Rob Brooks-Bilson's Blog - CFUnited

CFUNITED: Spry Framework with Kelly Brown

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 14:31:00 -0400

Sitting in on the Spry presentation with Kelly Brown right now. He starts off by asking who attended Steve's CFAjax presentation, then making the point that Spry is (in his opinion) much easier to use. Next up is a general intro to Ajax. The goals of Spry are open access, easy to use, and innovation enablement. Spry capabilities include loading and displaying data, filtering data using XPath, UI widgets, and visual effects. It's currently in beta, with new features still being onboarded. Beyond the capabilities, there are some limitations. It requires JavaScript (as do all Ajax frameworks), performance (think large data sets), accessibility, and browser limitations (FireFox 1.5, Netscape 7.2, IE 6, and Safari 2.0.3), uses the Google XPath library, only supports XML data, and doesn't degrade well. Despite limitations, Spry is pretty simple to use. You simply include a couple of JavaScript libraries, depending on what functionality you want to use. From there, you load data by creating a Spry XMLDataSet containing the URL of the data source and an XPath statement to select the data (in JavaScript). To display the data, you create a Spry region using standard HTML tags such as DIV. You use binding notation similar to Flex to do the actual display of the data:



{firstname} {lastname}

Looping is also available, similar to how it's done in ColdFusion. Spry also has a mechanism for handling master/detail records. You can select an item from a list and have more information about that item displayed. Kelly is moving along kinda slow, and so far the examples haven't been too dynamic. He's displaying data, but we aren't seeing much as far as dynamic data goes. So far, it doesn't look any different than just pulling data using CF and displaying on the page. I've taken a look at one of the previous beta versions of Spry, and I do have to admit that it does seem simple to use. I still haven't gotten a good feel for everything Spry can do, and unfortunately, I'm leaving this session not much further ahead than where I started. It's nothing against Kelly - he seems pretty knowledgeable about Spry - it's just that I was expecting a slightly faster pace and a little more depth out of the presentation.

CFUNITED: CFAjax with Steve Rittler

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 13:26:00 -0400

I'm sitting in Steve Rittler's CFAjax session right now. Steve's giving some background on Ajax as well as showing the process flow. Basically, "how it works". (x)HTML uses JavaScript to talk to an Ajax object. Ajax object makes an http request to a back end system, in this case ColdFusion. ColdFusion returns xml to the ajax object, which again uses JavaScript to deal with the returned data on the client. Besides CFAJax, there's also ajaxCFC (by Rob Gonda). It uses a slightly different approach. There are also several non-CF specific Ajax frameworks which can be used. CFAjax works with CF 6.0 and above. Requires JavaScript. The client must also support the XMLHttp object. CFAjax can return Structs, Query's and Arrays in addition to XML. Steve's moving into some simple examples now. It's a speaker search where you start typing a last name in a form field and Ajax is used to send the info as you type, updating the form field with possible matches. This is basically the way Google Suggest works. Cross browser support in Ajax can be really difficult. One of the big issues Steve faced is the way most Ajax libraries require you to embed all sorts of HTML within your JavaScript. It's verbose at best. It requires DOM manipulation, which is also a huge pain for cross browser support. His solution is to use "templates". He cautions this isn't for everyone, but in their case, it works well and has a lot of real world deployments. Pros of the templating system include returning HTML - there's no hard coded DOM work. It's also, in Steve's words "very, very, very easy". The cons are that it feels a bit dirty, and may rub purists the wrong way. Again, there's a cost benefits analysis to be done. He shows the simple example again, this time using the templating system. Steve's mentioning upcoming Ajax trends include Ajax/Flex integration (they actually complement each other) as well as mobile Ajax. Lots and lots of "how do I do..." questions coming from the audience. There's obviously a lot of interest in this topic. Steve's doing a good job of answering them. This presentation could definitely span multiple sessions. Steve looks to be wrapping up with an example of how to integrate CFAjax within the Mach-II framework. It's very similar in ModelGlue as well. He's showing the demonstration from within an application his company created called RecruitWeb. It's a pretty slick application for use by athletic recruiting departments. The application is completely written in ColdFusion using Mach-II as the framework and AjaxCFC. If you are interested in the mechanics of the integration, I believe Steve is making the techniques available on his company's website, I'm sure he'd be glad to give a fuller explanation.

CFUNITED: Advanced Web Services: SOAP Headers and More with Ron West

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 16:24:00 -0400

Ron West is discussing advanced web services in ColdFusion. He's starting out by discussing some of the current problems with web services: Security, simple examples (think weather, stocks, etc), document vs. rpc. ColdFusion uses Apache AXIS under the covers. It basically wraps the class org.apache.axis.client.stub. There are lots of useful methods you can call directly on the class. Here are a few: getHeaders()
setHeaders()
getUsername()
getPassword()
setAttachements()
_setPromperty()
WSDL isn't necessarily dynamic. In fact, you can create static WSDL files that correspond to CFC's on your system. You can also modify the static WSDL files. This lets you do things like manage endpoints. Endpoints are locations (URI) for accessing a web service. They can change during the web service call. This allows you to do things like create a simple authentication service for web services. Ron shows an example where you call one login webservice and after authenticating, it returns back the URI to use for the authenticated service. It's very simple, but it does add a layer of additional security (albeit very basic security). SOAP headers allow you to pass additional information along to/from web services. Pre MX 7, working with headers was a real pain. In MX 7, two new functions made working with headers easier: getSOAPRequestHeader() and addSOAPRequestHeader(). SOAP headers are passed as XML. On the ColdFusion side, you can choose to work with the SOAP headers as XML or have them split out into name/value pairs. Web services actually do support persistence (well, they support persistence of the objects being passed, but the connection itself is stateless). You can do them at the client level (via scopes in CF such as applicatoin and session) as well as the service level. AXIS has SESSION_MAINTAIN_PROPERTY as well as cookie support. Ron then went on to show some integration examples, including one that integrated Salesforce.com with a ColdFusion application (CommonSpot CMS) by using salesforce.com's web services API (it has a 3500 line WSDL!). Overall, a very good presentation on some of the advanced ways to work with web services in ColdFusion.

CFUNITED: Inversion of Control with Dave Ross

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 15:01:00 -0400

Sitting in on Dave Ross's Inversion of Control (ColdSpring) presentation right now. Dave's laying the groundwork for the "what & why" of ColdSpring. For background, it's a framework, but not one like ModelGlue, Fusebox, Mach-II, etc. It's more like a container for your application's model. It doesn't handle HTTP requests. It's based off of the Java Spring framework, but it's not a one-for-one port. It attempts to solve the same problems, though. ColdSpring implements a flexible model, where components use each other (one component depends on another to do work), as opposed to one component creating and configuring another. This is called a dependency, with the two components being collaborators. As an IoC container, ColdSpring injects one component into another. Components don't have to create and configure each other - they just use each other. This also makes the actual implementation unimportant as you are now programming to an interface. Polymorphism - you can swap out one implementation of a component for another and collaborators don't know the difference. ColdSpring works like this:

Create an xml file that defines the components and their configs
Refer to the content as bean definitions of bean defs - bean is interchangeable with component
Create a ColdSpring BeanFactory and then pass in your bean definitions

How does ColdSpring get used in a real app:

When app starts, BeanFactory is created and supplied with bean defs
BeanFactory is placed in a persistent scope (application) so that the beans are singletons
In an MVC app, the controller obtains the component(s) it needs from the BeanFactory
ColdSpring is not usually involved with the creation of transient or value objects because that requires knowledge of the framework by other components. The main idea here is that your model shouldn't know it's being managed by ColdSpring.

BeanFactory can also do auto-wiring. Lets ColdSpring automatically figure out which components should be injected where by looking at the method signatures of the defined components and matching with bean definitions. There are pros and cons to auto-wiring. Pros are less typing and less xml. Cons are having to keep better track of what's going on. ColdSpring AOP (aspect oriented programming). It allows you to apply a piece of code across the rest of your codebase in logical places - such as before or after a method call or when an exception is thrown. AOP is often used in logging and security, but it isn't limited to that. It also works well for managing transactions and workflow. ColdSpring AOP can also be used to expose functionality to services such as Flash Remoting without having to create a facade. Chris Scott programmed the AOP piece of ColdSpring. ModelGlue 2.0 uses ColdSpring as the default IoC container. It's used by the framework itself and is also exposed so you can use it.

Reminder: CFUNITED Flickr Pool

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 17:04:00 -0400

Just a reminder for folks headed to CFUNITED (and those watching from home), there's an active Flickr Pool where you can post and view photos from the event as well as post messages. The group currently contains a lot of photos from last year's event, and I'm hoping it's just as popular this year!

CFUNITED Flickr Pool - 2006

Thu, 18 May 2006 22:39:00 -0400

With a little more than a month until the kick-off of CFUNITED, I figured I'd remind everyone that there's a Flickr pool for CFUNITED photos. There are currently 25 members, with over 150 photos posted from last year's event. If you are going to this year's conference, sign up for the group (it's free) and share your conference pics. If you can't make it to CFUNITED this year, the Flickr pool is a great place to see what you are missing ;-)

Blue Dragon Profiler

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 12:13:00 -0400

After the CF 8 announcement the other day that Macromedia would be opening up more server internals for monitoring in the next major release of ColdFusion, one of my first thoughts was "profiling tools". Funnily enough, Charlie Arehart of New Atlanta has just officially announced that they are productizing a proflier that they initially created for their own use. Their profiling tool, which is web based will show all sorts of useful information about a CFML web application such as page execution, which tags executed, how many times, how long the tags took to execute, execution order, etc. Each of these items contains additional details. You can dril down from the page to tag level to see exactly what's executing, and how long it took. It's granular all the way down to the line of code that's in question. The one thing I didn't see them show in the tool is memory utilization. While I think the tool gives us a lot more than we have now, to me, showing memory utilization is pretty crucial. We'll see if this makes its way into the final product or not.

Reflecting on Joel on Software

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 11:33:00 -0400

Joel Spolsky's keynote emphasized one key point that I think we all need to reflect on to keep us grounded. To end users, the UI is the application. That means that no matter how great our models and controllers are, what we present to the user is how our applications are going to be judged. They don't care that we're using asynch gateways, OO, etc. What they do care about is asthetics, usability and an emotional response to the environment. Food for thought for sure. I think we've all seen more than our share of bad UIs for otherwise fantastic applications.

CFUNITED Winding Down

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 11:25:00 -0400

As CFUNITED winds dowm, I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who made it possible. Those people are too numerous to mention here, so I'll leave it at that. The quality and consistency of this year's conference was exceptional. From the conference facilities to the speaker selection to the keynote addresses, this year's CFUNITED was the best ever. It's clear that CFUNITED has truely become the premier ColdFusion technical conference. While MAX will always be considered "The Macromedia Conference", the fact remains that it's much more heavily focused on the entire Macromedia product line than it is on just ColdFusion. While there is still a lot of value to be derived from MAX, if you are looking for focused, timely ColdFusion technical sessions, CFUNITED is the ticket.

Joel on Project Management

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 13:30:00 -0400

From Joel's Project Management session. I read this before on his website, but it's good to hear it delivered in person:

Use source control. Duh.
Automate the build process
Create daily builds. Keeps developers from blocking each other (more so in compiled langs).
Get a bug tracking system
Fix bugs before writing new code
Maintain an up-to-date schedule
You need a spec, with as much detail as possible
Programmers need a quiet work environment
Get yourself the best tools money can buy
You need testers (not programmers) for your application testing
Make programmers write code during interviews
You need to do usability testing - even if it's on the cheap

First CFUNITED Pictures Now On Flickr

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 08:46:00 -0400

I finally had a chance to post some of my initial CFUNITED pictures to the CFUNITED Flickr Pool. If you haven't checked out the pool yet, it's a place where anyone attending the conference can go and post pictures for everyone to see. I (and hopefully others) should be adding more pictures soon.

Jeff Tapper on Event Gateways

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 08:40:00 -0400

Jeff Tapper gave a good introduction to ColdFusion Event Gateways. Besides the ususal "here's how you send an IM through the gateway", Jeff also demo'd an application he created to allow him to add new music to his music server remotely, and have the songs show up in his online playlist. He's using a combination of FTP, a modified version of the directory watcher gateway, and WinAmp. When the file's been received and added to the playlist, it send him an IM letting him know. A cool idea indeed, and a great demo app.

Why CFUNITED Rocks

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 00:18:00 -0400

As many of you know by now, I'm at CFUNITED, the premier ColdFusion Technical Conference all week. What you may not be aware of, however, is exactly why CFUNITED rocks. Let me tell you. In addition to the keynotes, developer focused sessions, etc., the networking opportunities here are unmatched. Adam Crump and I finished off the evening tonight (about 10 minutes ago) with an awesome conversation with Joe Rinehart (of model-glue fame), Paul Kenney (CFCUnit architect) and Doug Hughes (Alagad Image Component author). We discussed everything from frameworks to unit testing to future trends in ColdFusion. While I've spoken to several of these guys individually, or via forum posts, it's hard to describe just how awesome it was to have all of them in the same room discussing the things that I think matter most to ColdFusion's future.

ColdFusion MX 8 - Codename Scorpio

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:17:00 -0400

At the CFUNITED keynote this morning, Macromedia announced the codename for ColdFusion MX 8, "Scorpio". Currently in early development, Tim Buntel mentioned that the two top areas of focus were the presentation tier, and greater access to the server internals and monitoring. The server internals and monitoring is especially interesting (to me at least). This would open up the potential for several things. The first thing we could potentially get would be more access to internal information, such as how much memory particular things were consuming. Think things like knowing how much memory a particular query is consuming, etc. There's a lot of potential here. Second on the list is profiling tools. The Java world has them, and I want them for CF. Having a profiling tool would allow you to pinpoint where in your code certain conditions were present such as excessive memory use, slow performance, etc. Given previous product cycles, I'm guessing here that we won't see CFMX 8 going gold for probably another 18 months or so, but that's only a prediction.

Macromedia and Open Source - CFEclipse Announcement

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:12:00 -0400

From the CFUNITED conference in Bethesda, MD... Macromedia announced formal support for the CFEclipse project, pledging engineering support and collaboration for the project. CFEclipse will remain an independant project, with Macromedia providing advice, research, and code as time unfolds. Simeon Bateman, the project leader for CFEclipse also addressed the crowd stating that we should start to expect more regular builds as the collaboration with Macromedia moves forward. Expect the CFEclipse 2.0 release sometime this fall. In the meantime, the new CFEclipse Website is now online.