Powered by BlogCFM http://www.dougboude.com/blog <p><font size="3">Even though MVC has been &quot;all the rage&quot; now for a good long time and several frameworks have been lovingly and painstakingly developed and shared by the CF community to help facilitate the migration to a more standardized OO approach to development, I do believe that there will always be a need to regularly return to the foundational principles of our craft. For some, an affirmation or further perfecting of their core http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2008/07/How-to-Think-about-Controller-objects-and-Model-objects.cfm 2008-07-29T09:31:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue <p><font size="3">Just because a person uses Model Glue and has learned enough about XML to know how to create basic settings doesn't necessarily mean that they have a strong command of XML, right? Well, I needed to put a funky, &quot;special character filled&quot; value into my global config object for use later, and through some experimentation found that using XML's 'CDATA' allowed me to do this so I thought I'd share it since I hadn't seen it http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2008/07/Using-Special-Characters-within-ColdspringXML.cfm 2008-07-24T00:09:05-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue <font face="Arial" size="3">For any of you Model-gluers out there who are dabbling in Fusebox 5.5+ (which I happen to be for a current client project), I came across a hair-pulling situation that I wanted to share with you in the hopes that you'll not have to endure the same.<br /><br /><b>The symptom:</b> you wrote a perfectly good controller method that is being called and, according to the debugging, is rendering all of your content just fine. http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2008/06/My-FB-55-Content-Pulled-a-David-Blaine.cfm 2008-06-29T11:28:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox <p><font size="3">It's in the wee hours of the night and I'm trying to knock out one more item from my client's laundry list: speed up the load time of a specific template in his Model Glue app.</font></p> <p><font size="3">This particular template has several different select lists, each being populated with the results of a Model-Glue generic List broadcast. It also relies upon the return of a pre-populated object that is fairly &quot;heavy&qu http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2008/05/ModelGlue-Generic-Read-Time-Tests.cfm 2008-05-27T02:05:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox <font size="3"><b>A necessary disclaimer...</b><br /><font size="2"><i>Everything in the following post that appears to be an opinion most likely is and should be taken as such. My personal view on a topic does not (necessarily) invalidate any other opposing view. Readers should ascribe whatever value they so choose to the information that follows and either adopt it or reject it at their own discretion.</i></font><br /><br />In the comment threa http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2008/05/Why-I-Hate-ORMs-a-solicited-rant.cfm 2008-05-01T11:54:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion <font size="3">Last September I shared a post on an <a href="http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2006/09/ClientSide-Interactivity-without-Ajax.cfm">alternative to Ajax for client-side interactivity</a> leveraging Coldfusion's WDDX. I'd like to take it a step further now and share an approach (and corresponding code) I often use in my Model-Glue apps when needing to create tiered or drilldown-type select lists <i>withOUT</i> having to make numerous ca http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2008/03/test.cfm 2008-03-09T22:46:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets <font size="3">Ever felt so confident in your skills and ability to code an entire model glue event from the xml to the controller, model, and view that you decided to go ahead and do two or three entire events before you actually attempted to run your code, only to find out that SOMEWHERE along the lines you fat fingered your xml, and for the LIFE of you can't see it? All Model-Glue is going to tell you is that your XML is invalid, but it's up t http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2008/02/Finding-Fat-Finger-errors-in-Modelgluexml.cfm 2008-02-21T12:31:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets <font size="3" face="Arial">As any user of Model-Glue can attest to, there are often times when you get the ol' &quot;OOPS!&quot; message and it doesn't give you much of a clue as to what the REAL issue is. Well, in order to help myself save time during future development and decipher these rather vague and even misleading types of errors, I've begun keeping track of them. I capture the error itself, what I found the TRUE cause to be, and what I http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/12/ModelGlue-Error-Matrix.cfm 2007-12-12T11:20:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets <font size="3" face="Arial">Jim Pickering, the manager of the Kansas City CF User group, recently started a group project to rebuild their UG's web site. The project has the secondary agenda of promoting team development and learning Model-Glue, so he invited me to participate by setting up a skeleton app with basic security and then giving his volunteers a &quot;Model-Glue Quickstart&quot;.&nbsp; The entire presentation is just over an hour long http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/10/Yet-Another-ModelGlue-Quickstart.cfm 2007-10-04T12:51:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets <font size="3" face="Arial">Don't you hate it when you're focused on adding functionality and/or troubleshooting issues in your Model-Glue app and when you save your modelglue.xml file to see if it all works right, you get the error: </font><br /><font style="color: black; font-family: verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 11pt; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> <h1 sty http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/10/ModelGlue-XML-Isnt-Valid-Short-Reminder.cfm 2007-10-03T16:36:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets <font size="3">In a post I did a while back, I shared what I had learned about using Model-Glue's built in &quot;SimpleConfig&quot; cfc. Well, I just got a question from a fellow developer who was trying to leverage the information in that post to implement his own home grown configuration settings cfc, and what I had shared there didn't quite apply. I tried to email him back, but it was returned as undeliverable, so I thought I'd just post my re http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/09/Global-Configuration-in-ModelGlue-Using-Your-Own-Config-CFC.cfm 2007-09-27T15:21:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger <font size="3">By now almost all of us have &quot;rolled our own&quot; when it comes to giving a Coldfusion app some semblance of security, so the concept is nothing new. It can be, however, somewhat daunting when attempting to take what we know procedurally and apply it to an MVC styled application. <br /><br /></font><font size="3">The Kansas City Coldfusion User Group invited me to assist them with a group project using Model-Glue, specificall http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/09/My-Approach-to-Basic-Security-in-a-ModelGlue-Application.cfm 2007-09-25T03:54:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger <font size="3">Attempting a save action, evaluating the outcome, and adding a subsequent &quot;success&quot; or &quot;Check your Work!&quot; message, along with a Modelglue Result value (in order to redirect appropriately) are common things to do when building an app, right? Well, I burned about fifteen minutes this morning trying to do this simple task, tracing events and double checking code, trying to figure out WHY the message value I added t http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/09/ModelGlue-addResultsetValue-Order-Matters.cfm 2007-09-21T06:52:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger <font size="3">Reactor's built-in validation produces a validationError structure when it encounters something amiss, and passes it back to your viewstate. That structure is actually a structure of arrays.<br /><br />I DO use Reactor's validation, and found myself copying and pasting the same snippet for outputting the validation error results a time or two this morning... figured it might come in handy for other folks, too. <br /><br /></font> http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/09/Snippet-Outputting-Reactor-Validation-Structures.cfm 2007-09-12T13:23:02-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger <font size="3">Okay, I've been up since 3 A.M (went to bed waaay too early last night) working on a Modelglue project, and now I'm feeling the need to rant a little bit. Not complain, per se, because I truly do appreciate the blood, sweat, and tears that must have gone into creating the frameworks that comprise Unity; But out of the 4 hours I &quot;worked&quot;, a full third of it was spent on issues related to trying to get my app to &quot;see&q http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/09/Reactor-Rant-Just-Getting-It-Out-Of-My-System.cfm 2007-09-12T12:29:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger <font size="3">When my team and I first began building our Model-Glue:Unity application, we experienced a GREAT deal of head scratching and frustration during the development process. We would alter a line here or there, refresh our browser, and NOT see the change. It took us quite some time to finally figure out what kind of action was warranted for what kind of change in order to make it manifest, so we documented it for ourselves in our local http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/09/ModelGlue-Development-Cheat-Sheet.cfm 2007-09-07T12:14:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger <font size="3">Okay, actually there's no way to COMPLETELY distill this topic down to the point where you don't have to have a decent understanding of web development to grasp it. BUT, I do believe that I've been able to demystify the subject sufficient to allow even the beginner OOP/Model-Glue developer to &quot;get it&quot;, which is what I wish I would have had a year ago when I left the comforts of procedural and embarked on m http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/08/The-ModelGlue-Event-Lifecycle-in-Laymans-Terms.cfm 2007-08-29T01:04:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger <font size="3" face="Arial">At first, getting a grasp on how to &quot;think&quot; about rendered views in Model Glue may appear to be challenging; but I tell you, that you already know exactly how to think about them. If you have EVER included a template using &lt;CFINCLUDE&gt;, then you have a two minute learning curve to working with views in Model Glue.<br /><br />Breaking your page up into individual pieces, and then including those pieces la http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/07/Model-Glue-Views-Demystified.cfm 2007-07-27T12:01:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger <font size="3" face="Comic Sans MS">To anyone who has not yet breached the subject of model-glue event security, it can potentially be confusing at first, so I thought I'd share my approach to it in case it helps save someone a little time.<br /><br />Understanding and being able to visualize the life-cycle of a Model-Glue event is a prerequisite to really grasping event security, so let me share my take on what a brief overview of that life-cycl http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/07/Basic-Event-Security-in-ModelGlue-Applications.cfm 2007-07-02T15:27:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger <font face="Comic Sans MS" size="3"><font face="Arial">When making the transition from procedural CF to OO, sometimes what was SO simple before can become a challenge (at least the first time). For instance, the way we used to pass around our app's DSN value was probably something along the lines of setting an application variable in our application.cfm or cfc, thus making it accessible throughout our app while consolidating the value to a single http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/06/Global-Configuration-Settings-in-ModelGlueUnity.cfm 2007-06-10T09:58:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger <font face="Arial" size="3">Someone recently asked about how to specifically ensure that a submitted email address is unique when using a model-glue generic commit, so I thought I'd share an example since I recently had to do that very thing.<br /><br />I'm assuming for the remainder of this post that the reader is already familiar with Model-Glue in a practical sense, and at least knows of the existence of Reactor's automagic validation. Still, http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/05/Custom-Validation-with-Generic-Commit-a-ModelGlue-Case-Study.cfm 2007-05-25T01:30:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger <font face="Comic Sans MS" size="3"><font face="Arial">At first glance, the topic can seem somewhat overwhelming. The key, however, is to understand each of them separately and then using them together won't seem overwhelming in the least. I'll touch briefly on each of them independently, but will assume for the bulk of this post that you have at least an elementary understanding of what each is and generally how they work.<br /><br />Ajax refers http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/03/Using-Ajax-with-ModelGlue--its-really-quite-simple.cfm 2007-03-19T23:34:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger <font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS">Okay, I spent the greater part of today at work wrestling with a situation involving the injection of objects into other objects using Coldspring. After far too many hours of experimentation, furrowed brow, taking up my teammate's time, and frustration, I came to some conclusions. I can't explain the &quot;WHY's&quot; of the conclusions, but i can definately validate the conclusions themselves by my results.<br http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/03/Coldspring-automagic-lesson.cfm 2007-03-05T00:00:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger <font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS">The scenario is that my team and I are building an app that must be able to seamlessly communicate between multiple datastores; one local, and the remainder remote and accessible via web service calls. In order to accommodate this, I've created a DataStoreAdapter component that has an instance of each of the specific data store interface components injected into it by Coldspring. <br /><br />The challenge here http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/03/Dynamic-Data-Stores-A-ModelGlueOO-Case-Study.cfm 2007-03-02T16:35:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger Yesterday evening (Tuesday February 27th) I gave my first live presentation! The Kansas City Coldfusion User's group (www.kcdevcore.org) invited me to come and speak about Model-Glue since I've been using it on my day job for the past six months or so and have learned it and OO coming from a strictly procedural background. I wasn't nervous until Jim Pickering (the UG manager) and I drove up to the building where they meet. The nervousness finally http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/02/Lost-my-public-speaking-virginity.cfm 2007-02-28T17:14:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger,Personal <p><font size="3"><em><a href="mailto:dougboude@gmail.com?subject=OO%20Instruction">(Consider hiring Doug to instruct you and your team in the ways of OO!)</a></em></font></p> <p><font size="3">I've been hearing the term 'Service Layer' everywhere for at least the past year and a half, as I'm sure most of my peers have as well. Whether it's seen in blog posts, heard during casual conversation at conferences, found in articles, or woven throughou http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/02/Just-What-IS-a-Service-Layer-Anyway.cfm 2007-02-21T06:15:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger,Personal <font face="Comic Sans MS" size="2">I spent the first hour of my morning listening (and gladly so) to Joe Reinhart preaching the need for us all to focus on just comprehending exactly what MVC is. Personally I felt like he started the presentation a few feet over most of the audience's head, using terms that were quite comfortable for him but new to many of us. Not his fault, and to his credit he did take the time to define many of the terms for http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2006/06/CFUNITED--MVC-Unraveled.cfm 2006-06-29T17:58:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger,Personal,CFUNITED <font face="Comic Sans MS" size="2">Most of you may be aware of the debate over frameworks that has been raging off and on since at least CFObjective back in March of this year. In the one corner, representing all that is opposed to the preaching of frameworks to the masses is Simon Horwith. In the other corner, representing framework evangelists and followers from all over the globe is Hal Helms. <br /><br />I first became aware of this schism a http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2006/06/CFUNITED--The-Frameworks-Debate-Continues.cfm 2006-06-29T12:23:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger,Personal,CFUNITED <font size="3" face="Comic Sans MS">Learning OO can be somewhat intimidating at first, especially coming from a procedural CF background.&nbsp; One of the first things needed in order to be able to take advantage of the different posts, presentations, and articles so graciously shared by your more advanced ColdFusion brethren is to have the OO vocabulary ready at hand. In order to assist with this, I am sharing with you my own personal lexicon of http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2006/06/Personal-OO-Lexicon.cfm 2006-06-16T00:00:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger,Personal,CFUNITED Scope within a CFC is incredibly important, and even moreso when you start using Object Oriented Frameworks for your application. It is essential to understand it in order to save yourself a lot of mind numbing troubleshooting, especially when writing recursive functions.<br /><br />The following information is also contained in my OO Lexicon, but I felt like it was sufficiently encapsulated (that's an OO term <img alt="" src="/blog/FCKeditor/edi http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2006/06/ColdFusion-Component-Variable-Scopes-This-Variables-and-Var.cfm 2006-06-16T00:00:00-05:00 OOP,coldspring,goog,Model-Glue,Fusebox,Frameworks,rant,ColdFusion,javascript,JSON, code snippets,placeblogger,Personal,CFUNITED