Tips & Tricks

ColdFusion to the Rescue

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 12:00:00 EDT

In the 21st century business environment, companies live and die by their fat and bogus enterprise applications. New mega-industry groups have been created not only to develop these applications, but deploy, support, and train.

Parse RSS del.icio.us Using ColdFusion

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 19:30:00 EDT

Using RSS as a means to create automatic dynamic content with minimal work fascinates me. Most bloggers probably create feeds on a regular basis - most likely at least a Flickr feed, and possibly del.icio.us. These provide JavaScript services to parse the feed into your site; however, with the prevalence of server-side scripting, why not have fun and parse the feed into your blog yourself?

Macromedia ColdFusion - MX to iSeries Demystified

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 12:15:00 EDT

In this article, I'll show you how to connect ColdFusion MX to an IBM iSeries (formerly AS/400) DB2 database. I'll describe your connectivity options and give you configuration examples.

Building a Zip Code Proximity Search with ColdFusion

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 17:15:00 EST

Recently I was tasked with improving our Web site's Reseller Locator application. This tool helps potential customers in the U.S. find a product reseller in their state. By choosing a state from a drop-down box, a listing of all resellers located in that state is displayed.

Ray Camden's "Ask a Jedi" – Building a Template System in ColdFusion

Sun, 16 Oct 2005 11:00:00 EDT

A developer who'd seen CMS applications in PHP that have templates that use variable for placing content, menu, footer, etc, asked CFDJ's technical editor and CF blogger Ray Camden if there's a way that such variables can be created using ColdFusion? Ray's answer, as usual, was authoritative. In a word: 'Absolutely!'

Observed Benefits of the Unified Modeling Language

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 17:00:00 EDT

Over the past 12 months, I have observed significant benefits using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) when developing Rich Internet Applications using Macromedia technology.

The XPath Factor

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 17:00:00 EDT

It's 3:00 P.M. on a sunny Saturday afternoon. The birds are chirping, the leaves are blowing, and you can hear the lake waters breaking on its rocky shores. The sounds of a baseball game randomly crack in the distance, and the roar of competition erupts on the basketball courts nearby.

Reusable (and Maintainable) Presentation Code

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 00:00:00 EST

Everyone knows that you should reuse your code so that you don't have to repeatedly write the same functionality. You put widgets in custom tags and encapsulate logic in CFCs. Even so, your application's user interface may frequently end up changing. Sometimes the changes are so substantial that it hardly seems worth the effort to try to reuse code at all.

HTTP Status Codes: Do the Unthinkable

Wed, 20 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EDT

HTTP status codes can help you implement threading and more. Here are a couple of ideas. Although the power of ColdFusion allows us as developers to do many things very quickly compared to many other languages, there are times when we find CFML does not offer all of the functionality required to accomplish a task.

Using XML to Share Performing Arts Schedules

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 00:00:00 EDT

'Don't you have it set up so you can just automatically pull our listings from our Web sites?' the e-mail asked. 'Not yet,' I typed in my response. 'But it's a great idea, and I'm working on it now.'

Creating Free PDFs from Your CF Application

Wed, 14 Jul 2004 00:00:00 EDT

Here's how to put your knowledge of HTML to work by creating free PDFs with FOP (Formatting Objects Processor). In the May issue of CFDJ, I covered the basics of utilizing FOP from Apache to dynamically create free PDFs in your ColdFusion application. If you enjoyed that article you will certainly enjoy this one as we dive deeper into the capabilities of this process.

Writing Queries for Oracle vs SQL Server

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 00:00:00 EST

Have you ever written an application using one database only to have it break when you switched to a different database? How often have you decided to limit the functionality of your database by writing only basic SQL because you just weren't sure if your queries would work on a different database?

Using the CASE Expression in SQL Queries

Tue, 09 Dec 2003 00:00:00 EST

The DBMS (database management system) is often faster at performing calculations like summing up or averaging the values in a column of numbers than, for instance, the application server. However, there are many cases in which performing the same calculation on all of the data in a column will not provide the correct result.

Enhancing Verity Search Results

Tue, 11 Nov 2003 00:00:00 EST

Your customer says, 'I want my site search to include all of my regular site pages and my data-based items as well. When my customer clicks on the link, I want it to show the correct page.

Persistence: Creating State

Tue, 11 Nov 2003 00:00:00 EST

What is state? You may have heard the popular phrase, 'The Web is a stateless environment.' Simply put, data cannot persist across multiple page requests to the server.

Extending ColdFusion

Wed, 15 Oct 2003 00:00:00 EDT

Welcome to another edition of Extending ColdFusion, where we discuss the multitude of ways you can extend your ColdFusion programming with user-defined functions (UDFs), custom tags, CFCs, and other methods. In this edition, we are going to delve into a 'gray' area of CF development – use of hidden/internal methods.

Sorting Multidimensional Arrays

Wed, 15 Oct 2003 00:00:00 EDT

In my last article we looked at how to sort multidimensional arrays by creating a second single-dimensional array that is used as a key. The focus of this article is how to sort multidimensional arrays by creating a query object that can be sorted in the same way you would an ordered result set from a database.

Sorting Multidimensional Arrays

Thu, 11 Sep 2003 00:00:00 EDT

One of the most common requests made by users when they see data displayed on a Web page is that they want to be able to view the information sorted by columns. Working with a database makes this request fairly simple; working with arrays is, or at least was, a problem.

Defeating DoS Attacks

Fri, 11 Jul 2003 00:00:00 EDT

A denial-of-service (DoS) attack is an attempt by a single person or a group of people to disrupt an online service. It is designed to bring the server and network to its knees by flooding it with useless traffic. A DoS attack is the most common type of Internet attack and can be launched against your site at any time with relative ease.

JavaScript Without the Headaches

Fri, 11 Jul 2003 00:00:00 EDT

Coding ColdFusion and coding JavaScript are about as far apart on the productivity spectrum as it's possible to be. CF tags are neat, easy to read, tolerant, and fun to write. JavaScript is none of that. It has all the drawbacks of traditional languages, with the added disadvantage of sitting somewhat awkwardly within the HTML document model.

Back to Basics

Mon, 16 Jun 2003 00:00:00 EDT

I read somewhere that when faced with a task that takes one hour to do manually, or one hour to automate, a good programmer will choose to automate the process. As ColdFusion developers, we often face this decision when we need to programmatically use data contained in a text file.

Dynamic Client-Side Input Validation

Thu, 01 May 2003 00:00:00 EDT

Using JavaScript to perform client-side input validation can be simple. However, the task can become more complicated when the set of inputs changes or increases in number, the rules change, or the validation depends on other inputs. This article will show how to create a system to dynamically maintain input fields and validation rules that can be applied to the inputs.

Ask the Training Staff

Fri, 31 Jan 2003 00:00:00 EST

I don't know about you, but February is going to be a very busy month for me. Not only is there plenty of CF work to keep me busy, but my wife, my son, and I are eagerly awaiting the birth of baby boy number two! Nevertheless, I have questions to answer and one revision to make on a previous answer. I hope you find it all worthwhile.

Ask the Training Staff

Tue, 19 Nov 2002 00:00:00 EST

Can you believe it's December already? 2002 was certainly a year of big changes for many CFers as Macromedia released the new MX products. Many of us scrambled to come up to speed on the new changes in CFMX. However, the fundamentals of CF programming didn't really change.

Extending ColdFusion

Tue, 19 Nov 2002 00:00:00 EST

Welcome to another installment of Extending ColdFusion. This month I'm going to talk about a UDF (user-defined function) that will help deal with users. Users are wonderful. Without people visiting your site, your Web page may as well not exist. On the other hand, users have a way of doing the most stup... err crazy things that you can (or most likely cannot) imagine.

Ask the Training Staff

Tue, 22 Oct 2002 00:00:00 EDT

Greetings. I hope all of you who attended the DevCon last month enjoyed it, and came away with some great tips and tricks. This month's column is short, but hopefully addresses some problems that you've encountered recently. Keep those questions coming!

Performance Measurements

Tue, 22 Oct 2002 00:00:00 EDT

It was an article by Michael Dinowitz, 'Comparisons with CFIF,' that made me reevaluate how I was writing my CFIF statements. Since the common was the slowest way to compare two strings, the table of data presented in the article (see Fusion Authority, 1/10/00, www.houseoffusion.com) seemed incomplete to me. I wondered what the performance data would show for integers - and for Boolean tests, as we all write tons of those in our code as well.

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Java: A Training Review

Tue, 22 Oct 2002 00:00:00 EDT

By the end of the course, I had a good grasp of the various parts of the Java language, a better understanding of object-oriented programming, and a great appreciation for how powerful Java can be. J2EE, Java, EJBs, JavaBeans, JSP... . The list of Java-related technologies can be mind-boggling. What's a ColdFusion developer to do? We know Java is important. Macromedia has built ColdFusion MX on a J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) platform, but, does that mean we all need to run out and learn Java? How about JSP? JRun? How will we use it in our day-to-day work? Will we use it and, if so, what flavor? Does a ColdFusion developer have the skills to learn this material?

Error Handling in JavaScript

Fri, 04 Oct 2002 00:00:00 EDT

Have you ever been to a site and gotten a pop-up box telling you about a JavaScript error on the page? It can be really annoying. What's worse is that the person responsible for maintaining the site doesn't even know that the error occurred.

Using Integers to Store Bits of Information

Fri, 04 Oct 2002 00:00:00 EDT

Imagine that your client, Fast Eddy's Auto World, asks you to build a data entry form for his inventory. There are several models of cars that use combinations of many options. No two use the same combination.

Extending ColdFusion

Fri, 04 Oct 2002 00:00:00 EDT

This column will focus on some of the ways developers have of extending the core capacities of ColdFusion. Specifically, we will cover user-defined functions (UDFs), custom tags, and ColdFusion components (CFCs). Every other month I'll select one or two resources that are freely available to anyone and explain what makes it (or them) interesting - or just plain cool.

Ask the Training Staff

Fri, 23 Aug 2002 00:00:00 EDT

September means summer is over and we all get back to work or back to school. And for those of us who have been out of school for a very long time, I hope you always look for opportunities to learn something new. Send me your questions if you get stuck!

Ask the Training Staff

Thu, 30 May 2002 00:00:00 EDT

Wow! Can you believe it's June already? The last few months have been blurred by the flurry of excitement around the new MX products announced and released by Macromedia. As you'll see from the first question, I'm very excited about the new CFMX product. I know you'll like it once you give it a spin. I'd like to hear your comments and questions about it.

Ask the Training Staff

Thu, 02 May 2002 00:00:00 EDT

This month we have three questions to consider. I like them all because they're very practical and applicable to many kinds of applications. I particularly like the third question about encryption methods because it gives me an opportunity to cover two undocumented ColdFusion functions. I hope you find my answers helpful. Keep those questions coming!

How to Sidestep Locking

Mon, 08 Apr 2002 00:00:00 EDT

We all know we should lock our shared scoped variables - that is, application, session, and server variables that can be shared between multiple ColdFusion threads. Everywhere we turn there's another article, another e-mail, and another best practices - all of which entail locking.

Session States Without the Session

Mon, 08 Apr 2002 00:00:00 EDT

Discussions have centered around clusters and shared sessions: How do you overcome the problem of being unable to share session variables across clustered servers? Why else would you build a sessionless site? The answers may surprise you. This article documents a technique that allows session states on clustered servers, increases user security, and provides greater development flexibility.

Ask the Training Staff

Mon, 08 Apr 2002 00:00:00 EDT

Two questions I received this month made me realize just how often we overlook the power of Lists and the many List functions in CF. Many times, we look at a string or other piece of data and don't even realize that what we're looking at is actually a list. Once we realize that something can be treated as a list, CF gives us many ways of using or manipulating that data.

Ask the Training Staff

Mon, 11 Mar 2002 00:00:00 EST

Sometimes I take for granted just how cool ColdFusion really is! The other day one of my programmers asked me how to do what I thought was a fairly easy task. When I showed him the four lines of CF code he needed, he said, 'ColdFusion rocks! It would have taken me 50 lines in PHP to do the same thing!' What could I say, other than 'Yep'? Below are a few lines of code that I hope will make your life easier.

A Banner Ad Custom Tag

Tue, 05 Feb 2002 00:00:00 EST

The banner ad is a bit of a curious creature. It wasn't so long ago (say, 1998) that the pundits who had for so long decried the gluttonous, indelicate banner ad were immersed in self-congratulation. Click-through rates were dropping below 1% down to .5% by the start of 2000. Users don't even see them, the pundits claimed. They've learned to block out the banners and scroll past them; people will turn to other forms of advertising, such as the content ad. And perhaps, to an extent, they have.

Using MS-SQL Stored Procedures with ColdFusion Part 3 of 3

Tue, 05 Feb 2002 00:00:00 EST

Now that we've gone over stored-procedure integration with ColdFusion and looked at some programming basics in Parts 1 and 2 of this article (CFDJ, Vol. 3, issues 10 and 12), let's look at some other useful and more complicated functions using MS-SQL2000. First, however, I need to correct a statement I made in Part 1. I mentioned that stored procedures weren't good if you needed to cache a query on the Web server.