July 2009 Web Log Entries
Learning ColdFusion 9: Using OnCFCRequest() To Return JSONP (JSON With Padding) API Responses
Posted: July 20, 2009 at 8:50 AM by Ben Nadel
A few days ago, I blogged about the new OnCFCRequest() event handler in ColdFusion 9's Application.cfc framework . This event handler controls requests made to ColdFusion components as opposed to the OnRequest() event handler which, in ColdFusion 9, only handles requests made to ColdFusion templates (CFM file). Over the weekend, I was thinking mo... read more »
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Free ColdFusion 9 Beta Hosting On Hostek.com
Posted: July 19, 2009 at 5:44 PM by Ben Nadel
I just saw on Twitter that Hostek.com is now offering free ColdFusion 9 Beta hosting! If you're interested, check it out here: Free ColdFusion 9 Beta Hosting . ... read more »
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Project HUGE: Huge In A Hurry - Get Big - Phase 3 / Week 3
Posted: July 19, 2009 at 3:59 PM by Ben Nadel
I am almost done with the Get Big program in Chad Waterbury's Huge In A Hurry workout . I have been really trying to stick with it; but, as I have gotten farther into the workout, I have started substituting a few of the exercise choices. This last week, Week 3 of Phase 2, I decided to substitute Barbell Box Squats in lieu of Bulgarian Split Squa... read more »
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Ask Ben: Dynamic Web Root And Site URL Calculations In Application.cfc
Posted: July 19, 2009 at 2:33 PM by Ben Nadel
I'm new to using Application.cfc. Following Ben Forta's tutorial, I've created one that calls a SiteHeader and a SiteFooter. The header has an image file which displays at the root level of the website, but breaks when you go to folders underneath that. I can make it work by setting a Request.Image_Path in Application.cfc, but only by hardcoding t... read more »
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Learning ColdFusion 9: IsNull() And Working With NULL Values
Posted: July 18, 2009 at 9:10 PM by Ben Nadel
Before ColdFusion 9, there was never really a sense of NULL values in ColdFusion. If you had a NULL value returned from a Java method, it simply destroyed the variable into which it was stored. If you had a NULL value come back from a query, it was presented as an empty string. While that hasn't really changed, ColdFusion 9 now has a method that m... read more »
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Learning ColdFusion 9: ArrayFind() And ArrayContains() For Searching Arrays
Posted: July 18, 2009 at 7:37 PM by Ben Nadel
ColdFusion 9 had added three new methods for finding values within an array. Two of them - ArrayFind() and ArrayFindNoCase() - return the index of the target value (or zero if it the value cannot be found). The third, ArrayContains(), returns a boolean as to whether or not the value was found in the array. From what I can see, I can't figure out w... read more »
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The Performance Cost Of Throwing Exceptions In ColdFusion
Posted: July 17, 2009 at 6:54 PM by Ben Nadel
After writing my previous blog post on the performance gains offered by the Virtual File System in ColdFusion 9 , I started to think about Elliott Sprehn's recent blog post on using ARGUMENTS.Callee in ColdFusion . In it, Elliott uses manually-triggered exceptions to gain access to an instance of the Function object from within the function bo... read more »
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Learning ColdFusion 9: Virtual File System vs. Actual File System
Posted: July 17, 2009 at 5:55 PM by Ben Nadel
Earlier today, I blogged about the new Virtual File System available in ColdFusion 9 . I explained that the virtual file system was just like the actual file system except that you were writing to the "ram://" disk rather than to the hard drive. I wrote that the biggest benefit of this new virtual file system was the performance gain - that it wa... read more »
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Learning ColdFusion 9: The Virtual File System (RAM Disk)
Posted: July 17, 2009 at 10:10 AM by Ben Nadel
ColdFusion 9 introduced a new file system, called the Virtual File System, that acts just like any drive, but exists fully in the RAM of the server. It looks, acts, and feels like a regular file system, but the difference is that it's much faster due to the fact that reads and writes to and from it don't actually involve any disk access. Other tha... read more »
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Step Debugging jQuery Selectors
Posted: July 16, 2009 at 11:00 AM by Ben Nadel
NOTE : This blog post was inspired by a post that Ray Camden did a while back about an AIR-based jQuery selector tester . I was talking to some people a while back about debugging jQuery selectors. To me, the hardest part about debugging jQuery selectors is that when they are not returning the set of nodes you want, or nodes at all, its ha... read more »
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Attaching ColdFusion Error Reports To Avoid GMail Spam
Posted: July 16, 2009 at 9:29 AM by Ben Nadel
I am sure that all of us keep track of the errors generated by our ColdFusion web sites. I personally like to email myself the exception data using Application.cfc's OnError() event handler. Traditionally, what I do is just CFDump out a bunch of the relevant scopes (Exception, CGI, FORM, URL) in the email body and send it off. But recently, GMail ... read more »
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Learning ColdFusion 9: CFImport / New Operator Works With Tags As Well
Posted: July 15, 2009 at 8:05 PM by Ben Nadel
This is a really minor post, but I just wanted to show a quick example. Several people have already demonstrated ColdFusion 9's "new" operator for use in creating ColdFusion components in lieu of the CreateObject() method. But, those demonstrations have all been done using CFScript and I wanted to kick it old-school (sometimes referred to as "Ben ... read more »
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Learning ColdFusion 9: Application.cfc OnCFCRequest Event Handler For CFC Requests
Posted: July 15, 2009 at 10:44 AM by Ben Nadel
Earlier this week, Ray Camden blogged about ColdFusion 9's new onCFCRequest() event handler method in Application.cfc. If you look at the Application.cfc reference guide in the ColdFusion 9 documentation, you'll notice that it is not there at all (so far the CF9 docs have been extremely under whelming). As such, there are a lot of questions th... read more »
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Learning ColdFusion 9: Referencing Arrays Returned From Methods
Posted: July 14, 2009 at 1:51 PM by Ben Nadel
This is a really minor syntax update in ColdFusion 9, but again, one that will probably remove a good amount of friction in certain areas. In ColdFusion 9, if you perform a method call that returns an array, you can now reference the array index directly off of the method call result without creating an intermediary variable. Meaning, you can now ... read more »
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ColdFusion and OOP - Match Made in Heaven, or Long Road to Hell?
Posted: July 14, 2009 at 10:45 AM by Ben Nadel
For a long time, Hal Helms has been my beacon of hope in the world of object oriented programming madness. With many years of OO programming experience across a variety of different languages, I thought, some how, if I could just understand the concepts that he did, I would finally be able to wrap my head around the beast which is OO. As such, I... read more »
