Sam Farmer's Blog on App Development

bear: ORM text-based diagram

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 15:32:00 -0700

I'm pleased to announce an open-source mini-project that I have been working on to make ORM relationships easier to view. Its called bear.

bear takes metadata from ColdFusion ORM entities and turns it into a readable text-based diagram of the relationships and properties.

Features

Works with any entities that a mapping will point to.
Option to exclude entities to avoid listing entities that just produce noise (eg, user). Entities are displayed once to prevent circular display problems.
Option to show just relationships and ignore properties.
A GUI setup process
Clicking on a property displays all metadata in a popover

How it works
bear runs as its own application and uses ColdFusion mappings to read entities and their information. Provide all the mappings that your application uses for entities

How to make it work
Download the code somewhere local. Run.

debugClean Version 2

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 20:22:00 -0700

I added a few new features for version 2 of debugClean based on some of the features added to ColdFusion Builder 2.0:

Opens in a view.
Click on each issue and have the file open up with the line highlighted.
The issues are listed in reverse order. This means that when you click on each item and fix it often by removing the line the next issue will be on the correct line.
Works on CF and non-CF files.

Check it out and download from RIAForge.

Presentations from RIACon

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 13:55:00 -0700

Here are my two presentations from RIACon:

10 Little Ones: The New Array Features

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 20:09:00 -0700

Adobe ColdFusion 10 brings some improvements to manipulating arrays.

In this example we have two arrays called one and two. A new argument has been added to arrayAppend called arrayConcat that when true will append two arrays together.

one = ["a","c","e"];
two = ["b","d"];

arrayAppend( one, two, true );

writeDump( var=one, label="one after arrayAppend");

one after arrayAppend - array
1	a
2	c
3	e
4	b
5	d

Array one now has all the values. The order seems a little off though. Enter arraySort which as its second argument takes a closure/function where you can write your own sort logic. Basic sorting is straightforward and its nice to have the flexibility to extend it when needed.

arraySort( one, function( a, b ) {
	return ( a > b );
});

writeDump( var=one, label="one after arraySort");

one after arraySort - array
1	a
2	b
3	c
4	d
5	e

In the next example we'll filter the array by writing a closure to return an array with just the letters that are in my name.

filtered = arrayFilter( one, function( val ) {
	if ( reFindNoCase("s|a|m", val ) ) {
		return true;
	} else {
		return false;
	}
});

writeDump( var=filtered, label="filtered");

filtered - array
1	a

Slicing of arrays has also been added with the arraySlice function.

sliced = arraySlice( one, 1, 1 );
writeDump(sliced);

array
1	a

last = arraySlice( one, -1, 1 );
writeDump(last);

array
1	e

Where it makes send these functions also have list and struct equivalents.

10 Little Ones: What are Implicit Accessors?

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 19:52:00 -0700

ColdFusion 10 added implicit accessors and in this post I'll cover how to turn them on and use them.

Turning on implicit accessors is achieved via a straightforward setting in application.cfc:
component { this.name = "implicitFun"; this.invokeImplicitAccessor = true; }

Once on this means we can now access a getter and setter function of an object/cfc using the same syntax as if it where a struct. Let's look at a simple component called user.cfc:
component accessors="true" { property firstname; property lastname; function getFirstname() { return UCase( variables.firstname ); } function getName() { return variables.firstname & " " & variables.lastname; } }

Now let's see what happens when we make an object and start interacting with it:
//using the automatic constructor -- there is no init //function in user user = new user( firstname="Homer", lastname="Simpson" ); //calling firstname will run getter function //in CF9 this was user.getFirstname() writeOutput( user.firstname ); /*DISPLAYS: HOMER */ //calling name which directly references variables scope does //not call getter function writeOutput( user.name ); /*DISPLAYS: Homer Simpson */ //now lets change the name and call it again: user.firstname = "Lisa"; writeOutput( user.firstname ); /*DISPLAYS: LISA */

As you can see from the code above when you call the implicit accessor on an object it calls the getter or setter function but within a cfc calling the variables scope directly calls the variable and not the getter or setter function.

Speaking at RIACON 2012

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:20:00 -0700

I'm delighted to have been asked to speak at this years RIACON — "Back at a better venue". That's my slogan not the official one which doesn't actually exists. RIACON 2012 in its own words:

Where architects and developers of all levels come to gather, share and learn about creating the next generation of web based applications. RIAcon's goal is to help you network with fellow industry professionals and expose you to the best content. At RIACon attendees can learn the most up to date skills in HTML5, Mobile, Javascript, Flex/AIR, Actionscript, and Server Side Enterprise Architecture.

I'll be speaking on Searching ORM: Why, How and What's New in CF10 and there are many other excellent sessions.

CF Developer Week: 19 Sessions, 5 Days

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 14:08:00 -0700

ColdFusion Developer Week starts Monday June 4th and covers 19 sessions over 5 days. All sessions are presented online using Adobe Connect.

It kicks off with Getting Started with Web Application Development Using ColdFusion presented by Elishia Dvorak and ends with Revamped Scheduled Tasks in ColdFusion 10 presented by Jeff Coughlin.

Along the way there are sessions for beginners and experts covering everything from testing to ORM to PDF's to REST to WebSockets. Check out all the sessions and register.

Searching ORM: First Why, Then How -- Slides from cf.Objective()

Thu, 24 May 2012 06:41:00 -0700

Thank you to everyone who came out to my presentation on Searching ORM at cf.Objective().

Here are the slides

ColdFusion 10 is Released!

Tue, 15 May 2012 07:15:00 -0700

Its out of beta and up for grabs...ColdFusion 10 has been released! (I make a small appearance in the intro video as well.)

I wrote about ColdFusion 10 back in February read my thoughts.

Crack your laptop open, we'll crack a beer at the Hackathon

Mon, 14 May 2012 07:11:00 -0700

My buddy, Adam Tuttle, has organized a Hackathon at cf.Objective() to code for his CFScript Community Components project. The hackathon is taking place at 7pm on Friday. That sounds like a time when its better to have a beer in hand. So, I spoke to some good people at Adobe and they agreed to buy everyone who participates a drink!

So, come along, crack open your laptop and make ColdFusion better and we'll crack open a beer, or drink of preference, for you!

10 Little Ones: Automatic CFC Init (#5)

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:41:00 -0700

One of the language enhancements in ColdFusion 10 beta is implicit/automatic constructors for CFC's. In short this means that if a component has defined properties and there is no init function ColdFusion will look to match the parameters passed in to the properties. Lets take a look at how it works: component accessors="true" { property firstname; property lastname; } user = new user( firstname="Homer", lastname="Simpson" ); writeDump( var=user, format="text", showudfs=false );

Which will produce:

[cfc1] component user

Properties: 

	firstname: Homer 

	lastname: Simpson

Parameters can be passed in as name-value pairs or as a struct:

user = new user( {firstname="Homer", lastname="Simpson"} );

10 Little Ones: Specify Language Version on Per Project Basis in Builder (#4)

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 19:59:00 -0700

The ColdFusion 10 beta also includes ColdFusion Builder 2.0.1 beta (scroll down page). One nice addition is the option to specify language version on a per project basis rather than per editor.

For developers who work on multiple versions this is a great improvement.

10 Little Ones: Write and Append Enhancements for cffile (#3)

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 20:14:00 -0700

An enhancement in ColdFusion 10 to cffile makes it very easy to write or append content to a file on physical disk, Amazon S3 or RAM disk.

In the following example a new file will be created: Here is my file content With several lines That go on

In this example the content is appended to the file: And now appending a couple lines

10 Little Ones: For in loop for Queries (#2)

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 19:35:00 -0700

ColdFusion 10, now in public beta, adds for-in loops for query recordsets. The variable name in the for loop will reference each column by the column name.

The currentrow can be referenced by queryname.currentrow as seen in the example below. Same for recordcount. getArt = new query( sql="SELECT artName, price FROM Art" ).execute().getResult(); for ( row in getArt ) { writeOutput( "

" & getArt.currentRow & ": " & row.artName & " " & row.price & "

");
}

10 Little Ones: Memory and CPU Figures (#1)

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:12:00 -0700

ColdFusion 10 beta adds three new functions that provide system stats:

getCPUUsage()
getSystemFreeMemory()
getSystemTotalMemory()

The first returns a percentage while the other two return the amount of bytes. Here is a quick example:



CPU Usage #getCPUUsage()#



System Memory

Total #getSystemTotalMemory()#

Free #getSystemFreeMemory()#


% Free: #numberFormat( ( getSystemFreeMemory()/getSystemTotalMemory() ) *100, "999.99")#

Which produces

CPU Usage 24.875624

System Memory
Total 8589934592
Free 1640640512
% Free: 19.10

Pretty straightforward and information that would look good in the new charting functionality...

(This is the first in a series to show off some of the smaller additions to ColdFusion 10).