cf_space

Category: Coldfusion,coreforms
Author: Charles

I have moved all the coreForms update posts to a different blog.  You can find it on the CompositeWeb's main blog.

Category: Coldfusion,tech notes
Author: Charles

Here's another item that I am note sure I knew before, but now I do.  When you are running a query of queries and trying to do a sort on it, the one thing you have to remember is that the field names are case sensitive.

So what you need to do is cfdump the query you are using in the query of queries and copy the field names that show up exactly as shown.  Then it should run just fine.

Category: Coldfusion,Notes,OpenID
Author: Charles

I was recently integrating OpenID into my SaaS Intranet offering over at CompositeWeb.  I started working with the opensource project OpenID at riaforge.  It worked great, but then I found the RPXnow site and thought it would provide a lot more flexibility in the future and provide for an easier to maintain interface.

I didn't find any information on how to implement it with coldfusion so I thought I would post what I figured out.

 

Category: Coldfusion,tech notes
Author: Charles

I was recently adding some features to my CMS system and came accross a feature of cfqueryparam that I had not used in a while but is really nice when you need it.  When doing an insert or update query for an integer field you can specify the Null attribute of the cfqueryparam tag.

Here is an example:

<cfqueryparam cfsqltype="cf_sql_integer" value="#form.duration#" NULL="#NOT len(form.duration)#">

So what this is doing is testing if there is any value in the form.duration field, and if there is nothing there, insert a NULL.  If there is something there is just inserts the field value normally.

 

Category: Coldfusion,tech notes
Author: Charles

I am currently redoing the help files for coreforms.  I have to totally redo them because I have added a bunch of new features, and I don't think the current version is that useful.  You kind of know that your documentation needs changing when the author of whatever you are trying to document has a hard time figuring them out.

So the solution I am working on needs a database so I can organize the documentation better.  The problem is that I do not want to require that people who want to view the documentation need to have a database connection and load a bunch of tables onto their server.  So I am trying some static ways to create coldfusion datasources.

The first way is to manually build out the query using coldfusion's queryNew, queryAddRow and querySetCell tags.

<cfset get_format = queryNew("name,description,status,attributes")>

<cfset queryAddRow(get_format)>
<cfset querySetCell(get_format,"name","text")>
<cfset querySetCell(get_format,"description","general text field, same features as an html text field")>
<cfset querySetCell(get_format,"status","A")>
<cfset querySetCell(get_format,"attributes","3")>

<cfset queryAddRow(get_format)>
<cfset querySetCell(get_format,"name","textarea")>
<cfset querySetCell(get_format,"description","general textarea field, same features as an html text field")>
<cfset querySetCell(get_format,"status","A")>
<cfset querySetCell(get_format,"attributes","4")>

This is ok for a small amount of rows, but I have another query that will hold all the attributes.  For this one I am going to use the basic concepts as the one above but build out a comma delimeted file first then loop through the data to create the query.

<cfsavecontent variable="theData">
1,fieldname,Yes,put the name of the query field,A,A
2,required,No,enter a Y if you need the field filled out,A,A
3,max,No,enter the total number of characters for a text field or a maximum date for a date field,A,S
4,cols,No,enter the number of columns for a textarea field just like the html attribute,A,S
</cfsavecontent>

<cfset theFields = "id,attributename,required,description,status,scope">

<cfset get_attributes = queryNew("#theFields#")>

<cfloop list="#theData#" delimiters="#chr(10)##chr(13)#" index="ii">
<cfset queryAddRow(get_attributes)>
    <cfset loopcounter = 1>
    <cfloop list="#thefields#" index="jj">
        <cfset querySetCell(get_attributes,"#jj#","#listgetat(ii,#loopcounter#)#")>
        <cfset loopcounter = loopcounter + 1>
    </cfloop>
</cfloop>

 Then all I have to do to get the query onto my page is to cfInclude the files that I put the above code on.

Category: Coldfusion,coreforms
Author: Charles

I just posted an update to coreforms over at riaforge.  If you are interested in my forms solution, check it out.

I added a couple of new features.  The first is the ability to prepopulate a form that allows for multiple check box selects.  The data could be coming from another query of just supply a comma delimeted list of values.  So as an example, say you are building a weblog form and you want to pull all the data for the post with query1 and you want to pull in all your post categories with another data.  This will allow you to tie the two into the same form so you can update the main post and the categories on the same form.

I also added another customtag called "coredirections".  This allows you to add directions to a form at any point in the form if you are having the form build programatically (maketable = 'Y').

Hope you enjoy the changes.  If you have any suggestions let me know.

Category: Coldfusion,coreforms
Author: Charles

Just a quick introduction, I have been a coldfusion developer for the past 7 years.  I have mostly been focused on Intranets but also on internet sites as well.  I hope to share some of my interest in that to you.  I have an opensource coldfusion project called "coreforms".  It is a very simple set of custom tags that allows you to easily create web forms for creating and updating data.  If you are interested you can download it from coreforms.riaforge.com.