Jon Hartmann - Frameworks

Building Pages with a Page Object

Wed, 20 May 2009 23:34:00 -0500

I was reading through PHP and MySQL Web Development at the local bookstore the other night when I noticed that their example code for explaining object oriented concepts was a Page class that basically built a page based on its properties. While the concept of directly building the return code string by string is a little foreign to ColdFusion, I was very interested in the idea of an extensible Page object that could help me manage my applications. Read more to see what I came up with. [More]

CF on Wheels: What I Like

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 05:30:00 -0500

Over the last few days, I've taken the time to make myself a little more familiar with CF on Wheels, and I've I'm really digging it. CF on Wheels bills itself as a ColdFusion framework "in the spirit of Ruby On Rails," and I think it lives up to the tag line. Click "more" to read more about it. [More]

Ruby on Rails: What I Like

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:18:00 -0500

I started a short series of blogs about what I like in a number of modern frameworks/web programming environments. This is part of an effort to find what really works in these languages, and to see how best I can port them to ColdFusion. This time around its the king of RAD, Ruby on Rails. Rails is all the rage these days, so its hard not to compare any framework to the "RoR". Its even harder when lost of frameworks for existing languages are inspired by Ruby on Rails, and try to re-implement things it does in their own language. You know what they say: "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." Now its time for me to see what I like. [More]

CakePHP: What I like

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:48:00 -0500

I've been doing a lot of thinking about frameworks lately, and about how much work it is to get a MVC/Model2 framework going in ColdFusion compared to in other languages/servers. This lead me to investigate the documentation for a number of non-ColdFusion server/frameworks that I've used, or are popular, and I've been trying to round out a list of what I like and why. The first installment of this mini-series is on CakePHP. Please remember that while I may have used some of these frameworks, I'm not an expert, so I might be missing the thing that makes that framework cool. If so, let me know that you think the best parts of the framework are, and I'll see if I agree. [More]

IIS vs onMissingTemplate

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:15:00 -0500

Several weeks back I was exposed to Python and Django for the first time, and it really got me thinking. While I'm not a huge fan of Python syntax, I really did like the setup for Django, and how it implements MVC. One of the first things that I loved was this little tid-bit for linking up URL requests to views:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^polls/$', 'mysite.polls.views.index'),
    (r'^polls/(?P\d+)/$', 'mysite.polls.views.detail'),
    (r'^polls/(?P\d+)/results/$', 'mysite.polls.views.results'),
    (r'^polls/(?P\d+)/vote/$', 'mysite.polls.views.vote'),
)

In that block, Django is defining regular expressions that map to Python functions, and defining how to pull named variables out of that regular expression, so that if you requested /polls/23/ becomes a call to the mysite.polls.views module to do the following:

# mysite.polls.views is the module, details is the function
detail(request=, poll_id='23')

Isn't that cool? I'd love to be able to do that in ColdFusion, but it looks like there are a number of hurtles I have to get past before I can make this work:

How do I make ColdFusion get the variables out of that URL path?
How do I make ColdFusion look at a URL that doesn't exist?

[More]

Leveraging Popular Frameworks

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 08:16:00 -0500

This contains info from the CFUnited talk on this topic. This talk covers MVC, Factories, ORM Introducing a quick start application: AppBooster Domain & Business objects for each Entity. Business Object (bean) - people, places, and things, the nouns in your system. Data Access Objects (DAO) - read and save objects Gateways - Objects which return queries Service Object (SO) - your API (controllers do not touch BO, DAO, or Gateway) Controllers - talk to your service layer. Q: Where is validation at? A: In the BO, or the SO. Frameworks and Software Layers DB Layer (ORM) Transfer, Reactor continue later

StackCore

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 17:44:00 -0500

I've come up with a .02 version of warpcore using a Java Stack as the event manager, but from simple testing it doesn't seem to be as fast as the previous version. I'm going to have to narrow this down to creation time or execution time though. Click more to see the code. [More]

WarpCore

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 17:07:00 -0500

The name's probably already taken, but what the hell. WarpCore is the name I've given to a very simple implementation of an implicit invocation controller scheme in ColdFusion. The concept is simple: some variable is set that contains an event, the WarpCore handles the registration of new drives (controllers), and the WarpCore controls activating functions in those drives. [More]

First Model Glue App

Wed, 23 May 2007 12:56:00 -0500

Ok, so I finished my first application in Model Glue: Pig Latin Translator. Yes its the QuickStart example. Yes its lame. I'm still proud.

Model Glue

Tue, 22 May 2007 12:46:00 -0500

I've reversed my previous ideas on the Model Glue vs Mach II frameworks; I like Model Glue better. Its not because Mach II is "bad" in any way, but I was sold by the simplicity of Model Glue's config.xml set over that in Mach II, and the cleanness of the integration with Reactor and Coldspring... oh and scaffolding is the shizzle.

Risks of prototype.js

Mon, 07 May 2007 09:08:00 -0500

I've been doing some reading into using Adobe's Spry Framework (more about that later), and I've found that apparently prototype.js isn't quite as awesome as I had thought. Prototype works by extended the array and object prototypes to include new functionality, unfortunately this breaks some code (including Spry and Google's xpath.js library). While I've not gotten to look into the full ramifications of this, it sounds like prototype can cause headaches if you want to mix-in other code.

Mach-II & Reactor

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 16:37:00 -0500

No, I've not started using these together, but I have delved into quite a few architectures / time saving ideas reacently, and these two have particularly stuck out at me as very useful systems. [More]

ColdFusion Frameworks

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 18:37:00 -0500

I've been delving into the use of "frameworks" for development lately, specifically as applies to ColdFusion. My job currently is a little understaffed, so I'm looking into things that might provide more stable applications in a shorter development time. However it seems that the basic definition of framework changes when you move from platform to platform. In Javascript the Prototype framework (or others) include prebuilt, compatability tested code so you can easily leverage AJAX or other technology with low overhead. While I see that as the goal of many frameworks, it seems like there is a high overhead just to get things going, or that these crazy setups require like 5 different sets of Frameworks working together to work fully. Any way, if any one gets to this post and has any comments on any of the following frameworks, please let me know. ColdSpring Mach-II Fusebox Reactor Model Glue