few helper methods that I've found useful. First off, I'd like to thank the fine folks on the Mozilla Web QA team, from whom I borrowed the idea for these methods. I wrote a couple of tests for them in Python, and their Python base page object contains these methods. While I agree that it makes sense to include these methods in a base page object, not everyone using CFSelenium is using the Page Object Model, and as the creator and co-maintainer of CFSelenium I figured I'd just make everyone's life simpler and include them directly in the client library.

The three methods, which are waitForElementPresent, waitForElementVisible, and waitForElementNotVisible, are helpful when testing applications that make use of AJAX, or even just simple JavaScript. When you want to check that a page has responded to a user interaction, and the response is generated by JavaScript, you can often run into timing issues in your Selenium tests. If you issue a click command and then immediately include an assert with a getText command in it, it may be that the element that you are attempting to get hasn't been created by the browser yet. The same can be true when elements are shown or hidden. To address this issue the three methods mentioned above can be used, each of which is described in more detail below.

Arguments

Each of these methods accepts one required and one optional argument. The first argument, locator, is just that; the locator of the element that you want to wait for. The second, optional, argument is timeout, which is a number, in milliseconds, that you want CFSelenium to wait for the element before it throws an exception. The default value for timeout is 30000 (or 30 seconds), and this can be overridden in one of two ways. You can override the default for your entire test case by passing a value into the waitTimeout argument of CFSelenium's init method. You can also override the default on any call to any of these methods by passing a value into the second argument of the methods, which is timeout.

waitFor Methods

In case it isn't completely obvious, here is what the waitFor methods do:

waitForElementPresent - Waits for the specified element to be added to the DOM. If the element is not present by the end of the timeout interval an exception is thrown.
waitForElementVisible - Waits for the specified element to become visible. If the element is not visible by the end of the timeout interval an exception is thrown. Note that the element must be present in the DOM or the Selenium server will throw an exception immediately.
waitForElementNotVisible - Waits for the specified element to become hidden. If the element is still visible by the end of the timeout interval an exception is thrown.

As always, the latest version is available via the CFSelenium RIAForge page and via the CFSelenium GitHub Project. The latter also includes a detailed Readme file which can help you get started using CFSelenium.

CFSelenium 1.4 - Starts and Stops Selenium-RC Java Server For You

Tue, 24 May 2011 11:26:00 -0400

A new version of CFSelenium was recently released which includes an enhancement contributed by Marc Esher. In previous versions you had to manually start and stop the Selenium-RC Java server, but in this latest version CFSelenium is smart enough to start it for you, in the background, if it is not already started. You can also shut down the java server by calling the stopServer() method on the selenium.cfc component. This will only stop the Java server if CFSelenium was the one that started it.

Marc also added a base test case for MXUnit which includes code to start and stop the server. The base test case is called CFSeleniumTestCase.cfc and the code to both start the Selenium Java server, and to start a browser session is in the beforeTests() method. There is also code to stop the browser and stop the server in the afterTests() method. This will allow all of your tests to run using the same browser session, which is much faster that starting a new browser session for each individual test.

To create a test case which is based on this new base test case, just extend it and add your own beforeTests() method which sets a variable for the base url for your tests and then calls the beforeTests() method in the parent. It will look something like this: component extends="cfselenium.CFSeleniumTestCase" { function beforeTests(){ // set the base url for your tests browserURL = "http://github.com/"; super.beforeTests(); } function myTest() { // note that the variable selenium is available to you which refers to an instance of CFSelenium selenium.open("/bobsilverberg/CFSelenium"); assertEquals("bobsilverberg/CFSelenium - GitHub", selenium.getTitle()); selenium.click("link=readme.md"); selenium.waitForPageToLoad("30000"); assertEquals("readme.md at master from bobsilverberg/cfselenium - github", selenium.getTitle()); } }

If you want to use a browser other than the default (which is Firefox), you can also specify a value for the variable browserCommand which will control which browser is used.

The latest version is available via the CFSelenium RIAForge page and via the CFSelenium GitHub Project. The latter also includes a detailed Readme file which can help you get started using CFSelenium.

Slides for Introduction to Browser Automation and Testing with Selenium

Tue, 17 May 2011 19:38:00 -0400

cf.Objective() 2011 has come and gone, and by all accounts it was an awesome conference. I presented an Introduction to Browser Automation and Testing with Selenium, and I'm making my slides available via this blog post. You can download the PDF here.

The real meat of the session consisted of demos of Selenium-IDE, Selenium-RC and CFSelenium, so I'm not sure that you'll get much from the slides alone. If you're interested in using Selenium via ColdFusion, please visit the CFSelenium project and look over the readme file. It should give you all you need to get started writing your own functional tests with ColdFusion and Selenium.

Vitamin Sweet with Bob and Brian to Debut on CodeBass Radio Next Friday

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:29:00 -0400

That's right, your heard it correctly, I will be starting my second show on CodeBass Radio next week, along with my partner in crime, Brian Rinaldi.

As the name so obviously implies, Vitamin Sweet is all about new releases. Every other week we'll bring you an hour packed with songs that have recently been released. Here's your chance to keep on top of what's new and cool out there (according to Brian and me, of course). We'll be featuring the latest releases, hand-picked by one of us, from bands both new to the scene and longtime favorites. I'll be playing tunes that I like and Brian will be doing likewise, and perhaps we'll have a few tunes that get the double-B seal of approval.

So, if you love music, and are keen to hear some of the newest stuff out there, join us on Friday, April 1st at 10:00am Eastern time, on CodeBass Radio for our maiden voyage, and then tune in every other Friday at the same time. You can listen in at bit.ly/codebass or by using the awesomely cool MediaSlurp AIR app which comes bundled with a bunch of other great community streams and podcasts.

I hope to see you online next Friday morning.

CFSelenium Now Supports ColdFusion 7 and 8

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 09:58:00 -0400

Just a quick note to let you know that Brian Swartzfager has added support for ColdFusion 7 and 8 to the CFSelenium project by adding a tag-based cfc. This is now included in the latest version (1.2), which can be downloaded from the CFSelenium RIAForge page.

Brian, who will be maintaining the tag-based version, has written up a blog post about this addition to the CFSelenium project.

cf.Objective() 2011 - Call for Pecha Kucha Speakers and BoF Survey Now Open

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:25:00 -0400

Just a quick note to let you know that the Call for Pecha Kucha Speakers and BoF Survey for cf.Objective() are now open. The details can be found at the cf.Objective() web site.

I had previously been making announcements about cf.Objective() via my blog, but now that we have a news section available at the official site all announcements will be published there. If you're interested in keeping on top of cf.Objective() news I suggest you add the news page to your RSS readers.

Bob's Basement to Debut on CodeBass Radio on Monday

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 14:24:00 -0400

You remember hanging out in your friend's basement? You'd go down there after school, and on the weekends, and you'd chill out and listen to tunes. You'd have your favourites that you'd listen to, but as often as not someone would pull out a new record for everyone to check out. Maybe it was something they'd just picked up at the local record store, or maybe something from their collection that hadn't seen the stylus in awhile. Everyone would sit back on the old sectional, the needle would hit the vinyl and you'd be transported somewhere else.

You'd close your eyes and listen as the sound waves did their thing to you. Sometimes they'd delight, sometimes they'd annoy, and every now and then they'd turn you onto a new band or disc that would stay with you for years to come. Often for the rest of your life.

I remember those days, and I'm going to do my part to bring a touch of that back. Join me on Monday, March 7th at 1:00pm Eastern time, on CodeBass Radio for the inaugural trip down those stairs and allow me to spin some tunes for you. Some may be familiar to you, a lot will not be. I hope that you'll enjoy them, and maybe discover some new stuff that you wouldn't have otherwise.

A big thanks goes out to Vicky Ryder for providing me with this opportunity. You can listen in at www.codebassradio.com or by using the awesomely cool MediaSlurp AIR app which comes bundled with a bunch of other great community streams and podcasts, including the brand-spanking new 2 devs from down under.

I hope to see you online on Monday afternoon.