Peter Boughton's blog articles tagged:CFML

Speaking at Scotch on the Rocks 2013

2013-03-13T12:10:00Z

I will be speaking at this year's Scotch on the Rocks conference. My presentation is on the subject of getting help when you are stuck and how to describe your issue in a way that makes it easier for others to help you.

All developers have times when they need help, but it's not always easy to ask for (particularly when all you want is to get past a tricky problem, not have long tangental discussions). Having spent a lot of time both seeking and offering help, I hope to shed some light on the quickest ways to find solutions and effective methods for framing your issues so that fellow developers can understand what you need.

The talk will be aimed at developers of any level who want help with getting help.

Scotch on the Rocks is Europe's longest running conference catering for CFML developers, having been held most years since 2005. This year it takes place on the 6th and 7th of June at the Hilton Edinburgh Grosvenor hotel and covers a wide variety of topics on different aspects of web development - so whether you're looking to learn new techniques and technologies or you want to network and socialise with other programmers, Scotch on the Rocks is the conference for you.

Hurry up and book your tickets before they sell out!

QueryParam Scanner v0.7.5 Released

2013-01-10T15:30:00Z

Earlier this week I promoted the release candidate for 0.7.5 of QueryParam Scanner to full release.

For anyone unaware, QueryParam Scanner is a simple tool for identifying unparameterised variables in CFML queries (which may indicate a potential SQL injection risk).

This version has a handful of bug fixes and code cleanups, resulting in faster more accurate scanning than previous versions, plus the addition of JSON output format, giving a more lightweight option if used in scripted processes.

For further details on these, see the previous RC article; other than a couple of trivial fixes and a new readme, nothing has changed since that.

To download the latest version, you can either clone the git repo, or grab it as a zip archive from the GitHub tags page.

For any feedback, problems, or questions, please use the issue tracker.

Happy Regex Day 2012!

2012-06-02T00:42:00Z

Today was the 1st June, and that means it's Regex Day again!

This annual event was started four years ago by Ben Nadel to celebrate this wonderful (yet often misunderstood) technology, and as usual Ben is running a fun regex competition, with prizes, on his blog.

If that's not enough regex goodness for you, here's a couple of projects you should know about.

First up, there's XRegExp, a library by Steven Levithan which augments JavaScript's native regex functionality with new functionality, and ensures cross-browser compatibility.

For CFML developers, there's cfRegex a replacement regex implemenation providing more power and functionality than CFML's native functions, whilst being easier to work with.

Whatever your level of regex skill, both of these tools are definitely worth checking out.

QueryParam Scanner 0.7.5 Release Candidate

2012-01-07T20:59:00Z

I have just pushed an update of QueryParam Scanner to GitHub, containing various improvements.

This update is on the rc0.7.5 branch, and it'd be nice if people could take it for a spin and make sure there are no issues with it. (There is a zip download for anyone without git.)

The visible changes which you might notice are:

Added JSON output format, giving an alternative to XML for anyone using qpscanner in a scripted process.
Added variable for number of potential risk files, and improved related wording in HTML output.
Fixed bug where identical queries were causing incorrect line numbers.
Fixed bug where query names were not being detected.
Fixed bug where blank lines were incorrectly removed.

However, there are also significant under-the-hood changes. I removed my obsolete "Java Regex Utils" library (replacing it with the object part of cfRegex), and made a number of little code clean-ups.

A result of these changes is that qpscanner rc0.7.5 appears to be almost twice as fast as previous versions.

If you have any feedback, please feel free to contact me via GitHub, and similarly if you find any bugs then please raise them on the issue tracker.

Why Railo 3.3?

2011-11-06T23:54:00Z

It's been over two and a half years since my last "why railo" post, and - despite Railo "only" being 0.3 versions on - there's been a lot of improvements!

In fact, because it's been so long, a few of the things here are not new with v3.3 (though they are all new since the previous article), but are still great features that deserve mentioning!

Read on to find out what my ten favourite new feature are.

CFML on Wikipedia

2011-10-02T23:08:00Z

If you've ever looked at the CFML related articles on Wikipedia, you can't fail to have noticed that, especially when compared to other programming articles, they're not very good.

When somebody puts "coldfusion" or "cfml" into Google, they will almost certainly see the respective Wikipedia pages amongst the top three results, but when they follow those links they're unlikely to get a very good impression!

Not only could both these pages themselves benefit significantly from being cleaned up and improved, but there are only a few frameworks and tools that even have pages, and most of what does exist are very unencyclopaedic stubs. And this doesn't even consider the generic programming pages that often don't even mention CFML.

Take a look at the CFML category page - does that category contain everything you would expect an encyclopaedia to cover about CFML? Check the pages for the frameworks you are familiar with - do they go into the level of detail you would expect, and tell you everything you'd want to know if you were entirely new to CFML?

If you agree that the CFML presence on Wikipedia can and should be improved, and it's up to the CFML community to do it, then read on to find out how you can help fix it.

Introducing the cfRegex Project!

2011-07-22T23:20:00Z

The cfRegex project is two things. Firstly, it is a complete regex implementation for CFML, providing more functionality, flexibility, features and power than the existing CFML RE functions. Secondly, it is a drive to encourage people to properly learn and make use of regex.

Regex is a very flexible language for matching patterns within text, and it has the power to greatly simplify certain programming tasks. However, it can also be intimidating to people not experienced with it.

This problem can be compounded by the relatively limited support for regex in CFML, which often means code is written that is more complex than should be necessary.

cfRegex helps to address both these problems. It provides a number of functions and features that help to reduce the amount of code which programmers have to write, whilst also helping to make their code clearer and easier to understand. In addition, the project provides documentation, not just for its own features, but also for regex itself, helping people to understand exactly what their expressions are matching, and how to get the most out of regex.

Whilst cfRegex is still at a relatively early stage, it is currently usable, and if you're a fan of regex it is certainly worth checking out.

It currently runs on CF 9.0.1, OpenBD 2.0, Railo 3.2 and later.
(Support for CF8 and others will be considered if enough people need it.)

The documentation should tell you everything you need to know about using it, but if not then get it touch and say what's missing so it can be fixed!

If you get stuck, there's a mailing list where you can receive answers to any problems or questions you have.

Railo: Still Awesome!

2010-01-26T21:42:00Z

It's nearly a year on from my last Railo blog post so it is well overdue that I write another - just in case there is anyone still sitting on the fence, unsure if they should use Railo - or indeed, anyone who might be unaware of Railo's very existance!

So to start with, a quick summary of what Railo is:

Railo, pronounced /ˈraɪ.ləʊ/, is super fast Enterprise-level sofware for RAD webapp and website creation.
Railo is LGPL-licensed Free Software, so anyone can use it how they like.
Railo runs on any Java EE server, (but doesn't require Java knowledge), and is a Jboss.org project.
Railo uses the CFML language, like Adobe ColdFusion (the primary CFML engine), OpenBlueDragon, and others.
Railo is really awesome.

Find out why Railo is the perfect choice for your next development project.

Java RegEx Utilities - v0.7 preview

2009-04-09T22:47:00Z

Java RegEx Utilities, or jre-utils, is a CFC which provides a convenient way to access Java's regular expression functionality.

Whilst ColdFusion, Railo, and openBD are all built on Java, and CFML does have regular expression functions, they do not actually use the Java regular expression engine, which supports many useful regex constructs.

The purpose of jre-utils is to provide this extra power to CFML developers in a familiar and easy to use way.

I will shortly be releasing v0.7 of jre-utils, which adds a number of new functions, as well as making things more consistent, so I decided I would give this quick preview of what it contains.

Open Source Railo

2009-03-31T22:03:00Z

Earlier today, the eagely awaited Railo 3.1 public beta was announced!

And the reason for much of this eagerness?

Railo is now Open Source and Free Software, released under the LGPL v2.

This license requires that any changes to Railo's sourcecode itself must also be released under LGPL v2 (or later version).

However, unlike the full GPL, it does not require that you release any packaged applications under a compatible license - so you can still use whatever license you like for your own CFML code, Open Source or otherwise.

Along with the announcement comes two new Railo websites: The commercial-oriented getrailo.com and the community-oriented getrailo.org, which also contains wiki-based documentation.

Details on updating this documentation, as well as information about the new features in Railo 3.1, will come later this week - stay tuned to the Railo blog for the latest details.

The next four months are going to be a very exciting time for Railo and CFML!

Why Railo 3?

2009-03-01T02:53:00Z

It's been nearly half a year since Railo 3 was released, and with 3.1 just around the corner it is a good time to write a post about some of the features that continue to make Railo such an excellent CFML engine!

This blog entry covers things new to Railo 3 - however, if you've not looked at Railo before, you should also look at my previous postings, as they are still valid:

This blog entry gives ten reasons for using Railo 3...

Creating my very first Eclipse Plugin

2008-09-23T01:10:00Z

I recently* completed my very first Eclipse Plugin, and I found the whole experience to be very interesting.
*(well about a month ago; took me longer to get writing this than intended)

This blog entry will focus on two main areas - my experience with Eclipse (as opposed to CFEclipse and similar), and the issues I encountered from a development perspective

Read on to find out about it.

Railo 3.0 released!

2008-09-09T20:08:00Z

The long awaited Railo 3.0 is out of Beta and available to all.

There are a lot of exciting new features with Railo 3.0: multimedia video conversion and manipulation, video player with playlisting, task manager, cluster scope, CF8 compatibility, and more.

Also, with Railo 3.0, the Community and Professional versions have been combined - keeping the price of the Community edition (i.e free), but without the previous restrictions this had. (With Railo 3.1 due later this year, Railo will fully become Free Software, under the LGPL2 license.)

For more details, the best place to head is the rebrushed Railo website, which has been updated to provide information on what is new with Railo 3.0.

There will also be a three part series on the Railo blog covering the new features. The first entry in the series is already available.

QueryParam Scanner - Eclipse Plugin

2008-08-26T00:24:00Z

The first pre-release version of the qpScanner Eclipse Plugin is now available.

This is the very first Eclipse plugin I have created. It was an interesting experience, and something that I will be writing up in a separate entry as soon as I can collect my thoughts.

It order to use the plugin, you must be using v0.7 or higher of qpScanner - if you do not yet have this, you can download the latest development version of qpScanner, which contains details of the Update Site to use. If for any reason you cannot use the regular Eclipse Update method, you can directly download the qpScanner Eclipse Plugin instead.

Just to be clear, both v0.7 of QueryParam Scanner and v0.1 of the qpScanner Eclipse Plugin are currently considered development releases, and are being made available so that they can be tested and any bugs that might exist can be found - if you are unwilling to use pre-release software you should wait until the official release.

If you do get the Eclipse Plugin, or even just qpScanner on its own, I welcome any and all feedback you might have - whether to report bugs you have found, request new features you would like, or simply to let me know that works with your local setup.

Please send feedback via the GitHub Issue system.

Related websites:

QueryParam Scanner v0.7-dev

2008-08-17T01:01:00Z

The latest development version of qpScanner is now in SVN at RIAForge.

It would be great if people could test it out and let me know of any issues they encounter.

As before, it is all self-contained, so it can be installed and run with minimal effort.

Note: As this is still the development version, you need to use the zip option at the bottom of the RIAForge page, not the "Download Project" link - the button will only give the old version.

When released, v0.7 will be a significant new version, so I want to give a quick discussion of the new features...

expandPath bug in CF8

2008-08-16T18:23:00Z

I've just encountered a very annoying bug with the expandPath function in CF8.

Take the following code:

<cfset MyDir = "."/>

<cfloop index="i" from="1" to="5">
    <cfset MyDir = expandPath(MyDir)/>
    <cfoutput><br/>#MyDir#</cfoutput>
</cfloop>

Run the code through Railo and you will get exactly the right behaviour, with the current directory output five times:

C:\dev\scratch
C:\dev\scratch
C:\dev\scratch
C:\dev\scratch
C:\dev\scratch

Now go run the same code with CF8 - and this is what you get:

F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch
F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch
F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch
F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch
F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch\F:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\scratch

It simply stacks the current directory onto the front each time. Very frustrating.

In order to get round this, I created a regular expression to pull off the last value of any directory containing more than one colon - this will work for Windows machines, but may need to be changed for Linux or MacOSX machines (if the bug affects these).

<cfif isDefined('Server.ColdFusion.ProductName')
    AND Server.ColdFusion.ProductName EQ 'ColdFusion Server'
    AND ListLen( MyDir ,':') GT 2>
    <cfset MyDir = REreplace( MyDir , "^.*([A-Z]:[^:]+)$" , "\1" )/>
</cfif>

Railo goes Open Source with JBoss.org (Update)

2008-06-08T18:59:00Z

As promised previously, here is a more detailed entry on the announcement to Open Source the Railo CFML engine.

Scotch on the Rocks 2008

2008-06-06T23:57:00Z

Scotch on the Rocks 2008 is now unfortunately ended, read on to see my thoughts.

Railo goes Open Source with JBoss.org

2008-06-05T18:30:00Z

Today at the midday Scotch keynote, Gert Franz and Luc Texier made an impressive announcement: Railo is going completely Open Source.

This is an exciting move both for Railo and for the CFML community as a whole, and I'll be writing more details about it later, but for now here some some quick key details...

There will be two editions of Railo, with the Community and Professional editions combining into one, and the Enterprise edition being the other:

The new Community+Professional edition will be Open Source and there will be no limit to the number of web contexts allowed.

The Enterprise edition will have added value features, including tools from Intergral.

The license will be LGPL2, which means you can distribute Railo along with commercial software.

The timeline for release of the source code is mid to late October, around the time that Railo 3.1 is due for release.

The announcement is online at the JBoss website at www.jboss.org/railo

More Information available: Railo goes Open Source with JBoss.org (Update)

QueryParam Scanner

2008-04-06T18:42:00Z

The code for my QueryParam Scanner has been uploaded to RIAForge.

QueryParam Scanner is a simple tool which scans your code for queries and reports back about any variables that are not inside <cfqueryparam/> tags.

Download QueryParam Scanner from RIAForge.

Java RegEx Utilities

2008-04-06T00:30:00Z

I have just released Java RegEx Utilities on RIAForge, which is a CFC enabling easy access to Java Regular Expression functionality, adding to what is available in the standard CFML functions.

Currently there are two main functions.

jre.get(Text,RegEx) returns the matches to the regular expression as an array.

jre.replace(Text,RegEx,Replacement) is similar to REReplace, but the Replacement argument can be a function pointer, allowing you to process the results of a regex match with a function

You can find more usage details on the jre-utils wiki, which I plan to update with some examples of when each of these functions can be useful.

I have tested jre-utils against Railo 2 and CFMX 7, but it should also work with ColdFusion 8 and the Java version of BlueDragon - if anyone can test/confirm this please let me know.

Download Java RegEx Utilities from RIAForge.

Fusebox 5.5 is out now!

2007-12-03T23:44:00Z

The highly anticapted next major version of Fusebox has finally been released to the website.

Fusebox 5.5 allows you to use the Fusebox applications without using XML, which should please many people.

Instead of fusebox.xml it checks conventional places for your circuits, and instead of circuit.xml it can either use CFCs, where each function is a fuseaction, or just a directory, where each file is a fuseaction.

It also brings support for dynamic do to both xml and non-xml configuration, which is a feature I've really wanted on a couple of occasions.

Get it while it's hot...

http://fusebox.org/go/fusebox-downloads/core-files

Railo 2.0 out now!

2007-08-29T01:48:00Z

The final release of Railo 2.0 is now available for download from the re-vamped Railo website.

If you've already tried Railo, you'll probably be wanting to head straight to the download page.

If you want to know more about what Railo is and why you might be interested, read on...

Why Railo 2?

2007-06-06T22:58:00Z

A while ago I wrote an entry about why people should consider Railo. Well, with the Release Candidate for version 2.0, there comes a lot more reasons for using Railo. And here are twenty of them...

Why Railo?

2007-02-07T21:36:00Z

In the near future I'll be getting myself a dedicated server, and decided to find out if anyone would be interested if I was to setup Railo hosting on it. So, I posted on the CF-Talk mailing list to see if anyone was interested, and crikey, what a reaction I got! The discussion is currently the longest in the past four dozen threads.

The first few replies basically boiled down to was "why would anyone want Railo hosting?!?".

Tempting as it is to reply with "Railo PWNS U l4m3rz!", I've decided that I'll instead explain why I choose Railo, over all the other CFML engines available (CFMX, BlueDragon and Smith being the significant alternatives).

However, to prevent me from rambling on for hours about how wonderful Railo is -- and I really could talk about it all day -- I am simply going to pick just five things that should help to show what attracts me to Railo.

Read on.

Railo 1.1 Beta

2007-01-01T21:04:00Z

The latest version of Railo is now available as a public beta from the Railo customer center, and it brings with it an exciting new feature: Resources.

Resources are a brilliant feature that allows you to perform file actions on virtual filesystems such as in memory, ZIP archives, and FTP sites.

Read on to find out more.

cfDevCon 2006

2006-11-09T22:49:00Z

Okay, so I've arrived back from the UK's first* ColdFusion developers' conference (*if you ignore the previous two UK-based CF conferences), and decided I would give my thoughts about it.

Link lexicon verb for Fusebox 5

2006-11-08T17:54:00Z

I have created a simple custom verb which allows you to link specified resource files from circuit.xml, without having to go to the bother of writing it all in a script and including it.

For example, you can do this:

<cf:link resource="/res/bubbles.css"/>
<cf:link resource="/res/bubbles.js"/>

And it will convert that and place the following inside your HTML head:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/res/bubbles.css"/>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/res/bubbles.js"></script>

This should be useful if you have a lot of different circuits that all have unique styles and scripts, and you'd rather avoid putting lots of conditional statements in your layout pages.

For more information and a download link, read the article.

Railo

2006-07-17T20:31:00Z

Railo is the best CFML engine.

I guess you'll be wanting me to validate that statement? Well I'll make a start on that in a moment, but first I think I'll post a few disclaimers to pre-empt any potential whiney people.

I have nothing against Adobe, NewAtlanta, CFMX, nor BlueDragon. They're both great companies/products - without the company formally known as Allaire, I'd never have had my life enriched by the joy that is ColdFusion - and BlueDragon is no doubt a fine product if you find yourself stuck using that .NET thing. ;)

But Railo is better than both of them, and here is why...