Viewing by month: October 2007
CFGrid Issues - CFGridRow Values that Contain Commas
Posted on Oct 11, 2007
I am working on something I hope to announce soon and was trying some of the new ColdFusion 8 Ajax UI functionality, including the updated CFGrid tag. However, I ran into one issue. One of my CFGridRow values contains a comma, but the CFGrid would shove this to the next column by default. The documentation regarding this says the following regarding the value attribute of CFGridRow:
Comma-delimited list of column values. If a value contains a comma, it must be escaped with another comma.
What exactly does that last part mean? I tried replacing the commas with two commas or using the standard RegEx escape character \ before my commas to no avail. Finally, I decided to replace all commas in my text with '&##44' (the double pound is obviously to escape it for CF purposes) and that worked. Nonetheless, I don't think that is what they intended in the docs. Anybody know what they mean?
Where Should Server-Side Form Validation Go?
Posted on Oct 10, 2007
I am working on some internal training at my day job on using object-oriented programming best practices in ColdFusion as well as Mach-II. As part of this, I am building a sample application based upon my Objects and Composition - No Framework tutorial. This includes a number of forms that all interact to allow you to create the example "Xbox console" objects that I used in my example. Its funny when you are trying to build an application for the real-world, you often go with the solution that is expedient and works but when it is for teaching purposes, you might prefer to actually confirm that this is the (or a) "right way" to do things.
One question that I am trying to get a handle on is where is the best place to put server-side form validation. The most common place I have seen recommended by several prominent folks within the community is that validation should live within the bean. Along these lines my generator actually does generate a validate() method. Others have also looked into this topic lately. Jeff Chastain of Alagad wrote several entries on the topic earlier this year. His posts focused on a more generic server-side validation framework. Clearly there is no single answer to this question. However, I am finding the more I think about it, I don't like either of these solutions. Let me explain and then discuss where I have settled, at least for the moment.
ColdFusion Open-Source Update - October 8, 2007
Posted on Oct 08, 2007
Count 'em...six new projects and six updates this week. Thankfully we had seven rather six tutorials or this would have become the Open-Source Update of the Beast. Perhaps it is because it is October and Halloween is near and, fittingly, ComputerWorld recently declared ColdFusion undead. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your perspective), I think this means that ColdFusion must now feast on the flesh of living languages. Watch out PHP!
MAX Wrap-Up - The Big Picture
Posted on Oct 04, 2007
MAX Keynote Stage
ColdFusion Sneak Peak at MAX - ColdFusion and AIR
Posted on Oct 02, 2007
In the sneak peak for ColdFusion, Hemant Khandewal shows how Coldfusion can create an offline/online AIR application using the next version of ColdFusion. Despite some initial technical difficulties, he shows an application built using the new Coldfusion 8 CFAjax tags.
Hemant wants to convert the application to an AIR application and make it available in an offline mode. Offline submission of data would synchronize when the person returns online. He does this by adding a cfairaccess tag to the page. ColdFusion then generates all the code for the AIR application to store all its data into the local database, and then the page is saved as HTML and compiled into an HTML/JavaScript AIR application with the full functionality retained.
Lastly, Hemant demonstrates how offline data is sent to the sever. This uses a coldfusion.air.submitForm function. Once this is done, when a person is in offline mode the data is put into an unsent items. Once the person gets back into online mode, the data is synchronized by being sent to the server.
This is great news in my opinion for the future of ColdFusion and deeper integration with AIR, which is an obvious priority for Adobe.