IT Web Feeds » Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com » May 2008

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• May 31, 2008
• 16:43

  Bigger, Stronger, Faster - The Side Effects Of Being American

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  Last night, I went to see Bigger, Stronger, Faster - The Side Effects of Being American. Written by Chris Bell and staring him and his two brothers, it is a no nonsense look at the world of performance enhancing drugs - what they are, what they do, who uses them, and most interestingly, how America is so incredibly hypocritical when it comes to dealing with them. All three of the Bell boys have used steroids; Chris - writer/director of the film - has given them up after being overcome with f ... Read More »
• May 30, 2008
• 10:22

  National Regular Expression Day And Reflections On My Own Journey

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  With National Regular Expression Day coming up this Sunday, I was taking some time to reflect on my own journey into the land of regular expressions. I have really only come to love regular expressions in the last 3 or 4 years. Before that, I knew they existed, and I know people used them, but I really didn't know anything about them. It all seemed like some voodoo black magic to me; somehow these crazy strings of seemingly ... Read More »
• 8:57

  Ask Ben: Dynamically Executing ColdFusion Application.cfc Instances

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  Here's a challenge. I'm trying to code a solution to replace a hefty, expensive CMS platform. ColdFusion does a lot of stuff and, I believe, can be used to replace that platform. Except for one thing; that CMS can surface CF apps and allow them to use the application.cfc within their directory. An example: /root/application.cfc /root/index.cfm /root/stuff/application.cfc /root/stuff/module.cfm My framework, index.cfm, can include module.c ... Read More »
• May 29, 2008
• 10:06

  POIUtility.cfc - "Too Many Fonts / Formats" Issue Fixed

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  A number of people have brought this issue up to me (I would thank you, but I simply am not organized with my emails, sorry). Basically, because the POI Utility custom tags were creating new CellStyle objects for each cell in the Excel sheet, Microsoft Excel was going over the number of formats that it could use. Apparently there is some upper limit, like a thousand individual formats of something, before it can n ... Read More »
• 7:45

  HotFix For "The ColdFusion Mail Spool Encountered An Invalid Spool File In The Spool Directory"

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  Dav just pointed out to me that there is a public Adobe HotFix for the ColdFusion 8.0.1 CFMail problem that was causing this error in my mail log file: The ColdFusion Mail Spool Encountered An Invalid Spool File In The Spool Directory. The invalid file MailXXXXXX.cfmail was moved to the undeliverable directory. I just ... Read More »
• May 28, 2008
• 16:05

  ColdFusion, jQuery, And "AJAX" File Upload Demo

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  As part of the project I am currently working on, I had to learn how to post files to the server using AJAX. I had never even attempted this before, so I was extra excited to learn something new. Of course, what you might learn quickly is that you cannot actually do this via "AJAX". Luckily, Rob Gonda warned me about this at the New York ColdFusion User Group when he came to talk about A ... Read More »
• 10:01

  June 1st 2008 - National Regular Expression Day! (Post A Comment, Win A Prize)

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  NOTE: To win prizes, you must post a comment below (and mention which prize you would be interested in). Not so long ago, I was walking down 14th street in New York City when out of no where, I started to think about Regular Expressions. They are just so awesome. I actually took a moment out of my walk home to stop and think about how much they have made my life better. That might seem like a silly notion to those who have not yet used regular ... Read More »
• 8:45

  CFHttpSession.cfc Fixed And Added To Projects

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  A while back, I created CFHttpSession.cfc , a ColdFusion component that wraps around ColdFusion's CFHttp tag to maintain a session across multiple CFHttp requests. It does this by capturing returned cookie information from each response and sending it back with the subsequent CFHttp requests. As part of that blackbox, the CFHttpSession.cfc also handled sessions when the response headers requested a relocation. A ... Read More »
• May 27, 2008
• 14:12

  Malcolm Gladwell, Transactive Memory, And Pair Programming

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  Thanks to a recommendation by Clark Valberg , I recently read The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. It was a good read and I like Gladwell's somewhat meandering story telling style. One thing that he mentioned really caught my ... Read More »
• 8:32

  Array Iteration Is Much Faster That Struct Iteration (Thanks Eric Stevens)

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  Last week, I claimed that Struct iteration would be faster than array iteration in ColdFusion. This wasn't totally out of left field - what I have read about the two different objects and their underlying Java classes (FastHashTable and ArrayCollection) would have suggested that look ups on a Struct were faster than look ups on an array. After I made this claim, Eric Stevens of ... Read More »
• 7:59

  Updated: Converting A ColdFusion Query To CSV Using QueryToCSV()

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  Last week, I posted a ColdFusion user defined function that took a ColdFusion query object and turned it into a comma separated value (CSV) string . I had made heavy use of the Java StringBuffer to build the string. This however, required many method calls and extra string concatenation that apparently was slowing things down. This is a good example of what happens when you try to optimize something without ful ... Read More »
• May 23, 2008
• 10:49

  Ask Ben: Working With Inconsistent XML

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  About your post: Testing For The Absence Of A Text Node Using XmlSearch() And XPath... I could not post any code so I am writing you here. Useful info. Here's another one for ya. Say your looping through some XML you got via cfhttp that has, at times, *inconsistent data*. See below. <girl> . . . <name>Hayden Panettiere</name> . . . <age>18</age> . . . <height></height> . . . <weight></weight&gt ... Read More »
• 9:01

  Bug With ARGUMENTS Scope And Implicit Array / Struct Creation

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  When I was working on my XmlDeleteNodes() user defined function , I ran into a weird issue involving the ARGUMENTS scope and implict array notation. This feels very much like a bug to me, but I am not 100% sure. With my XmlDeleteNodes() method, you could pass in either a single node or an array of nodes to be deleted. However, internally, I wanted to operate under the assumption that I always had an array of no ... Read More »
• 8:21

  Deleting XML Node Arrays From A ColdFusion XML Document

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  Yesterday, I was working on an audit system that stored data at XML when I needed to delete a bunch of XML nodes from a particular document. I don't spend a lot of time manipulating ColdFusion XML documents; most of my work with them has been either creating them and searching them using XPath and XmlSearch(). As such, I wasn't sure what the best way to go about it was. In the past, I have used ArrayDeleteAt() to remove a single XML node from an XmlChildren array. This, however requires you ... Read More »
• May 22, 2008
• 9:17

  Testing For The Absence Of A Text Node Using XmlSearch() And XPath

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  In my previous post , I explored the issues associated with non-existent text nodes in ColdFusion XML documents. Because non-existent text nodes, like NULL values in SQL, cannot be compared to values for equality or inequality, it sometimes becomes necessary to check for the very existence of a text node. Generally, when we use XPath predicates in XmlSearch(), we are checking too see that other values exist. Fo ... Read More »
• 8:13

  Text Nodes Do Not Always Exist In A ColdFusion XML Document

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  Yesterday, I was working on an audit tracker that stored updates in an XML document when I came across an XML behavior that I didn't know about. Apparently, not all element nodes in an XML document have to have a nested text node. Now, when you think about this, this makes some sense; however, when you look at a ColdFusion XML document, it can certainly be confusing. To examine this, let's create a simple ColdFusion XML document: <!--- Create a ColdFusion XML ... Read More »
• May 21, 2008
• 11:11

  The ColdFusion Mail Spool Encountered An Invalid Spool File In The Spool Directory

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  I just realized that a bunch of people have commented on a post and I wasn't getting any email notifications for it (as I usually do). So, I went into my server and sure enough, there were dozens of emails in my undeliverable mail folder. I then went into my ColdFusion Administrator and viewed my mail logs and saw this error many times in a row for CFMail: The ColdFusion Mail Spool Encountered An Invalid Spool File In The Spool Directory. The invalid file MailXXXXXX. ... Read More »
• 9:02

  XmlSearch() Ignores CDATA Sections In ColdFusion XPath

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  I ran into a really weird problem today. I was working on an event based XML parser (along the lines of the SAX parser, but way dumbbed down) and couldn't seem to get CDATA sections to be returned in my XPath. CDATA is an escape notation that ensure that a block of text is not parsed as if it were XML, but rather utilized as plain text. It is denoted using the following syntax: <![CDATA[ ...your character data here... ]]> CDATA text and standard node text values are suppose ... Read More »
• May 19, 2008
• 9:04

  Converting A ColdFusion Query To CSV Using QueryToCSV()

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  UPDATE : I have posted an updated, faster more accurate version of this UDF here . The other day, someone asked me about converting a ColdFusion query to a "comma separated values" file, or CSV. I was about to point them to my QueryToCSV() user defined function when I realized something crazy - I didn't have one. I have done a lot of work with ... Read More »
• May 16, 2008
• 9:19

  The Philosophy Of Undocumented ColdFusion Features

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  I was just reading over on Dave Ferguson's Blog about his debate over whether or not to use some undocumented features of ColdFusion (specifically, using the underlying Java objects that power core ColdFusion data types). This is an interesting debate, and one that I have struggled with myself. As with all complicated things, I often find that my true feelings on a matter can be more easily ... Read More »
• May 15, 2008
• 9:13

  Ask Ben: Working With Lists In An Object Oriented Programming Application

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  Your site has been a great help to me over the past year, so thank you and keep it up! However I am now in the position where I just can't seem to find a coherent answer to my question anywhere else, so I need to ask directly. I am trying to learn OO and (I think) I was doing great until I needed to get data back out for a seeming simple operation, output a list comprised of company name, their state and primary contact. I have created a company object, using comp ... Read More »
• May 14, 2008
• 18:02

  Eric Stevens On CFContent And Memory Usage In ColdFusion 8

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  This is just a minor note but a really powerful piece of information. Eric Stevens of the B And E Blog did some memory usage testing involving ColdFusion 8 and the CFContent tag and the findings are very cool: I just did a test in CF 8 using FusionReactor to watch memory while using <cfcontent type="application/x-zip-compressed" file="#ExpandPath('bigfile.zip')#"> Memory was at 141 ... Read More »
• 15:24

  Using ColdFusion To Stream Files To The Client Without Loading The Entire File Into Memory

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  Just a really quick post here. In my previous post on creating semi-secure file downloads , Todd Rafferty brought up the idea that the reason we want to avoid CFContent is because it loads the entire file into memory before it flushes it to the browser. He made the point that the problem is not so much the tying up of threads via CFContent, but rather the fa ... Read More »
• 8:43

  Creating Semi-Secure File Downloads Without Using CFContent

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  In the past, I have been asked several times how to create secure file downloads without tying up resources in the ColdFusion thread pool. Really, when you want to create a good, secure download, you would want to funnel the file requests through some sort of ColdFusion control logic and then stream a non-web-accessible file to the user via ColdFusion's CFContent tag. The problem with this is that the CFContent tag ties up a ColdFusion thread for the entire duration of the download. This wor ... Read More »
• May 13, 2008
• 7:27

  OOP Data Validation Using Validation Behaviors In ColdFusion

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  In my last post on object oriented data validation and error message translation , there were some really good conversations about factoring out validation logic such that different scenarios could validate the instance data in different ways. This morning, I tried to apply that methdology by factoring out my Girl.cfc and Clothing.cfc validation logic into "validation behaviors". I am not sure what the exact de ... Read More »
• May 12, 2008
• 8:30

  HostMySite.com Has The Best ColdFusion Hosting

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  Over the weekend, someone asked me for advice on ColdFusion hosting, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to really get the word out there - HostMySite.com has the best ColdFusion hosting. I have been hosting ColdFusion sites with them on a Virtual Private Server (VPS) and have had nothing but an awesome experience. As always, their support team is outstanding - it is quite exemplary. I never have any issues that go unresolved ... Read More »
• May 09, 2008
• 14:50

  Object Oriented Data Validation And Error Message Translation

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  Yesterday, I discussed that as I am learning more and more about Object Oriented Programming (OOP) in ColdFusion, one of the biggest mental hurdles seems to be data validation. Well, data validation and the translation of data errors into user-friendly error messages. I talked about how the translation cannot be made in the Model because that would couple the Model too tightly to the rest of the application wh ... Read More »
• May 08, 2008
• 9:13

  More On Data Validation - Translating Error Messages

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  I am still trying to wrap my head around things like MVC (model-view-controller) and OOP (object oriented programming) and cf.Objective() has really brought that back into the spotlight. One of the largest road blocks in my journey to understanding it all is the processing of data validation and reporting errors. I gather that a smart bean will usually have some sort of Validate() method that probably takes so ... Read More »
• May 07, 2008
• 9:47

  CFDirectory Filtering Uses Pipe Character For Multiple Filters (Thanks Steve Withington)

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  After I just posted about how the CFDirectory tag can use the single-character wild card , "?", in its filtering, Steve Withington came in and demonstrated that you can also use the pipe character, "|", to use multiple filters in the same CFDirectory tag. After reading this, I went to the ColdFusion 8 docs but didn't see this listed or mention ... Read More »
• 9:23

  ColdFusion CFMailParam's New "Content" Attribute Is Awesome

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  As part of the ColdFusion 8.0.1 updater, the CFMailParam tag can now attach files to an email using the Content attribute. When using this, the CFMailParam takes a File attribute and the Content attribute. In this case, the File attribute provides the name of the file as it will appear in the mail attachments list, not the path of the file on the server. The content attribute can take any ColdFusion variable that can be converted to binary data. Like the ColdFusion CFContent tag, this conten ... Read More »
• 8:21

  CFDirectory Filtering Uses Single Character Wild Card

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  Minor tip here, but over the weekend, at cf.Objective() , I was watching a presentation (I think it was Mark Mandel ) when I saw that someone was using a ColdFusion CFDirectory filter that had the "?" wild card. I knew that CFDirectory filtering could use the multi-character "*" wild card, but I am pretty sure I didn't know that it could use the single- ... Read More »
• May 06, 2008
• 13:40

  Work At Edit.com - The Website Maintenance Experts

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  My friends at Edit.com are looking for three people to join their team. Recently, I have had a chance to talk with David Ries and it sounds like they are building some really awesome applications over there; elastic clouds, on-demand services, project management systems, remote communication. I am always impressed with Dave's vision and his architectural plans. If you have the chance to work with him, I highly recommend it. Lot to learn, and ... Read More »
• 8:39

  Soft References In ColdFusion

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  At cf.Objective() , Mark Mandel held a presentation on the caching mechanisms and algorithms he uses in his Transfer ORM project . In it, he talked about his use of Soft References. A soft reference, as opposed to a hard reference, is a reference to an object that does not get flagged as a "use" ... Read More »
• May 05, 2008
• 9:24

  cf.Objective() 2008: Walking Among Giants

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  As a child, I remember laying out on hot summer nights and staring up at the sky. I wasn't in a city then, so the stars, unobstructed, would spread out far beyond my periphery in infinite arrangements. The sky seemed so big to me then - so incomprehensibly vast; its endless expanse always made me feel small, but not in a negative way - not small and insignificant. It gave me this feeling in my stomach, a sort of uneasy desire. As a youth, I could only describe this feeling as lust or maybe e ... Read More »
• May 01, 2008
• 9:30

  Updated CFHttpSession.cfc With Spoofed Referer Can Log Into PayPal

   » ‎ Ben Nadel ColdFusion And Web Development Feed @ BenNadel.com
  Yesterday, Steve Stout brought it to my attention that my CFHttpSession.cfc ColdFusion component does not use any Referer spoofing. When I read that, I almost couldn't believe my eyes; I have spent a good amount of my time playing around with CFHttp and CFHttpParam and the fact that I forgot to put in referral spoofing blows my mind a little bit. So, this ... Read More »