Sam Farmer's Blog on App Development - Virtual File Explorer

Virtual File Explorer and c:\wtf.html

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 13:58:00 -0700

After dinner I checked Twitter and saw the following tweet from @marcesher:

It didn't take long for me to track down the cause of this problem. In the Virtual File Explorer code on line 50 of Service.cfc there it was:

writeDump(var=q, output="c:\wtf.html", format="html");

My apologies to anyone who had downloaded and installed Virtual File Explorer. To fix either remove the line in question or download and install again.

Virtual File Explorer Released! ColdFusion Builder Extension to view, edit and delete your virtual files and directories.

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 03:05:00 -0700

The addition of a virtual file system, essentially RAM based files, in ColdFusion 9 is a very cool one and very useful at times. Working with the virtual file system can be problematic though as, well, its virtual and therefore hard to see!

Enter the ColdFusion Builder extension called Virtual File Explorer that provides this insight.

The image above is shrunk so you'll have to download and install the extension to see its true beauty. The interface above shows the following features:

Pie chart of free and used space
List of all directories with total size, files with file size
Delete button for deleting a file or directory
Edit button for viewing or editing a file (or double-click).

The edit file interface is basic but functional:

I've tagged this as version 0.8. I have some ideas for what would be nice for version 1 but I'd also love to hear from you for any ideas or problems you come across. Thanks also to Raymond Camden for testing and providing great feedback.

Download Virtual File Explorer now!

Later in the week I'll blog my thoughts about building an extension.

The First Post

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 20:59:53 -0700

The first post. I've decided to start a blog primarily because I like writing. And having been a programmer for the last 10 years I haven't written much during that time. I also realize I like writing about technical issues and have a fair amount on my mind at the moment so it seems like a good time to start a blog. Note, I did not say I was a grammatically correct writer. So, expect the odd typo and grammatically incorrect sentence from time to time. This is a blog and I'm not going to use the grammar corrector in Word before posting.

I am also intrigued by social networking so InstantSpot seemed a good spot (pun intended) to start my blog.

I aim to cover a bunch of topics, some tutorials and explanations of basic ColdFusion functionality, thoughts on the future of the web and ColdFusion, conferences, and anything else that comes up. I will mostly be focusing on ColdFusion (and will probably start using cf as an abbreviation real soon) though I do hope to post on other non-cf topics like JavaScript, MySQL and databases in general and who knows what else in the future.

I am not going to aim to publish on a regular basis and have pledged to keep this blog a purely non-work time activity. I'm busy enough there anyway. Good busy. I also don't believe blogs die. So if I have nothing good or interesting to say I will say nothing. I also don't think this will turn into a news blog with short entries and links to the latest news. There are enough of those, and, I rely on them for my tech-news as much as anywhere else. In short, if you like what you are reading I suggest using the RSS feeds or subscribing over email.

More to come...