Charlie Griefer - ColdFusion

The Nicest Thing Anybody's Said About Me in a Long Time...

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:57:00 -0500

you're like the herpes of the internet, theres 50000000 CF forums and everytime i read a thread going "ah this is the issue i have, i really don't want to do it this particular way" there you are answering why you should do it like that, very annoying

The above was just IM'd to me by a friend. I think it might actually be a compliment of sorts.

On an unrelated note... sincere apologies for the lack of blog entries (and even more sincere apologies for resuming blogging with this particular entry). Suffice it to say, I've been busy, which is a "good thing" (tm). I do intend to get back to it, updating everybody with what's been going on (we moved... again), things I've learned about working from home, and of course, ColdFusion.

Stay tuned...

TextMate - My New IDE of Choice

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 03:10:00 -0500

A little less than a year ago I made the switch to OS X and treated myself to a Macbook Pro. Just recently, I started working with the TextMate IDE on a current contract.

My first impression was less than stellar. Visually, TextMate is pretty spartan. Applications on OS X are supposed to be pretty (see Coda). TextMate is most decidedly not pretty. But as I'm starting to learn, she's got an amazing personality.

Sometimes it's the little things that hook you in. For the longest time, I put off learning jQuery. Didn't see the need. I'm pretty comfortable with JavaScript, and couldn't justify investing the time to learn a new way to write what I already knew how to write. Then I learned about .toggle(). I was sold. I hopped into bed with jQuery and I've not looked back.

Today, I was introduced to TextMate's equivalent of .toggle(). It may seem trivial, but it got me hooked, and hungry to learn more.

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jQuery - Ensuring Unique Usernames in Real Time

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:40:00 -0500

A question came up yesterday on the cf-talk mailing list. The question involved a user who is filling out a form and choosing a user name. The poster wanted to check in "real time" (after the blur event on the username input) that the name is unique.

As Steve "Cutter" Blades points out, this can be accomplished using Jörn Zaefferer's Validation Plugin for jQuery. This plugin is essentially the defacto standard for doing validations via jQuery. It can be implemented very easily to do the most basic validations, but it can also be extended to do any number of complex validations.

That being said, I thought it still might be worthwhile to see a quick example of how to build out that specific functionality from scratch. How can we use jQuery to give a user real-time feedback as to whether or not a username is available? Start with the markup below:

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Los Angeles Bound... MAX Here I Come

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 02:04:00 -0500

Finishing up some last-minute packing before heading off for Adobe MAX tomorrow morning.

Saving a few dollars (I think... the price of gas might actually prove otherwise) by driving instead of flying. I like the convenience of having a car at the conference. Provides a little bit of freedom for getting out and about.

I'll be picking up Sean Corfield at 9am. It'll be nice to share the ride as it's a pretty monotonous drive down I-5. Saturday night I'll be hitting a Dodgers game with Scott Stroz and Ray Camden, which should be a good time. I don't follow baseball, but I do enjoy getting out to a live game. I haven't done that since I went to a Diamondback game back in AZ.

Sunday morning, Scott and I are heading over to ESPN Zone to watch the Giants vs. Chiefs. Scott and I both grew up in NJ, and are both Giants fans. Getting to watch the game together is going to be a blast. If you're at the conference and want to meet up, we'll be there for the early game (10:00am). Depending on who's playing and who shows up, we may stay for the late games as well.

Sunday night is the Community Summit. This is my first year as a User Group Manager, and I'm really looking forward to meeting other managers and Community Experts.

Monday the conference starts in earnest. I expect that most of the time I'll be in the ColdFusion Unconference area. Ezra Parker and I are going to be doing what we can to help Ray make sure everything runs smoothly.

With the exception of the Max Bash on Tuesday night, evenings are open. I'm sure both open evenings will fill up. Scott and I talked about the possibility of a trip to Fogo de Chao in Beverly Hills. Maybe Monday night? Any takers?

If you're going to be in town, come by the Unconference area and say hi. I look forward to seeing you there.

jQuery - What You Can do with the Data Method

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:06:00 -0500

A question came up yesterday on the jQuery mailing list where somebody wanted to effectively "embed" data into a link. They essentially wanted to call a function on click, but needed to pass arguments. Since jQuery is supposed to be unobtrusive (e.g. "Find Something, Do Something"), how can we tell jQuery that, when a specific link is clicked, there's specific data associated with that link?

The jQuery data() method allows you to do just that.

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ColdFusion and jQuery - New tutorial(s) on LearnCF.com (Part 3)

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:54:00 -0500

The long-awaited and eagerly anticipated (by me) conclusion to my 3-part tutorial on learncf.com on using jQuery to return JSON data from a ColdFusion CFC.

The tutorial can be found here. When all is said and done, you'll have built this page, and hopefully you'll have a good (better?) understanding of how it all works.

As always, hit me up with questions or comments.

ColdFusion and jQuery - New tutorial(s) on LearnCF.com (Part 2)

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:20:00 -0500

Part 2 of what is now a 3-part tutorial on using jQuery and ColdFusion has been posted to http://www.learncf.com.

To recap, Part 1 showed how to use jQuery's getJSON() method to pull data from Twitter's public API.

The current installation shows how to use that same getJSON() method to pull data from a ColdFusion CFC method, and output it to the current page.

A future installment will add some bells and whistles using various jQuery methods including show(), hide(), fadeIn(), fadeOut() and the new-in-jQuery1.3 live() method.

Check out the latest installment at http://tutorial43.learncf.com/. As always, I look forward to your comments or questions.

Registration for ColdFusion DevCamp Now Open!

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:18:00 -0500

What's ColdFusion DevCamp? Organized by Sid Maestre (manager of BACFUG), Rachel Luxemburg (Group Manager, Developer Relations at Adobe), and Luke Kilpatrick (who recently organized the highly successful pre DevCamp San Francisco), the event aims to introduce ColdFusion to non-ColdFusion people. Whether it be designers or developers using other languages, this is a day-long hands-on introduction to the wonderful world of ColdFusion.

The event takes place on Saturday November 7th, 2009 at the Adobe office in San Francisco.

The current agenda:

9:30-10:30 - Welcome, Laptop Setup assistance, coffee and donuts.
10:30-11:00 - Keynote (State of ColdFusion).
11:00-6:00 - ColdFusion - What's possible (demos of ColdFusion tags).
11:00-6:00 - Break into small teams and begin projects.
6:00-7:00 - Share projects.
7:00-7:30 - Raffle and close.

Lunch will be provided and served around 12:00 noon.

If you know of anyone in the Bay Area that's been curious to learn about ColdFusion, let them know about this event. If you're in the Bay Area and already know ColdFusion, register as a mentor. The more mentors that sign up, the better the experience will be for the students.

The cost for this all day hands-on event? Absolutely free. All that you need to bring is a laptop and a desire to learn.

Read more about it at http://www.cfdevcamp.org/. Hope to see you there!

ColdFusion and jQuery - New tutorial(s) on LearnCF.com

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:26:00 -0500

A couple weeks back, Paul Kukiel asked me if I'd put together a tutorial for http://www.learncf.com showing how to use jQuery and ColdFusion together.

I started writing, and about 14 pages later (including code samples), submitted the tutorial showing how to use jQuery's getJSON() method to retrieve data from a ColdFusion CFC.

I started out wanting to explain what getJSON() does in terms that a ColdFusion user would easily understand, and then gradually take that concept and move towards a jQuery solution. I illustrated this by retrieving data from Twitter using one if their API methods.

Once the reader had a grasp of using getJSON() to retrieve data from Twitter (or any external site), I turned the focus to using getJSON() to retrieve data from a ColdFusion CFC.

Because it was a bit lengthy, Paul thought it would be best to break it out into 2 separate tutorials (and I agreed with this... in fact, I thought it might have worked well as 3 tutorials).

Part 1 has been posted at http://tutorial42.learncf.com/. Part 2 should be along shortly (depending on how quickly Paul can get it formatted for screen) :)

If you have any comments or questions on any of the material that's covered, let me know.

Upcoming ColdFusion/Flex/AIR Events

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:04:00 -0500

Adobe MAX 2009 is coming up fast (October 4-7), and thousands of developers, designers, and decision-makers will soon be descending upon Los Angeles, CA. Certainly, MAX is one of the more extravagant conferences... and while it's worth the price of admission, I wanted to let people know about a few upcoming events that might be a bit more "budget-friendly".

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Add Twitter to BlogCFC

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 02:34:00 -0500

I'm pretty close to being done with my latest re-skinning effort of BlogCFC, and wanted to add a Twitter Pod to display my most recent tweet.

I've done some work recently with the Twitter API for blitztweets.com, so I didn't think it would be too difficult of a task.

I added a method to blog.cfc, added an application variable with the last update date/time (so as to only update every 'n' minutes and avoid potentially hitting the rate limit), and then created the pod itself (aptly named twitter.cfm).

After reinitializing the blog, everything looked good. I waited a few minutes, made a new tweet, and reloaded the page. Unfortunately, it didn't update.

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East Bay CFUG - Overcoming Objections to Using Frameworks

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:20:00 -0500

Just got back from our 2nd East Bay CFUG meeting at our new location (New Horizons Computer Learning Center in Pleasanton, CA), and couldn't be happier with the way the meeting went.

My goal with the group is to break away from what I've seen to be the traditional model of people showing up, a speaker speaks for an hour or so (while most people are texting or surfing on their laptops), swag is given out, and everybody goes home.

What I'm shooting for is to engage the audience. To hold interactive, collaborative meetings. Some might be small code challenges where everybody takes a few minutes to solve a particular problem, then shares their solution with the group. Others might be an open discussion on a given topic. Yet others might be hands-on labs to teach a particular technology.

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Now Powered by MySQL

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:11:00 -0500

I just "flipped the switch", and this blog (which had been running MS SQL Server) is now running on MySQL.

If you see anything funky, or at least funkier than usual, please drop me a line.

Securing Your XML Config Files

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:28:00 -0500

Yesterday I rolled out a new site, http://www.blitztweets.com. I announced it on Twitter, a few folks retweeted (thanks!), and Ray Camden descended upon it like a vulture descends upon a wounded bunny in the high noon desert heat. Ray's got a knack for finding flaws in CF sites, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have him in mind during development.

Overall, I think I did pretty well. He found two issues. First, my contact form could be submitted without the user filling in any fields. That was OK. I don't particularly mind if somebody really wants to send me an empty contact form. But the second issue... ooh, that was a doozy, and I'm duly embarrassed by it. He linked me to http://www.blitztweets.com/config/ColdSpring.xml, which proceeded to display the entire contents of the file in my browser window (it's since been fixed). Oops.

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MAX 2009 ColdFusion Unconference

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:46:00 -0500

What, you may ask, is an Unconference?

As per Adobe's MAX site:

Visit the Adobe ColdFusion® unconference area to participate in advanced tutorials and code show-and-tells. Share your latest cool code creations and explain how you built them.

Like last year, this year's ColdFusion Unconference will be organized and run by Ray Camden, with an assist by Scott Stroz.

Unlike last year, this year I will be helping out, as Ray's "Grunt Brute" (his term, not mine). I don't know exactly what the job description is, but with a title like that, could I really have said no? (Side Note: It wouldn't be the first time I've had a lapse in good judgment. I could tell stories, but my mom reads my blog and she's disappointed enough in me as it is. Every family get-together it's, "Oy, why ColdFusion? It's a dead language!" She tells her friends I'm a Ruby developer. But I digress...)

I'm looking forward to doing my part in helping to make all 3 days of the Unconference as memorable as possible. Ray recently posted a Call for Speakers/Comments, so if you'd like to set up a session, or have comments as to something you'd like to see, please drop either Ray or myself a line.

Hope to see you in October!