February 2007 Web Log Entries
ColdFusion Query Maintains Current Row Even When Passed By Reference
Posted: February 28, 2007 at 6:31 PM by Ben Nadel
I thought about this in the shower this morning (I take showers in the dark - it helps me think). I know that a ColdFusion query object knows what row it is in while being used in a CFLoop, that's obvious. But what happens if a ColdFusion query object is passed to another function in the middle of a CFLoop. Does it maintain the current row? After ... read more »
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QueryAddRow(), Date/Times, WDDX, And ORDER BY, OH MY!
Posted: February 28, 2007 at 8:15 AM by Ben Nadel
I am working on this mini ColdFusion application that uses a query object and caches it as a WDDX XML file. Usually, I think that WDDX is sooo freakin' cool, I am shocked I didn't start using it earlier. But, when it comes to Date/Time objects, WDDX seems to not be playing well with manually built ColdFusion queries. Now, I am not sure if this is... read more »
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ColdFusion Body Art And Other Forms Of ColdFusion Evangelism
Posted: February 27, 2007 at 8:03 AM by Ben Nadel
Rey Bango just launched the site, www.GotCFM.com , which is dedicated to promoting ColdFusion-related technologies. I think this is a great idea, but certainly, it's not the only way to "get the word out." I'm still hoping that ColdFusion body art catches on. Imagine seeing this at your local ColdFusion User Group or popping out from behind a b... read more »
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David Leventi Photography Is Now Live - Life Back To Normal
Posted: February 26, 2007 at 6:12 PM by Ben Nadel
For the past several weeks, I have been spending various nights working on my friend's web site, David Leventi Photography . It was a nice, simple site, and my first use of jQuery in any sort of production situation. It was a fairly easy site to build; the majority of the time was spent resizing images and getting the graphics to work (I didn't h... read more »
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Ask Ben: Creating An Archive Folder / File List (Part II)
Posted: February 24, 2007 at 10:38 AM by Ben Nadel
A while back, I was asked how to make a simple ColdFusion page that would allow the viewing of archive folders and their contents. At the time, the page was designed to handle a single list of directories and then a single list of sub-files. I have been asked to update that code to allow for sub-directories and sub-sub-directories (you get the p... read more »
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jQuery Custom Selectors - Holy Cow That Is So Badass!
Posted: February 23, 2007 at 4:49 PM by Ben Nadel
One of the things that is so cool about jQuery is the user of selectors to match DOM elements. Glen Lipka just pointed out to me that you can create your own custom selectors. Holy cow! That is so bad ass, you have no idea. Since I am very new to all of this, I figure I would write a little experiment to see how it worked (NOTE: I am new, so t... read more »
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Referring To The Proper Row Of The Outer CFLoop (With Nested CFLoops)
Posted: February 23, 2007 at 12:15 PM by Ben Nadel
Andy Matthews over on CF-Talk just asked why references to outer CFLoop columns within his inner CFLoop always refer to the first record. Jim Wright appropriately responded: "because that is the way it is". It's true. It has been like that for a while. I don't know why. I assume it has something to do with the scope context of a loop. The co... read more »
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Sleeping A Thread Pauses The CFSetting Request Time Out
Posted: February 23, 2007 at 9:26 AM by Ben Nadel
This is totally useless information, but I wanted to see what would happen to the page's request time out if you slept the current thread. Here's a little test: <!--- Set the page time out to only allow for 2 seconds. ---> <cfsetting requesttimeout="2" showdebugoutput="false" /> <!--- Create a timer structure to store t... read more »
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Printing The Entire jQuery API As A PDF (Using CFDocument And XML Parsing)
Posted: February 22, 2007 at 3:00 PM by Ben Nadel
I am just starting to really get into jQuery, the JavaScript API that makes writing sweet-ass JavaScript easy and fun. As with ColdFusion, I like to really dive into it by plowing through the documentation (yeah, I actually do like reading documentation so I can see what the possibilities are!). jQuery.com and VisualjQuery.com provide great do... read more »
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Creating A Centralized Point Of Entry For ColdFusion Scheduled Tasks
Posted: February 21, 2007 at 1:29 PM by Ben Nadel
I have never been a huge fan of ColdFusion's scheduled tasks. That's just an odd fear based on the fact that I have to rely on something outside of my applications. But, the fact is, scheduled tasks are essential if you want to do anything on a scheduled basis that is NOT triggered by user actions. I am also not a huge fan of creating / modifying ... read more »
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Josh Adams Of New Atlanta On AJAX And Blue Dragon At NY CFUG
Posted: February 21, 2007 at 8:19 AM by Ben Nadel
On Monday night, Josh Adams of New Atlanta came to speak at the New York ColdFusion Users Group about AJAX and Blue Dragon. The talk was advertised as AJAX and how it works with Adobe products and Blue Dragon. In all reality, this presentation was really two separate presentations: an intro to AJAX and an overview of Blue Dragon. The AJAX inf... read more »
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Reinventing The Wheel As A Reflection Of Skill Level (RE: Mark Mandel)
Posted: February 20, 2007 at 9:03 PM by Ben Nadel
In response to something I heard last night at the NY CFUG meeting about Blue Dragon, I set off to figure out how I one could test to see if a SQL value was NULL or if it was actually an empty string. As it turns out, Mark Mandel had solved this problem months ago in the same fashion (with arguably more elegance). At first I was bummed tha... read more »
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Dealing With RequestTimeOut And The OnError Application Event Method (Help Me)
Posted: February 20, 2007 at 3:18 PM by Ben Nadel
I was reading over on Dan Vega's blog this morning about request time outs when I came up with a question: How do you deal with handling time outs when your OnError() event method takes a bit of time to run? Take this simple ColdFusion example as demonstration. First, I set up a very simple Application.cfc ColdFusion component: <cfcompone... read more »
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ColdFusion Method Attribute Output=True Does Not Jive With EnableCFOutputOnly
Posted: February 20, 2007 at 12:47 PM by Ben Nadel
I was talking to Michael Dinowitz last night at the NY-CFUG about the ColdFusion CFSetting attribute, EnableCFOutputOnly. We had just seen an example where a ColdFusion user defined function had its "Output" attribute set to "True" and also had CFOutput tags inside the method body as well. Michael argued that this was redundant as the Output att... read more »
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Testing For NULL Values In A ColdFusion Query Result Set
Posted: February 20, 2007 at 9:35 AM by Ben Nadel
As you all know, when you get values returned form the SQL server in a ColdFusion query object, NULL column values look and act just like empty strings. I have big issues with the use of NULL values in most data column (except for certain dates pretty much) but if you are one who for one reason or another likes the NULL value, here is a way to d... read more »
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