Best Served Cold - ColdFusion

Lots of great ideas

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 23:12:00 -0700

I would like to thank everyone that offered suggestions for what they would like to see in the next version of cfcUnit. Many of these are great ideas, and some will certainly be added to the core framework. They have given me something to focus on and a bit more future food for thought. Something else that is made much clearer is that more documentation, tutorials and examples are needed to get people started more quickly. I will be addressing that. I would also like to remind folks that there is a cfcUnit mailing list (link below). If you have any ideas or questions about how things work, it is a good way of getting some help.

You want it, you got it!

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 01:34:47 -0700

Ok, so I have finally gone and done it. A number of people have been giving me a bit of grief over this, and while the cfcUnit site hasn't yet been updated, I have gone ahead and made available for download cfcUnit's next release, 1.2 Beta 1.

The major enhancement brought forth in this release is the inclusion of a rather versatile Ant task, so now tests can be run from within Eclipse without much trouble or as part of any build/deployment process that employs Ant.

I will post more about this and update the cfcUnit site later on today, but the link below will take you to the download page:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=100854&package_id=126568&release_id=483297

Let me know how it goes. I look forward to any feedback.

cfcUnit at CFUnited

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 13:50:00 -0700

There has been a lot more attention paid to testing CFCs this year at CFUnited, and cfcUnit is right there at the front when discussing unit testing one's CFML. Perhaps the biggest proponent of unit testing has been John Paul Ashenfelter and his talks on Agile Development and Testing ColdFusion. Additionally, I have seen demos of unit testing by Chris Scott when showing off different functionality of the ColdSpring framework.

A side effect of this attention has been that there will soon be a new Ant task written by John Paul that will allow cfcUnit to be run as a part of an automated build, but it could also be run from within Eclipse just as other unit testing frameworks do now.

Dave Ross and ColdSpring at the Fusebox Conference

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 16:20:25 -0700

Dave Ross has been asked by numerous people to speak about ColdSpring at the Fusebox Conference this year, but needs interested people to justify attending. If you are interested in learning more about ColdSpring and how it fits with the other frameworks, let him know.

New Tartan presentation available via Breeze

Wed, 18 May 2005 16:34:12 -0700

A couple of hours ago I gave a presentation introducting Tartan via Breeze. If you weren't able to watch it live, you can watch a recording.

New Tartan Website

Thu, 03 Mar 2005 02:05:08 -0700

I just got finished with my first go at a web site for the Tartan framework. It is a work in progress, but you have to start somewhere. It can be found at:

http://www.tartanframework.org

Much of the content has been contributed by Jared Rypka-Hauer, so if you have anything you want to see there, let me know and we can talk...

Anyhow, check it out!

Mach-II under fire!

Fri, 18 Feb 2005 14:33:59 -0700

There has been a interesting discussion on the Mach-II mailing list recently regarding the very future of the framework. Growing up is hard to do.

Peter Farrell has done a good job of summarizing the debate on his blog. Check it out.

Updated Tartan Framework files available...

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 22:58:42 -0700

There is a new set of files for Tartan. Check it out:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=100854&package_id=141144

Oh, and let me know if you have any problems.

Blackstone is out!

Sun, 06 Feb 2005 15:52:24 -0700

I just found out from John Beynon's blog that Blackstone (or CFMX 7) is now publicly available for download and purchase from Macromedia at http://www.macromedia.com/software/coldfusion/buy.

We've been waiting a long time, but no more! Go and get it!

New Tartan mailing list

Sun, 23 Jan 2005 15:38:56 -0700

A couple of people have asked about any possible mailing list, so I went ahead and created one at topica.com. The main page for the list can be found at http://lists.topica.com/lists/tartan. You can join the list from this page.

Tartan available for download

Mon, 17 Jan 2005 02:29:16 -0700

Ok, I just went ahead and put the code up to SourceForge as a downloadable zip file. You can get it here: http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=297551

Tartan: a new service framework for ColdFusion

Mon, 17 Jan 2005 01:11:42 -0700

Frameworks are a lot of fun to build. Over the last month I have been working on a framework for building ColdFusion service layers. I built it with the intension of making it available locally and remotely using Flash Remoting and web services. I have decided to call this framework Tartan.

Tartan is a command-driven service framework for ColdFusion. It was built to help produce the service layer within a larger application architecture which relies on strict separation or layering of functionality.

All access to the underlying business logic is controlled by public services which are available locally as CFCs and remotly via Flash Remoting and SOAP web services. A service can be composed of any number of commands, each of which implements a discreet operation within the application. These contain the core logic for the application. Commands can communicate with databases via DAOs, manipulate values received from the client, execute other commands and even communicate with services available on other remote servers.

At the center of Tartan are 6 core classes: RemoteService, LocalService, Command, DAO, ValueObject and ExceptionHandler. They provide most of the functionality of the framework, and must be extended by the application developer.

Although I am still working on proper documentation, there is some already, and tartan is now available for download as a part of the OpenXCF project on SourceForge via CVS. I will make it available as a single download really soon.

Event Gateways...

Wed, 03 Nov 2004 16:14:14 -0700

I just got out of Tom Jordal's session on Event Gateways in Blackstone, and I've got to tell you that I loved his presentation style--really laid-back. He went over the way they work and ways to use them, and I really need to get more into this area. I just need to find a good excuse to do it.

The "Sneak Peeks" session is coming up, so I've got to get going.

CFC Birds of a Feather tonight...

Tue, 02 Nov 2004 23:44:56 -0700

Well, tonight I attended the Bird's of a Feather session for CFCs that Ray Camden was good enough to set up for us. It seemed to be a more diverse group than last year and more people seemed to be interested in how things are done and why. It wasn't the gripe session that last year tended to be, and instead questions of "How do I learn how to use components?" were more important. We tended not to focus on what they could not do and instead reflected on different solutions to similar problems.

One person suggested starting with database queries and moving them into components one at a time. Really, the available documentation and body of knowledge since last year has changed quite a bit as more CF developers have embraced OO techniques using CFCs.

We also covered the need for good code generation capabilies similar to those in existance for Java developers--especially for writing boiler-plate code like database CRUD functionality.

Tom Schreck demonstrated a phenominal tool that will create a CFC, database tables that map to that CFC and the form for dealing with that CFC all in one place. He's spent quite some time on it, and it is something worth looking at and investing time and support in.

I also inquired within the group to see if anyone was using cfcUnit and if so what they thought of it. A couple of people in the room were familiar with it and liked it. Once again, I was reminded of the need for even more and better documentation... something I will have to work on.

Anyhow, it was a great session and I hope to get a chance to follow up with some of the attendees later on this week.

CF_Underground Uncovered

Sun, 31 Oct 2004 17:51:05 -0700

I spent the day at CF_Underground today, and I'm glad I did. There were great presentations on using CF with Flex, e-commerce security, extreme programming, creating personas, and software architecture and design patterns. Hal couln't be there, but Michael Smith and Shlomy Gantz did a good job of filling in at the last minute. Lots of good ideas floated around in the many discussions of the day.

There were also a lot of familiar faces from the last CFUN and MAX conferences. Hopefully the guys from Interakt will have more beer opening tricks to share before the week is over!

Anyhow, it's Halloween and the French Quarter should be interesting... I'll add more comments later.