May 2007 Web Log Entries
Learning ColdFusion 8: All Hail The New ++ Operator
Posted: May 31, 2007 at 9:04 PM by Ben Nadel
ColdFusion 8 has introduced some new, very exciting mathematical operators. Most of these operators can be used through out the ColdFusion language while some (since ColdFusion is a tag-based language) can only be used and parsed properly from within a CFScript block. The following operators can be used any where: ++, --, %, +=, -=, *=, /=, %=, &a... read more »
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Learning ColdFusion 8: Implicit Struct And Array Creation
Posted: May 31, 2007 at 9:13 AM by Ben Nadel
One of the coolest features of ColdFusion 8 is its new implicit struct and array creation. For those of you who love Javascript, you will be used to seeing this type of struct definition: <cfset objData = { Key1 = "Value1", Key2 = "Value2" } /> ... and this type of array definition: <cfset arrData = [ "Value1", "Value2" ] /... read more »
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Updating In-Memory (Temporary) SQL Tables With UPDATE / DELETE Clauses
Posted: May 30, 2007 at 2:38 PM by Ben Nadel
This never occurred to me to try, but today, trying to solve a problem, I ran a SQL statement that attempted to use the UPDATE clause on an in-memory table. Much to my surprise (and delight), this worked! I had no idea that you could do this. To test it even further, I ran a DELETE clause as well. Worked like a charm! Here is a demo of this in ac... read more »
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Storing Float Values In An Integer Column Of A ColdFusion Query
Posted: May 30, 2007 at 2:24 PM by Ben Nadel
ColdFusion query of queries are amazing; hands down, one of the best features of the language. 98% of the time, they rock, 2% of the time they drive you crazy. Today, I ran into one of those 2% times, which again, just goes to demonstrate how important it is to understand the underlying Java implementation and data types. I was performing a very ... read more »
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How ColdFusion CreateObject() Really Works With Java Objects
Posted: May 30, 2007 at 10:06 AM by Ben Nadel
I use ColdFusion's CreateObject() method at least a dozen times each day to create wonderful Java objects like String Buffers and File Input Stream. Until recently, I have never really thought about how it actually works - I have just accepted that the black magic under the hood did the job properly. But then, just the other day, I discovered that... read more »
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ColdFusion 8 Beta Released - ColdFusion 8 Release Date Contest Still Open
Posted: May 30, 2007 at 8:10 AM by Ben Nadel
In what is now an extremely exciting week, Adobe has released a public beta of ColdFusion 8. Check it out on the Adobe Labs page now. Here are some links to the important documentation (thousands of sweet, sweet pages): What's New in ColdFusion 8 (200 KB PDF) ColdFusion 8 Developer Guide (11 MB PDF) CFML Reference for ColdFusion 8 (8 M... read more »
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ColdFusion ZipUtility Component Can Now Write Directly To An Output Stream
Posted: May 29, 2007 at 9:43 PM by Ben Nadel
A few days ago, I posted my ColdFusion ZipUtility.cfc code that I was developing in order to zip code snippet files. One of the short coming of that version of the ZipUtility.cfc was that it required writing the Zip data to a physical file on the server. This is highly recommending for anything that is going to be large, but for my use case (zippi... read more »
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Inline Code Snippets Can Now Be Downloaded As One Zip File
Posted: May 29, 2007 at 9:16 PM by Ben Nadel
A few days ago, Boyan Kostadinov suggested that I add functionality that would allow users to download all the code snippets of a given blog entry as one zip file (as opposed to downloading each snippet individually). That suggestion is now a reality; for all blog entries that have more than one code snippet, there is now a Download Zip link at ... read more »
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ColdFusion 8 Coming Soon??? (Saucy)
Posted: May 29, 2007 at 7:42 PM by Ben Nadel
I don't what the recent buzz is about ColdFusion 8 coming soon, but I knew it could some how be fenagled into a girl-on-girl picture :) In all honesty, I am totally pumped up about the new ColdFusion version, code named Scorpio, and if it does indeed come out, I'll be downloading it ASAP! ... read more »
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Passing Users From One ColdFusion Application To Another
Posted: May 29, 2007 at 9:37 AM by Ben Nadel
NOTE: I was not expecting this to work. This was merely an exploration of what could be possible according to someone else. Someone recently mentioned to me that they pass users from one ColdFusion application to another and are able to maintain session information. I have never heard of this, but I have also never tried to do that. So, I figur... read more »
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Using CFApplication Inside Of ColdFusion's Application.cfc
Posted: May 29, 2007 at 8:43 AM by Ben Nadel
Last week, I gave a Nylon Technology presentation on ColdFusion's Application.cfc component . While giving the presentation, it occurred to me - if Application.cfc is a component just like any other and it really just defines a ColdFusion application, I wonder what would happen if you use ColdFusion's CFApplication tag inside of the Application... read more »
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Testing ColdFusion Session Cookie Acceptance
Posted: May 25, 2007 at 5:45 PM by Ben Nadel
Occassionally, you get random users who cannot seem to hold a session on one of your client sites. The cause of this, most often, is that that user cannot accept cookies either from any site or from the site in question. This is a hard problem to debug over the phone, so to help assuage the problem, I have created a ColdFusion page that tests to s... read more »
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Always Define Your ColdFusion Query Column Types
Posted: May 25, 2007 at 3:26 PM by Ben Nadel
It used to be in the pre-ColdFusion MX 7 days that there was no way to manually create a query and tell ColdFusion what Java data type you wanted the column to be. With the introduction of ColdFusion MX 7, that all changed. Now, QueryNew() and QueryAddColumn() both allow for explicit data type declarations: QueryNew( columnlist [, columntypelist]... read more »
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Creating Multiple Instances From The Same Java Class In ColdFusion
Posted: May 25, 2007 at 2:54 PM by Ben Nadel
The other day, I came across a cool little feature of ColdFusion that I was not aware of. Usually, when I go to create a Java object, I use the ColdFusion CreateObject() method and give it the Java class name that I want to create. I don't fully understand that magic that is CreateObject() and so, I assumed that you needed to call it for every sin... read more »
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Lenny And Bo, ColdFusion Programmers (Vol. 14)
Posted: May 25, 2007 at 8:01 AM by Ben Nadel
Hey Lenny, what do you call a modern application that's only running ColdFusion 4.5 and suffers from serious spaghetti code? I don't know, what? Still better than ASP! ... read more »
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