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architecting...

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:47:00 GMT

Good lord. The lexical side of things is easy.

Thinking in terms of the big picture is most definitely a skill that takes work.

And trust me, not having anything approaching a CS degree, it's mental work.

Now, the fun part is putting something together and seeing that it makes sense is very neat.

I don't have much more to expound on here, just thought I'd post that in between Dreamweaver saves.

editors

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:32:00 GMT

some editors I like to use: 1. Crimson Editor Lightweight, but has a definition file for CF stuff. And, you can add new tags to it. Very neat, very lightweight, and has FTP support built in. 2. Eclipse For integration of multiple tools. Major drawback: Obviously, Windows version lags because of java/Windows. Urgh. 3. *sigh* Dreamweaver, CS3 8 had goofy ftp issues (altho cs3 requires more resources. Arg again)

Comparing CF5 to CF8

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:23:00 GMT

On a lark, we compared some code running on cf5 versus cf8. Mind you, it wasn't an exact comparison, but the rough numbers obviously show a huge difference in speed between the two.

Reports run faster, etc. Way cool.

revisiting old code

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:21:00 GMT

Yikes. After going thru some Lynda.com Flex training, then checking out my old Flex code, I'm embarrassed.
It was like seeing an old pic of me in parachute pants or something.

Loosely coupled = good. That old crap I did = yikes.

It's a learning process. Anyhoo, I'm doing a personal website in Flex, using the stuff I learned.

I'm gonna start posting some of the code here soon.

Custom events make sense to me now, btw. Yay.

oy. been a while.

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 03:09:00 GMT

Started a new job.

Things have been in a flux.

I finally wiped Vista off my laptop. Just couldn't deal with it anymore. It simply sucked. Period.

I went with OpenSuse 11. There isn't much of a reason beyond my familiarity with Mandriva and Ubuntu, and wanting to try something new.

Beyond having to tinker with the wifi card (32-bit Atheros card put on a laptop with a 64-bit processor. o-k.) everything else was fine. I didn't even have to download the Nvidia driver for my xserver, as Suse handled the video resolution fine.

The one major thing I like about how Suse uses Gnome (my preference of desktop managers; I simply can't like KDE. I even installed 4.0; no good.). There's no bar at the top, ala OS X. Yeh, the taskbar is very Redmond-like, and the layout is kinda similar to Windows. So what.

All I know is that things are running just fine now thankyewverymuch without intrusion by *that* OS.

So there.

so simple, so basic, and yes of course, I only now realized it.

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 03:10:00 GMT

Cfscript for long a## structs and arrays! Duh.

I have a pretty big struct I have to create to regenerate a pdf. So, after putting in about, oh 150 lines of code (lotsa cfsets...) I picked up an old CF MX book of mine and read up that one chapter I so ignorantly, uh...ignored?
Anyway, yeh, whattya know, cfscript is good for those.

Live, learn, repeat.

CFGrid and dynamic number of grid columns

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:56:00 GMT

I had emailed the DFW CFUG about this, and the responses I got were right along where I wound up going with the solution.
I learned something new, btw, which was the function "getColumnList()" that each query has. Whattya know...
Here's my code:

The args code I found online (and once I remember from where I found it, I'll credit it as well). Anyhoo, this is the grid with the grid columns built based on what's in the db's table.

and now, back to cf8/mach ii related fun.

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:42:00 GMT

Alright, now that I have my little Flex app ironed out (it's working fine now. Whew) I'm back to playing with CF8 and Mach II

I want to setup something practical for me and the kids to keep track of things, like groceries they want me to buy, stuff I want them to do, etc.
My plan, then, is to take this modified user manager app and modify it to suit my needs.

The following are functions I want to put into this thing:

Grocery list. This one's easy enough.
Chores for the kids. Aha! This one'll make it fun. This will require dates, time to get it done, when it was done, by whom, etc.
Track their homework. Since they underperformed this last school year, I want them to put in each day what homework they had, and when they finished. Yeh, it's micromanaging, and it'll be tedious, but they're smart freaking kids and need to do better. (plus, I'll have what they put in emailed to me.)
There's gotta be at least a fourth functionality I can add. I'll figure something out.

Anyway, that's my home project for now.

What a pain in the ...

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:17:00 GMT

*sigh* Ok, finally.
Here's what I've found out, and it seems like this will fix my problem with file uploading in Flex/Coldfusion.
Firefox apparently uses two windows when dealing with file uploads as pertains to Flex.
What happens is, that second window drops the session info, and you wind up getting a 302 httpstatus code. (as a note, using something like Ngrep in linux or Windows, or Wireshark in Windows, to sniff your own network traffic to see the raw response will help you decipher what's failing. I was able to see that it was trying to redirect me to the login.cfm template)
What fixed it was returning the JSESSIONID from a Remote Object/CFC call, and using it in the URL string that I used in the URLRequest upon file uploading.
I.e., var req:URLRequest = new URLRequest();
req.url = "upload.cfm?jsessionid=" + jsessionid;
req.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
fileRef.upload(req);

"JSESSIONID" is set a little above the code with the Remote Object/CFC call.
And voila! That's how you upload files if you're behind HTTPS. *whew*

ok, if anyone out there has some info on this, I'm all ears.

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 05:47:00 GMT

*sigh* Ok, so I gave up testing Flex file uploads in an authenticated environment on my Linux box here at work.
It was simply a no-go.
It works fine in Windows if I hard-code the destination in the cffile tag.
If I don't do that, I get 302 redirects to the login page we have. This is coded in the application.cfm. (If you're not logged in, go to the login template)
This is weeeeiiiirrrddd.

Annoying Flex file upload problem...Fixed?

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Issue: File upload using Flex works fine in a normal (meaning non-authenticated) environment. Inside an authenticated environment, I get http status code 302 (redirection, basically)
After pulling my hair out and wondering what the heck was going on, I finally read online a recommendation to use a network sniffer to see what the responses were from my local server. Alrighty, I was familiar with ngrep, and have used it before for just boring network sniffery purposes, so fine. I'll try ngrep.
Ok, I ran that (making sure it was listening to my localhost traffic) and voila, sure enough, since I had moved my Flex app inside of one of our sites that requires logging in, it was showing a 302 message, along with the url to our login template.
My hunch is that I need to worry about keeping the app's session variables present. I found a nice little Forta article that I'm going to read up tonight and test out tomorrow.
At least, I HOPE that's what my problem here is... (Flex file uploading is a pain.)

fingers crossed

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 02:47:00 GMT

I THINK I successfully performed some basic object composition.

As per the usual Wiki-sources, Object Composition, I read what the definition of this concept was.

To wit, it isis a way and practice to combine simple objects or data types into more complex ones.

Ok, so that makes sense.
So, realizing that what I had was a 1-n relationship between users and recipes (1 user can have n number of recipes), I went about figuring out how to return recipes in my UserGateway.

Of course, it started with the m2 config file, and working my way up the latter.

I'm still testing this, so I probably jinxed myself all to hell posting about it before being 100% sure. I hope not. We'll see, now won't we?

breathless mach ii update: success!

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:20:00 GMT

ok, so I was able to add a select element to be able to both show who was the default user (who's recipe it was), along with it being populated with all users.

Also, I had to be able to update the info.

Easy. I just had to add the notify-listener call that returned all of my users in an array in the showRecipeForm event-handler.

I then had to make sure that new table column, 'userid', was being selected, updated, and deleted in the DAO (not to mention the bean getter and setter)

Of course, I made sure things were kosher in the service layer, as well.

It's working fine, except that once it updates, it only returns the number of recipes on the showAllRecipes form, instead lf all. I believe that's just due to the bean still being in memory.

I may just have to clean things out once the info is submitted.

(what this means is, once my form is submitted, it calls my showAllRecipes method, which has userid as an optional argument. Since it's in memory still, or at least to my thinking that's the case, it's being returned by userid, and not all. When I refresh the page, it returns all recipes. I think I'll need a filter to be called before calling the show all method. I'll test it and see.)

Continuing adventures in Mach II

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:09:00 GMT

My boss and coworker are gone for two days, so, along with some tasks I was given to take care of while they were gone, I was also tasked with getting to know Mach II, esp the service layer more.
so, I took a slightly modified version of Mr Shuck's User manager M2 app, and added a category of Recipes.
My challenge: tie the recipes to users.
So I added an innerjoin to the gateway; I then made sure that the recipe bean had a getter and setter for both the userid and username I was returning.

On my userform I now have a recipe array that I'm creating, and sure enough, it's there.

I'm still wondering , tho, if combining the userid and username to the recipe bean doesn't taint it somehow. I'm thinking that I should probably use the user bean ONLY, and reference that info along with the recipe bean.

More investigation to follow.

oh, ok. Slowly, but surely...

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:43:00 GMT

Alrighty, so far, here's what I know (I believe) about Mach II:

Listeners simply forward to the service layer.

Services contain logic to pull data via either DAOs or Gateways.

DAOs handle single records, and CRUD related work.

Gateways return multiple records, and/or more complex SQL.

Beans are simply instances of single records, with getter and setting methods for each attribute the object may have.

I'm working on fiddling with the service layer on this sample user manager app. I've added a table, 'recipes', and want to tie recipes to each individual user. This should be fairly straightforward.

adding a field to a Mach II form

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:44:00 GMT

Ok, since I have to get caught up once and for all, I started tinkering with the contact manager sample app of Dave Shuck's. My coworker, Brandon, had added a little to it, so I started tinkering with that version. So, I was challenged to add a field to the contact side of it. (Currently, there are users, and contacts) After about an hour's worth of work, (mainly just getting a better feel for how things run) I added it. It updates, etc. Mach II is far easier to troubleshoot than your standard proecedural code, that's for damned sure. I've spent hours digging around going thru includes and crap trying to nail down that one URL that didn't have the DSN in it. So far, so good. Since I plan on going hardcore MachII over the next few weeks, I'll probably be blogging mainly about my experiences. Here goes nothin'.

5 tagger and proud of it.

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:03:00 GMT

ok, the title is tongue in cheek. I'm doing my best to continue to expand how I approach web development, especially as it concerns ColdFusion. I'm in the process now of applying more and more OOP approaches to things I'm doing at work. I like figuring out more and more about how CFCs really do some neat things.
That said, man, oh man, while there are plenty of 'cool' kinda CF guys out there (like Dave Shuck, to cite a local example), there are alot of big headed types out there. I've been reading more and more blogs out there from ColdFusion programmer types, and yeesh. The hubris is certainly up there.
For those of you who have been in programming for years, and may even have your CS degree, please: keep in mind that some of us didn't start when you did, or, hell, don't have the aptitude you do.
Yes, there are plenty of CF coders who just stick with the tried and true 1000 line procedurally coded template-style of coding. (That's a terrible sentence, I realize.)
Trust me when I say there are also at least a few of us who are learning, and are going to catch up eventually. Having said that, every person I've met face to face locally that is in the CF community have gone out of their way to be helpful and nice about it all. To them, I'm beyond grateful. Anyhoo, just felt the need to get that off my chest.

beans, daos, gateways and services.

Sat, 17 May 2008 16:14:00 GMT

so, this weekend is the time I've chosen to play around with a User manager app that Mr. Shuck built. Mainly cuz we're starting to apply more and more of these concepts at work. SO. Here goes nothin'. Time to setup MySQL on my laptop.

Flex2/Actionscript 3 model objects and value objects

Mon, 12 May 2008 16:01:00 GMT

ok, so NOW Flex is really gettin' fun. I started tinkering with model objects last night.

Here's my first one (for my simple little blog)

package blogMO
{

    public class blogMOEntry
    {
        public var _ridBlog:int;
        public var _vcBlog:String;
        public var _intUsers:int;
        public var _dtCreate:Date;
        public var _intType:int;

        public function get ridBlog():int{
            return _ridBlog;
        }
        public function get vcBlog():String{
            return _vcBlog;
        }
        public function get intUsers():int{
            return _intUsers;
        }
        public function get dtCreate():Date{
            return _dtCreate;
        }
        public function get intType():int{
            return _intType;
        }

        public function set ridBlog(value:int):void{
            _ridBlog = ridBlog;
        }
        public function set vcBlog(value:String):void{
            _vcBlog = vcBlog;
        }
        public function set intUsers(value:int):void{
            _intUsers = intUsers;
        }
        public function set dtCreate(value:Date):void{
            _dtCreate = dtCreate;
        }
        public function set intType(value:int):void{
            _intType = intType;
        }

/*         public function toVO():blogEntryVO
        {
            var vo:BlogVO = new BlogVO;
                vo.ridBlog = ridBlog;
                vo.vcBlog = vcBlog;
                vo._intUsers = _intUsers;
                vo.dtCreate = dtCreate;
                vo.intType = intType;
            return vo;
        }

        public static function fromVO(vo:SchoolVO):School
        {
            var mo:BlogMO = new BlogMO();
                mo.ridBlog = vo.ridBlog;
                mo.vcBlog = vo.vcBlog;
                mo._intUsers = vo._intUsers;
                mo.dtCreate = vo.dtCreate;
                mo.intType = vo.intType;
            return mo;
        } */
        public function blog(){}


    }
}

Very straightforward.

It's all coming together in my wally-mind. Slowly but surely.

Pardon me, time to go meditate on my Flex 2 koan.

Ommmm.

CF8, Flex, etc.

Thu, 08 May 2008 19:06:00 GMT

a few housecleaning items:

CFPDF worked like a charm. I was able to output our pdf like we had with the custom tag without a problem. Very, very cool.

Flex is more and more fun for me. As it stands now, I've got an image preview/upload app that puts the images you have into a tile list 3x4.
The images all have a 'sort_order' property to them, and that gets updated in the db when you drag and drop the images around in the list.

I hope to get an example of this up in the next day or so. While it's not exactly reinventing the internet or anything, it was a HUGE amount of fun doing it.