May 20, 2010 2:34 PM
| Chris P.
Categories :
ColdFusion
I am in the R&D stages of building a Facebook application for my employer (DealerPeak). I just spent hours trying to figure out why I couldn't get my tab page to show up when being loaded by Facebook. I was getting the following error:
Errors while loading page from application
Parse errors:
FBML Error (line 20): illegal tag "body" under "fb:tab-position"
FBML Error (line 35): illegal tag "body" under "fb:tab-position"
Runtime errors:
URLExceptionInvalid scheme for url (javascript:history.back())
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First up was Server.cfc. However that is a bit of a misnomer. You can actually point the administrator to any CFC. That CFC simply needs to have an onServerStart() method. This should be quite a boon for getting sites that have an expensive (read "slow") first request all spun up and ready for traffic.
Next up was nested cftransaction. Not a lot to explain here. From what I saw, it should satisfy you if you ever said to yourself "I really wish I could nest transactions in CF".
Then we got introduced to cffinally/finally. I personally have never used this even in languages that I have access to it. Basically it gives you this syntax: "try { ... } catch (e) { ... } finally { ... }". If someone wants to explain an compelling use case for "finally", I would love to hear it...
And then there was cfcontinue and it was good. Seriously! I mean, I'm excited about this one and at the same time amazed it took them this long.
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Peter looks at projects in roughly 3 categories.
- Configuration < $8000 - free spec (just set up something already built)
- Customization < $50,000 - paid spec (requirements gathering, setting up and customizing packages)
- Exploration $50,000 - no spec (hard to even define scope)
Configuration
These projects are all about efficiency. You will need to simplify the specs for these types of projects. You will need to have/use configurable code to implement deliverable. That could be via something with a setting file or configuration wizard. In some cases you might use DSLs (domain specific languages). And for very simple stock types of things you can even reuse prior specification documents (copy and paste, or compile stock specs as you go).
Customization
I think here he was talking about a site that will use a lot of code that you or someone else already wrote.
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May 28, 2009 10:46 AM
| Chris P.
Categories :
ColdFusion
I ran some test code the other day just to make sure that I correctly understand how arguments passed in to functions in CFML work. If you know everything there is to know about functions and arguments in ColdFusion, then feel free not to read the rest of this. But, if you're curious...
Here is the code:
<cfoutput>
<cffunction name="ExtraArgs" access="public" returntype="string">
<cfargument name="Arg1" required="false" type="string" />
<cfargument name="Arg2" required="false" type="string" />
<cfargument name="Arg3" required="false" type="string" />
<cfargument name="Arg4" required="false" type="string" />
<cfif structKeyExists(arguments,'Arg4')>
<cfreturn arguments.Arg4 />
<cfelse>
<cfreturn 'undefined' />
</cfif>
</cffunction>
<cfset args3 = {Arg1='value1', Arg2='value2', Arg3='value3'} />
<cfset args4 = {Arg1='value1', Arg2='value2', Arg3='value3', Arg4='value4'} />
<br/> 1) #ExtraArgs(argumentCollection=args3)# <!--- output = "undefined" --->
<br/> 2) #ExtraArgs(argumentCollection=args4)# <!--- output = "value4" --->
<br/> 3) #ExtraArgs(argumentCollection=args4, Arg4='SomeOtherValue')# <!--- output = "SomeOtherValue" --->
</cfoutput>
All of the arguments are specified as 'not required' with no 'default' value. The function looks for the existence of the fourth argument and either returns that or the string "undefined".
The first time it is called with the "args3" struct that omits the "Arg4" argument, it returns "undefined".
The second time it is called with the "args4" struct, which contains "Arg4", it returns "value4" (the value of "Arg4" in the args4 struct).
The third time it is called with the "args4" struct and also the "Arg4" argument in addition to that, it returns "SomeOtherValue". This, I think, is the most interesting one. With this behavior, you could store structs containing the default arguments for certain operations, and then call those operations overriding defaults as needed.
My blog has been absolutely hammered with comment spam lately. If any of you were subscribed to any of those comments and were forwarded the offensive spam, I am very sorry.
Fortunately, one of the bots wasn't submitting something correctly. So, instead of getting a few thousand spam comments I got a few thousand error emails. :-(
Anyway, I just took the time to add CFFormProtect to my comment form. It was super easy. There was really no excuse for me not to do this sooner. So, again, I apologize.
Just to show you how easy it is, here is the implementation code from the docs.
Put
<cfinclude template="/cfformprotect/cffp.cfm">
somewhere between your form tags.
<!--- On your processing page include the following code: --->
<cfset Cffp = CreateObject("component","cfformprotect.cffpVerify").init() />
<!--- now we can test the form submission --->
<cfif Cffp.testSubmission(form)>
<!--- The submission has passed the form test. Place processing here --->
<cfelse>
<!--- The test failed. Take appropriate failure action here. --->
</cfif>
Of course there are lots of things you can do to customize it's behavior. But, that is the basics. So please go checkout CFFormProtect for all your 'spam form submission' needs. Because, seriously, Captcha is the suck.
Last night I presented my "Real World AJAX" talk to PDXRIA (our local Portland Adobe User Group). I said I would post the code. So, here it is! (Download link below)
I have included the PDF slide presentation too. There are not a lot of slides. This is a code heavy talk. It uses a very simple CRUD application to demonstrate adding AJAX to an existing application. There are three versions in the zip. One completely paged based. Another one with some 'partial page update' style AJAX to improve the user experience. And a final one with some DHTML and DOM building. The code uses an in memory query object instead of a database. So, you should be able to drop it in a folder and run it with no setup.
When I give the presentation, I show how you can turn JavaScript off and the second version still works (it gracefully degrades). I really need to add about 10 more slides with some of the stuff that I ramble off while I'm showing the code examples. If I get around to polishing it off, I'll re-post the updated slides and code.
Also, I built the slides in OpenOffice.org Impress. If you would like to give this talk to your user group, or somewhere else, let me know.
