cftopper.com

sql-mode=NO_BACKSLASH_ESCAPES

test\'' OR 1 = 1   --

test

WHERE variable LIKE 'test' AND userId = 55;

WHERE variable LIKE 'test' OR 1 = 1 -- AND userId = 55;

• Quick Tip: AJAX debugging
• Supporting Different Timezones
• Foreign Language Support
• Advanced File Uploading
• Quick Tip: CSS Hacking for IE6
• Working with Multiple Domains
• Database “Sharding”
• Source Control.

• Download my presentation - CFEurope 2008.pptx

This is the latest CF9 prototype (codename MoHawk):

The topic is:
How we made it: Teamwork Project Manager - tips for development of highly-scalable web2.0 apps in ColdFusion.

• Industry Analysis
• Ajax & ColdFusion
  • Debugging techniques
  • Processing the response
  • Using JSON with CF
• Handling Multiple Domains with one application
• Advanced file uploading - hundreds of files in one go
• Database design
• Scalability
• Support
• Sales & marketing

The Teamwork Project Manager Story

We have finally launched!!

The Website - Final Days

Teamwork Project Manager - Final Days

Après Launch

1. Open the file C:\Program Files\ColdFusionMX\lib\neo-security.xml.
2. Change:
   
   

   <var name="admin.security.enabled">

      <boolean value="true" />

   </var>

   
   to read
   
   

   <var name="admin.security.enabled">

      <boolean value="false" />

   </var>

3. Restart ColdFusion and you can now log into the administration without any password.
4. Make sure to pick a new password and turn the security back on. You can do this in the administration.

1. Open C:\CFusionMX7\runtime\servers\coldfusion\SERVER-INF\jrun.xml
2. Find "8500", replace with "80"
3. Save file and restart CF.

• tools/randpass.cfm

Download

• Download generateQuery.zip

Syntax

generateExcel( theQuery, columnList, mode, filename  )

generateExcel( myQuery  )

Options

• You can be specific about the columns:
  
  

  generateExcel( products, "productname, productCost" )

  
  The Column list argument allows you to specify the order you want the columns displayed in, or omit columns you don't want. If you want you can just leave it blank and it will just use the query column list - but the columns could be in any order.
• There are 3 output modes: "display", "save" and "debug":
  
  

  generateExcel( products, "productId, productname, productCost", "save" )
  
  

  The default mode is "display".

  Mode "display": This will try to display the excel chart within the browser. If the end-user's browser does not allow this, Excel will launch and show the output instead.

  Mode: "save": This will just do a download and will not attempt to display within the browser.
  
  Mode: "debug": Will display the columns as a normal HTML page with <pre> tags.
  

• The filename attribute allows you to specify the filename that the excel should be saved as. The default is "report.xls".

Update May 15 2007

• Launch Demo

First, HTTP Compression is a great way to speed up your Website and lower bandwidth utilization all at the same time. In this example, your ColdFusion server (6.1 and above) will encode CFML output using GZIP and have the browser decompress this data on the fly. In a corporate environment, Webmasters may choose to go with third-party software such as Port80 Software's httpZip, which can compress other files as well, including .js, .css, and your HTML files. In this example, we are only compressing the generated HTML output from a .cfm template execution.

• Poor Man's HTTP Compression with ColdFusion

Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2007 23:01:45 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Length: 2306

200 OK

Figuring out the Axis to Resize on

if( deltaX/currX < deltaY/currY ) then Resize on X Axis
else Resize on Y Axis

The TeamworkCMS Demo is available here:
http://demos.digital-crew.com/documentationportal/cms/

Login with "admin" and password "admin".

You can view the pages you add or edit on the Demo Website here:
http://demos.digital-crew.com/documentationportal/

<cfif right(cgi.script_name, len("index.cfm")) neq "index.cfm"
and right(cgi.script_name, 3) neq "cfc">

    <cflocation url="index.cfm" addtoken="no" />
</cfif>

Regardless of what framework, if any, that you are using, I recommend adding this code to you application.cfm.

ps. Bear in mind that Ajax or flash movie calls to CFML pages will only be able to get data from pages named "index.cfm". Also any popup window pages must now be accessed through or named "index.cfm".

Part 1 - Duping New Bots

1. Change the action of your form to "about:blank". (Remember the real action for later.) Robots indexing this will now go to "about:blank" instead of your action handler page.
   
2. If your form has a JavaScript validation function, add this line just before the form is OKed or submitted:
   
   document.[form name].action = "[path to form handler page]"
   
   Otherwise just stick in something like this in the form:
   
   onsubmit="this.action='[Path to handler page here]'"

Part 2 - Blocking Old Bots (they're using Form Caching!)

1. Add this line to your form:
   
   
   <input type="hidden" name="formSecurity" value="<cfoutput>#Hash( DateFormat( now(), "dd/mm/yyyy" ) & "YOUR_SECRET_KEY" )#</cfoutput>"/>
   
   
2. In your handler page insert the following at the start:
   
   
   <!--- FORM SECURITY --->
   <cfif NOT isdefined( "FORM.formSecurity" ) OR ( FORM.formSecurity IS NOT Hash( DateFormat( now(), "dd/mm/yyyy" ) & "YOUR_SECRET_KEY" ) )>
       <cfabort>
   </cfif>

Download

/* ColdFusion List Functions
   These functions manipulate lists just list ColdFusion does.
   (c) Digital Crew
   Happy Christmas. Knock yourself out.
   email: topper@digital-crew.com
   web: www.digital-crew.com   /   www.cftopper.com
*/
function listFind(c,n,d)
{
	if(arguments.length<3)d=",";
	var e = c.split(d);
	for(var i=0;i= 1 && p <= e.length )
	{
		return e[p-1];
	}
	alert("Out of range");
	return "";
}
function listSetAt(c,p,v,d)
{
	if(arguments.length<4) d=",";
	var e = c.split(d);
	if( p >= 1 && p <= e.length )
	{
		e[p-1] = v;//set the value
		//rebuild the string
		for( var i=0,c=""; i < e.length; i++ )
			c = (c!=""?(c+d):"")+e[i];
	}
	else alert("listSetAt: Index " + p + " is Out of range");
	return c;
}
function listInsertAt(c,p,v,d)
{
	if(arguments.length<4) d=",";
	var e = c.split(d);
	if( p >= 1 && p <= e.length+1 )
	{
		e.splice( p-1, 0, v );//insert the value
		//rebuild the string
		for( var i=0,c=""; i < e.length; i++ )
			c = (c!=""?(c+d):"")+e[i];
	}
	else alert("listSetAt: Index " + p + " is Out of range");
	return c;
}
function listLen(c,d)
{
	if( c == "" ) return 0;
	if(arguments.length<2)d=",";
	return c.split(d).length;
}

Coding readability is important! But only to to a degree - when people get religious on this issue I just zone out.

IMHO, if you have decided that you are a professional programmer, why not be the best programmer you can be. Try to evolve everyday. Look for things to learn. Improve, improve, improve. Get faster, learn the shortcuts. Every little time saver adds up.

#1 Use Whitespace

Which is easier to read, the first SQL statement or the second. Also most editors will allow the use of control-left, control-right to skip keywords with spaces between them but without the spaces, it skips the entire line.

There are basic examples, and as-such probably bad examples, when more code is involved the readability gets much harder when spaces aren't used.

SELECT moduletitle,modulelongtitle,moduleStatus,modulelevel
FROM modules
WHERE moduleId=#moduleId#

or

SELECT moduletitle, modulelongtitle, moduleStatus, modulelevel
FROM modules
WHERE moduleId = #moduleId#
 
Example 2:

html+='<option value="'+this.freqOptionVals[i]+'">'+this.freqOptions[i];

or

html += '<option value="' + this.freqOptionVals[i] + '">' + this.freqOptions[i];

You decide.

Dear Macromedia Adobe, any chance you could stop raping us European customers.

ColdFusion MX7 Standard Edition pricing analysis

Price for Ireland:

• € 1,571.79 inc. VAT  = $1,971.48 USD
• € 1,299.00 ex. VAT = $1,629.32 USD

American price:

• US $1,299.00

Difference:

• Inc. VAT: $672.48
• Ex. VAT: $330.32

Your European price should be €1,035.87.
note: 1 USD = 0.797434 EUR 23 Oct 2006

Conclusion

<cfif $1,299 IS NOT €1,299>

       <cf_rape suckers="Europe">

</cfif>

Those of you familiar with my UDI product should be delighted to hear I've added tab functionality to the interface!

I've been working flat-out on a rush job for a local college and they wanted tabs so I bit the bullet and made tabs a feature of UDI. It's great when I can use paid work to extend one of my components.

Seen below is a screenshot if the tabs in action on this project. You can add as many tabs as you want, it's cross browser and it makes for nicer interfaces.

If anybody wants to email me directly I will send them on the latest version of UDI. Otherwise expect an update available on www.cftagstore.com within a week or two.

OK OK, I know this has been done to death, but here is my 2c. I think a lot of the requested features from other developers wouldn't really benefit me on a day to day basis but here are some things I would find useful:

1. Components that aren't just code - Build-in support for the something like dcCom architecture I came up with. This architecture allows 'components' to store image files, flash files, javascript file etc as parts of a 'component' and allow the component to easily be invoked. One component might be a visual Ajax-style file manager, another might be a sexual flash image gallery. Having build-in support for this level of code reuse with zero configuration would be outstanding! Components are often more that use a bunch of CFML files and that should be considered.
   
2. CFImage - Even though I have made and sell online my CFX_JImage component, I would prefer to see comprehensive support for CFImage built into the ColdFusion runtime, no setup required. We need to be able to crop, resize, rotate etc images easily. This feature is very important for community websites or Content Management Systems that need to resize/modify images.
   
3. Better reporting in the Administration - I want to see how much memory each application is consuming, which are the most used applications, how many sessions are in each, the request frequency, the load a given application is causing on the server, the load a given template is causing on the server, queries that are slow to execute and any other useful metric you can think of.
   
4. Application Level CustomTags/Library - The CustomTags directory is often not used because it is way down there at C:\CFusionMX7\CustomTags and we want our applications nicely portable. How about allowing a "_lib" folder within an applications root to contain libraries, functions and CFCs which would then be automatically available within the application. With this, users would build, share, download and use useful libraries more readily.
   
5. Advanced scheduled Tasks - others have commented about how schedule tasks can be mission critical for business related software and I tend to agree. We need scheduled task that are bulletproof and that will send a notification email if it fails. Also the executed code CFML should be able to notify the ColdFusion engine that everything went OK and this should be visible from within the ColdFusion administration.
   
6. Code Lockdown and Redeployment - Many developers resell their products through sites such as www.cftagstore.com. At the moment the only way to lock-down your code to prevent dabbling is to encrypt it which of course can be easily decrypted.
   
7. Upgrade CFML - Take the best 100 libraries on www.cflib.org and build them in.
   
8. Better Local Variables - Allow a local variable in a function to be created anywhere inside in, instead of just at the top - it's a little thing that's quite annoying.
   
9. Command-line execution - of CFCs and other correctly configured CFML files. This would make ColdFusion so handy for all sorts of one-time or maintenance tasks.
   
10. Speed - Make ColdFusion even faster.
    
11. Programmable caching - I wrote my own dcCache component for ColdFusion which i can programmable reset through a list of reset words. This type of functionality would be great to have build into ColdFusion. Limiting caching to time-spans simply isn't powerful enough.
    
12. Inter-application communication - One application should be able to send a message to another application on the same-server without resorting to SERVER variables or HTTP requests.
    

And here are a handful of other feature requests, I scanned from other sites and agree with:

1. Better management of whitespace.
   
2. JDK 1.5 support.
   
3. Deprecate cfscript.
   
4. IMAP support
   
5. Ability to throw objects rather than strings
   
6. Syndication support - built-in RSS/ATOM tags.

Groan, it's 1.06am and my ass is sore from sitting in this position. I've been trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with my recursive ColdFusion function that copies the structure of a site into a ColdFusion structure...

I was convinced that something was wrong with ColdFusion, hell I even went as far as downloading the updater for 7.01.

Then it struck me - maybe I also have to define the variable used with <cfquery> as a local within the function. I somehow assumed that a <cfquery> would automatically be local. One <cfset Var getSubPages2 = ""> near the rest of the local variables and it was fixed. Hours later. Sore Ass. Lesson learnt.

I think I'm a ColdFusion master but this was a neat blow to my ego - I should have known that. Goodnight world.

..oh no, this is just a tribute! This is the latest Digital Crew database design for storing website pages.

I have evolved this design over the years and I'm pretty happy with this result - this design supports multiple sites, page redirection, page short name (for navigation) and page long name, page HTML (for basic pages or intro text on complex pages), meta information, visibility, security, published status, alternative URLs, alternative files, making page for special (dynamic) processing and the ability to open the page in a new window.

Use it, if you like.

CREATE TABLE `pages` (
  `pageid` int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `siteId` int(11) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT '1',
  `pageparentid` int(10) UNSIGNED DEFAULT '0',
  `pageCode` varchar(50) character SET latin1 NOT NULL,
  `pageNavName` varchar(100) character SET latin1 NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
  `pageName` varchar(150) character SET latin1 NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
  `pageHTML` text character SET latin1 NOT NULL,
  `pageDisplayOrder` smallint(5) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT '2000',
  `pageIsPublished` tinyint(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT '1',
  `pageDescription` varchar(255) character SET latin1 DEFAULT NULL,
  `pageKeywords` varchar(255) character SET latin1 DEFAULT NULL,
  `pageIsFolder` tinyint(1) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
  `pageIsDynamic` tinyint(1) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
  `pageIsVisible` tinyint(3) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT '1',
  `pageIsLocked` tinyint(1) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
  `pageAccess` enum('O','I','A') character SET latin1 NOT NULL DEFAULT 'A' COMMENT 'A=All, I=Logged In, O = Logged Out',
  `pageRedirectPage` varchar(50) character SET latin1 DEFAULT NULL,
  `pageAltFile` varchar(255) character SET latin1 DEFAULT NULL,
  `pageAltURL` varchar(255) character SET latin1 DEFAULT NULL,
  `pageOpenNewWin` tinyint(3) UNSIGNED DEFAULT '0',
  `pageShowOnInPageNav` tinyint(3) UNSIGNED DEFAULT '1'
  PRIMARY KEY  (`pageid`),
  KEY `pageparendId-pageId` (`pageparentid`),
  CONSTRAINT `pageparendId-pageId` FOREIGN KEY (`pageparentid`) REFERENCES `pages` (`pageid`) ON UPDATE CASCADE
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

I was thinking that I'd love to have some sort of idea how many people are subscribed to this site.

The Solution

Solution 1: Some people suggest using a HTTP 301 Moved Permanently header to redirect RSS Readers to a unique URL that you can use to track the feed.

Solution 2: Others recommend that you display/make-available a unique RSS feed URL every time you display your blog.

The Problem

The problem with solution 1 is that RSS readers *should* remember that the page is permanently redirected - if they don't you'll get users always being redirected to unique URLs looking like unique subscribers all-the-time.

The problem with solution 2 is that it doesn't track your existing subscribers.

What I Decided to Do

I decided to combine both solutions and hope that there aren't too many stupid RSS readers out there. Now, If you browse to to rss/ you will be redirected to a unique URL.

Also when you view this page, both the RSS feed in the header and the feed displayed on the right hand side are unique.

The Code (in Brief)

For the redirect if URL.ref isn't defined, I used:

<CFHEADER statuscode="301" statustext="Moved Permanently">

<CFHEADER name="Location" value="#UniqueRSSURL#">

For the unique Id in the RSS URL I simply used:

replace(CreateUUID(),"-","","ALL"

For logging to the MySQL RSSHits table I used:

<cfquery name="updateBlogHitCounter" ...>

INSERT INTO RSSHits(ref,blogId,hits)

VALUES (<cfqueryparam cfsqltype="CF_SQL_VARCHAR" value="#ref#">,

<cfqueryparam cfsqltype="CF_SQL_INTEGER" value="#URL.blogId#">,1)

ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE hits = hits + 1;

</cfquery>

For years we knew that we should be using source control. But we weren't. We didn't want the hassle of using source control.

But here's the thing: We make software components for ColdFusion. Some of these components are the cornerstones of our content management solutions which are in turn the cornerstone of our successful website and Intranet development business. In the past, when I made a change to UDI, a component for managing database content, I'd manually copy the code back to a central location. Then I would get the code again when starting a new project. The current version and change log were stored within the main.cfm file of each component. Painful.

What were we thinking?! About 3 months ago, I decided to take the bull by the horns and investigate the incredible complex, tedium world of source control. I got some manuals on Subversion and read a lot about CVS and source control systems. All pretty scary stuff to begin with.

But in truth, with the most excellent amazing fantastically brilliant TortoiseSNV extension for windows, source control is absolutely painless. Made changes? Just right click on the directory and select check-in, provide a short message and your done. Need the latest version, just right click and choose SVN Update. Wow, painless and simple.

And here is the thing I've come to notice, and it's a compelling reason to use source control - and not just because you should. You will be one hundred times more productive. How? You see, with the hassle of maintenance gone, I find myself making hundreds of little fixes and improvements all-the-time now.

If you make software and your not using some sort of proper source control, your officially living in the dark ages.

OK, it's 12.16am on 4th September 2006.

I changed how projects work - I have removed most project tasks functionality from the dashboard - the logic being that somebody should really have a single project selected before things get more complex.

I updated the navigation with the list of projects. I succumbed to the argument with Dan and put the New Project link in the project list also. I'm thinking that only starred ie. active projects will appear in the main nav. To access long term projects and such, a "view other projects" link will be provided off the dashboard... or maybe in the navigation - yeah that'd make more sence... "more projects".

The goal is to keep this lightning speed like GMail - what I'm calling GSpeed. I've been analysing how GMail works and they have some pretty clever shit going on. They load an almost blank page when you click an email to open it - this makes it seem to the user that the browser is doing the usual loading thing with proper loading message and I imagine that it allows the app to track the user moving backwards and forwards in the app.

But I won't have GSpeed initially - Only the header and footer are being spat out from javascript at the moment. I want to get the functionality and tweaking and changing done right before I convert all the forms to script-based template loading - basically only raw data should ever be outputted for the main screens of the app.

I'm thinking that a top frame will hold the app keeping the URL constant. A middle frame will hold the primary data and the javascript files - preventing nasty updates-since server hits. The data frame will then load a current view data screen.

When adding a new task, I am fading out the background with a 50% transparent black "cover" div then displaying an absolutely positioned div with a higher z-index on top of it. It all works great except that the bloody cursor on the input text box ceases to work. Where I am at the moment, I don't have access to the Internet so I'll have to leave this for tomorrow nights work.

I would like to have absolutely no real hyperlinks in the application - i don't want users right clicking. At the moment, when a user hovers over a project, they get extra options appear - it allows for a nice, clean interface. At every turn I'm pausing and spending ages thinking about the design - should I remove the background color - should the star option be kept in the same place, what is the best way to list this, should this option be in a 'pop-up window' or inline? If it seems like a really simple application when I'm done, then I've achieved my goal. Definitely going to get different people to use it while I watch them and fix any issues before the first release.

For the first release, I plan to get the bare bones working - none of the niceties that Dan and Myself would love. For example there will be no sub-tasks in V1. Definitely something I want. But something we can live without for now. Also I would like to able to say, hey, "use this project as a template called X" and then users could select that template when creating a new project.

I think our app will be significantly easier to use and must faster that all the other pm apps out there. I really hope this is received well! Shit we still need a good name.

Progress has been slow. It's just me working on this so far and I have to fit this side-project in around my real job developing websites, maintaining and supporting our sites, tags and components.

I think Ruby on Rails sucks. I'm sick of hearing about it.

I just watched all the videos at:

http://www.rubyonrails.org/screencasts

and i'm not excited. OK maybe "sucks" is extreme, but in fairness, it definitely is way over-hyped. It's nowhere near as great as it hype. Really!

One thing I will say, the documentation doesn't make RoR look like a piece-of-cake.

It's late - I'm too tried, lazy and inarticulate to make a decent argument so I'll leave it to the experts... just do a google search for "ruby on rails sucks". I just did... wow apparently I'm not the first to blog this exact opinion - people are sick of reading "yet-another-ruby-sucks-bait-post" so i'll shut up now.

But there, I said it. I'm happy now.

ColdFusion is a much better platform in my humble, biased opinion.

Update

Excellent - Joel shares my opinion.... and he's actually used it. And it makes interesting reading. Aside from all the hype, it looks like RoR ain't no smoking joe.

The solution is to stop playing and start over at the beginning and DO THINGS RIGHT THIS TIME, DAMMIT! Here is an actual entry from the Rails FAQ:

"Q012:That stinks... I want the scaffold code without starting over!

Too bad. Start a new rails project, run scaffold, then manually add the missing stuff to your new project from your old project with copy and paste."

Are we having fun yet?

Sometimes I've needed a custom tag to perform an operation on the actual code file that called it. However in coldfusion, there is no way (that I know of) to easily get the name or file path of the parent CFM file.

So I used to have to pass in the current file name like this:

<cf_someTag thisFile="#GetCurrentTemplatePath()#">

But yesterday, I cheated. When making the QueryWizard, I thought that the full list of executed templates is available and displayed when an error is thrown. Eureka! I simply throw a deliberate error within the tag, catch the error and extract the data I need like so:

<!--- Get the path to the caller template path by creating a
deliberate error and getting the path from the stack trace --->
<!--- I don't know of a better way! --->
<cfif NOT isdefined( "ATTRIBUTES.thisfile" )>
<cftry>
 <cfset abc = TheVarWontExist>
 <cfcatch type="Any">
  <cfset ATTRIBUTES.thisfile = cfcatch.tagContext[4].template>
 </cfcatch>
</cftry>
</cfif>

I know it probably won't work in everything (read:Bluedragon/CF5) so I still allow the attribute 'thisFile' to be passed, if required.

If there is a better way I am ignorant of, please educate me.

I've finally released the flash upload component - the development of which I was blogging about here. Took a while for myself and Dan to come up with a good name. We were throwing all sorts of crazy ideas out there. Anyhow, please please go ahead and try it out. The demo is fully functional apart from a banner that asks you to purchase it.

I'm selling this baby for $50 per website - a fair price I think given the amount of work that went into this sucker.

• Download the fully functional demo on CFTagStore.com.

What Is CF_ProFlashUpload? This widget creates a interface that allows your site user to easily upload multiple, even hundreds of files to your server. Each file has an individual progress bar and there is also an overall progress bar. The upload rate is also displayed.

The component allows you to use a multiple file upload component of any size as part of any ColdFusion application. It is extremely easy-to-use. You can call the component passing in just the upload directory and nothing else. Or you can use any of the advanced options to customise security options, file-type options and the look-and-feel of the component.

One of the nicest features of this component are per-file progress bars. The upload rate is also displayed along with the overall progress.

The demo is completely functional - just download it and you'll be up and running in minutes.

I'm just finished another small website project and it should be launched within a matter of days:

But that's not the reason I'm posting this. Yesterday, I was searching for something completely different when I came across some pages on Google's site describing how to add your own custom buttons to the new Google BETA toolbar.

My imagination was captured (=all real work ceased ). An hour later (OK to be honest, about 3 hours later) and I had my very own icon for our own InfinityCMS Content Management System. Check it out:

Installation: I added a page to our CMS system where the user can click a link to install this button in his/her Google Toolbar.

What Happens? Once clicked, the button sends the current URL to infinitycms.digital-crew.com. A ColdFusion page there checks the URL and performs a test to see if InfinityCMS is installed on that website.

If it isn't, the user gets a quick message displayed and is returned to where he/she was with history.back().

But if InfinityCMS is detected, a new window launches InfinityCMS and in the old window the user is again returned to where he was with history.back().

The Cool Bit: InfinityCMS is passed the URL of the page you were on when you clicked the icon... There are a series of regular expressions in the database (which can easily be updated in InfinityCMS by an administrator) that handle the request in a smart way...

For example, if the user was on the home page and clicks the icon, a window will appear allowing the user to quickly edit just the home page without all the other elements of the CMS solution:

And if there are several corresponding 'Quick Edit' options for a page, then the user will get a list of options. For example, on the following Quick Edit of the "Contact Us" page, the user can choose to edit the page or review messages from the contact form which have been logged in the database:

Now that I've been using it for a bit, I find this little icon invaluable for making quick changes here and there. Of course if the user isn't logged into the CMS system, the login page appears first. I must add on the ability for the user to switch from Quick Edit more to full edit mode which looks like this:

Would love to know what you think of this little hack?

Update

I was giving a demo of this to Cormac and his popup blocker (Google Toobar - haha - the irony) was preventing the Quick Edit window from opening.

I remembered when the other day, GMail popped up a message for me saying that a popup blocker was blocking a window from opening so I knew it was possible to detect this. I did a bit of googling and it turns out it's pretty easy to detect:

<script language='JavaScript'>

<!-- <![CDATA[

function userHasPopupBlocker() {

var oWin = window.open('','child','width=50,height=50,status=no,resizable=yes'); 

if( oWin==null || typeof(oWin)=="undefined" ) return true;

else oWin.close();

return false;

}

//    ]]> -->

</script>

So now my script displays a friendly message asking to user to disable the popup blocker for the redirect site and "click here to try again". All working as it should again.

FFS, all I want to do is ask the license server if this component is OK to run on this website. My code was working perfectly from localhost - cummunicating perfectly with the licensing server but when I put it out in the real world, it couldn't get a connection.

Turns out Flash's security model is preventing loading data from another domain.

There are three methods (I've found so far) to allow the communication, but all of these require that the license server know who the requesting server is, in advance. So not too good for my needs then.

I think the WebService API might be able to get around this restriction... It's 2.18am however and that's another days work. This article looks positive...

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/flmxpro_webservices_03.html

Interesting to see that, since yesterday, users of this site have uploaded 171 files messing around with the Multiple Upload Demo.

Among the files are a plethora of interesting MP3s, excel sheets, PSD files and of course some porno - thanks Guys.

Whomever uploaded "film_ze_mucha_nie_siada.mpg" - that's just weird.

Updated Demo

I've updated the demo with a few more options and started updating the descriptions. I haven't tested all these options yet, so please let me know if you find a bug.

IE users, you may want to reset you cache as I updated the flash control and IE is brutal for not updating the cached version flash movies.

Some Minor Updates

I changed the names of some attributes such as "color" which is now "statusTextColor".

I also re-jigged some of the internal Flash default parameter coding to make the flash control smaller and more robust in that it can handle color codes in any of the following formats, "0xFF4466", "#FF4466" or just "FF4466".

It's all these little things that are delaying the launch but will ultimately make this incredibly easy-to-use and dummy-proof.

Last night, I added some options and fixed one of the last remaining bugs in the Multiple File Upload Widget Demo.

Tonight I'll add more options to the demo.

I was thinking of add a 'tic' sound as each file uploads. Also don't you think the default text for the select files button should be "Select Files" and not "Browse".

One of the last things we want to add to the Flash control is licence control. From the top of my head, here's an overview of how the licensing might work:

1. The flash component will have a secret key and the licensing server will also have this same secret key.
2. When the component is called on a commercial website, the component will ask the server if the current website has a licence registered using its secret key to build a hash of the domain and time-stamp. The server will respond yes or no.
3. Once the flash gets the response, it will be able to authenticate that it was the real server it was talking to based on the hash.
4. If the server responded 'no', the "unregistered version, click here to register" text will display.
5. The website will be sent a unique license hash for the current website that it will store and pass into the flash control for instant authentication in the future without the need to communicate with the licensing server.
6. It will also be possible for users to download licence files for their website that prevent the need to communicate with the licensing server.

Of course all the falls flat on it's face if somebody cracks open the SWF file and obtains the secret key; and understands the licensing mechanism; and goes to extreme lengths to replica the licensing server or rebuild the licence key. But it's going to sell for $50, so so I don't think anybody would be bothered going to those lengths.

I know some of you are looking forward to checking out the demo of the flash file uploader component for ColdFusion so without further ado, here you go:

• Launch Demo

ps. I haven't got around to adding the licence management code yet so for security I've just slapped "demo" on it for now. This demo uses exactly the following code and also shows how javascript callbacks can be used. C&C very welcome.

<cf_dccom component="dcFlashUpload" folder="#folder#"

width="500"
height="400"

jsOnFileUpload="onFileUpload"
jsOnComplete="onComplete"

color="0xFFFFFF"

themeColor="haloGreen"

blockExtensions="cfm,cfml,exe,cgi,php,php3"

></cf_dccom>

On our site, CFTagStore.com, we have a ColdFusion widget called CF_MultiUpload Advanced which was programmed by Dan and I.

The advanced part of the widget uses an activeX control in a pop-up window to allow the user to easily select and upload hundreds of files.

However because Flash 8 now has powerful support for selecting and uploading multiple files, I spent Tuesday and Wednesday working on a sexual flash replacement for our old CF_MultiUpload Advanced widget. Here is a preview:

The Flash version will mean that this will work on all platforms and browsers without the need to install an activeX control.

As you can see, I only have icons in for JPG images so far - I was to try to dynamically load the needed icons to keep the controls load-size minimal.

Also I plan to add in a second progress bar for the current file along with some stats on the current upload rate and possibly the average upload rate.

Have a few bugs to fix also before I add any more features.

Dan assures me this will sell like cupcakes.

Can you imagine the luxury of never having to program a form again! Well. I am here adding some functionality to a 5 year old website (the programming behind of which is so... awkward; that it really highlights how much we, Digital Crew, have developed as CF programmers over the years) and...

I was just about to program another "input form, validation, update database, send emails" combination when I sighed and thought fuck this.

I've been comtemplating updating my UDI project to be able to work standalone with single forms so that I never have to do this shit. Just pop UDI onto a page, mess with the wizard that appears and bingo - job is done.

Stay tuned, I'm about an hour into this upgrade - the time invested will reap major rewards.

So it's been a week since my last post. That's pretty bad - I made a rule for myself that I'd post at least once every 2 working days. Guess I didn't have anything of note. So what have I been up to? Advanced caching for one thing...

Last Monday I decided to finally get around to adding content-caching to the Digital Crew site engine. With proper advanced caching, a single server could host up to 10 times the amount of websites, leading to cost savings and an overall improvement in website speeds. So I pulled out my old dcCache tag. I then re-factored (to use some bullshitty programming jargon) the tag bringing the code into the CFMX age. The tag works like so:

<dcCom component="dcCache" key="stuff"> CONTENT HERE </dcCom>

If the tag detects a cached version of "stuff", it just loads up that HTML page and spits it out, then exits the tag using <cfexit method="exittag">.

By the way, I had an old note in the tag saying that there was a bug with <cfexit> in which if the exittag option was called, it would still execute the content nested with the tag. I tested and this bug seems to be gone so I reimplemented the <cfexit> code.

This tag is used to cache various items around a web page. A "Top 10 Movies" content snippet could be cached for example so that it only updates when the database behind it is updated saving the execution of a query and parsing of result on every page of the site. Also an entire page could be cached. That entire page might contain the "Top 10 Movies" cached item. I got thinking about this and wanted a way so that if the "Top 10 Movies" snippet is reset, the parent cached item, the full page in this example is also reset.... I won't bored you with the details but with a REQUEST.dcCacheCurrentList variable I was able to make this magic happen.

I'm a little concerned that repeated loading the cached content from disk might be slow - it might be better to cache the most popular content in memory, but then again the operating system should know that certain disk items are being repeated accessed and make them easily available.

To reset the cache, the dcCache component is called using

<dcCom component="dcCache" action="resetlist" resetList="Top10Movies">

I used all this caching milarchy for Digital Warehouse and after some teething problem, the site now seems to be nice and fast - it's basically just spitting out pre-rendered HTML code for 90% of the web page. That's the beauty of dcCache, it can be used for just parts of a web page.

In our implementation of www.digitalwarehouse.ie, the CMS is one application and the website is another so I use CFHTTP to send a request from one app to the other to reset items when an update is made in the CMS. So far, it works pretty well. Anyone have a better idea for inter-application communication than CFHTTP and I don't want to hear about using SERVER variables - that's a no-no on a server that could host hundred of sites. :D

Oops, this post is way too long. Way to rant. I was going to give an overview of my entire week but that explanation of one days work has done me in. Stay tuned for another post later today.

I've spent the last 2 weeks working on the website for the new National Maritime College of Ireland (NMCI). It was a bit of a struggle to meet a tight deadline for their launch but we did it.

The website itself ain't bad but the CMS behind it is another evolution of our custom built InfinityCMS content management system and is pretty sweet (if I do say so myself).

One neat feature is this ability for the user to type [include:subnav] in the WYSIWYG and the website will automagically spit out an in-page navigation. Other options are [include:date], [include:datetime] etc.

Also an editor can choose up to 5 image and write [include:image1] in their text to get a nicely rounded captioned image on the page. The rounded edges are done using the nifty corners flash I showed here last week.

Then theres the right hand side items - editors can create and assign right hand side items for any page and the images are automatically scaled and rounded for them.

Oh and the site also uses the useful script I wrote to extract URL variables from the pathe path so the site is more search engine friendly with URLs like http://www.nmci.ie/index.cfm/page/undergraduatecourses as opposed to http://www.nmci.ie/index.cfm?page=undergraduatecourses

All in all, I think I did well to add all these features and still get the job done on-time.
Check out the site and hit me back, comments appreciated (Keith, this time round, please try to say something positive before you unleash hell's fury).

• National Maritime College of Ireland

Ever notice the way some sites would write a URl like:

index.cfm?page=somepage&x=1

as something a little more URL friendly like:

index.cfm/page/somepage/x/1

To get this, simply include the following code in your application.cfm file!:

<cfif ListLast(CGI.PATH_INFO,".") NEQ "cfm">
  <cfif Find(".cfm",CGI.PATH_INFO)>
      <cfset lenRHSofDotCFM = Len(CGI.PATH_INFO) - (Find(".cfm",CGI.PATH_INFO)+4)>
  <cfelse>
      <cfset lenRHSofDotCFM = Len(CGI.PATH_INFO)>
  </cfif>
  <cfif lenRHSofDotCFM GT 0>
      <cfset RHSofDotCFM = Right( CGI.PATH_INFO, lenRHSofDotCFM )>
      <cfset numURLItems = listLen(RHSofDotCFM,'/')>
      <cfset numURLItems = numURLItems - (numURLItems mod 2)>
      <cfloop from="1" to="#numURLItems#" index="i" step="2">
          <cfset URL[ GetToken(RHSofDotCFM,i,'/') ] = GetToken(RHSofDotCFM,i+1,'/')>
      </cfloop>
  </cfif>
</cfif>

PS. I made this site wider since I figure that anybody reading this site must be working with at least a 1024x768 resolution and the text is easier to read this way, don'tcha think.  If the site looks a little odd, try deleting your browser cache - the flash headers on the blog posts are caching big time. I've deleted Internet Explorers cache a few times now and its still cached. Looks fine in Firefox though so I guess it'll sort itself out.

Here is a good tool I made eons ago that from time to time I find invaluable.

Next time your knocking out a regular expression for ColdFusion, load up this, paste in some sample code and keep tweaking your expression until you get it right.

• Try It!
• Download

If like me, you don't want to wait ages for all the developer services such as IIS, ColdFusion, MySQL and MS SQL to start up when you simply want to check your email/browse the web; then you might appreciate these 2 simple batch files I keep handy  to start these services if and when I want them (assumes ColdFusion 7 on windows):

• Start Developer Services
• Stop Developer Services

Note: I appended ".txt" to these file names to allow them to download; batch files are blocked by IIS6. Just rename them and remove the ".txt" bit.

Armed with these you can set all the following services to manual in the services control so that they only start when you run the Start Developer Services batch file.

• w3svc (IIS Web Server)
• ColdFusion 7
  • ColdFusion MX 7 Application Server
    ColdFusion MX 7 ODBC Agent
    ColdFusion MX 7 ODBC Server
• MySQL
• MSSQLSERVER

PS. Didn't have a chance to work on the comments for this site over the weekend - coming soon I promise.

I think the site administration for cfTopper is pretty sweet. I should point out that the CMS for cfTopper is build on Digital Crew's InfinityCMS platform yada yada... we've been continually developing it for a number of years, slightly improving it for each new client site we develop. InfinityCMS makes is easy to knock out a custom CMS for just about anything.

Here is quick screen of what the CMS for cfTopper looks like: