October 2006 Web Log Entries
Skin Spider : Moving Application.cfm To ColdFusion MX 7 Application.cfc
Posted: October 23, 2006 at 2:24 PM by Ben Nadel
To learn all about Skin Spider, click here . To view the most updated application, click here . To view the current code base, click here . As the first part of Iteration 2, I moved the Application.cfm code over to the newer ColdFusion MX 7 Application.cfc component. The Application.cfc does pretty much the same thing that Application.cf... read more »
Comments (3) | Post Comment | Ask Ben | Permalink
Does Mentoring Exist Any More?
Posted: October 20, 2006 at 5:10 PM by Ben Nadel
I get a fairly regular supply of job offers through my web site contact form. While I am not really looking for a new employment opportunity, I do respond to most all the offers submitted. The one thing that I really request is that it is a position with a mentor. I don't see any point in moving jobs unless it is to a place where a "grand master" ... read more »
Comments (11) | Post Comment | Ask Ben | Permalink
The Fountainhead, An Amazing Book
Posted: October 20, 2006 at 9:04 AM by Ben Nadel
I have The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand) on my iPod. I listened a long time ago, but as I am always in shuffle mode, a chapter comes up ever now and then. Usually, I just skip over it to get to the next song, but I was tired this morning and thought it would be nice. About half way through the chapter I was suddenly over come with a feeling of ... not... read more »
Comments (10) | Post Comment | Ask Ben | Permalink
Skin Spider : A Testament To Application Portability
Posted: October 20, 2006 at 8:55 AM by Ben Nadel
I haven't blogged much about this before, but I am a HUGE fan of highly portable application development. If you know me, you know I avoid all sorts of special programming elements, such as: Mapped Paths Installed Custom Tags (CF's custom tag folder) CFX Tags IIS Filters Registered COM objects Centralized Framework Code ( grumble grumble ) ... read more »
Comments (0) | Post Comment | Ask Ben | Permalink
Ask Ben: Changing ColdFusion Query Column Names
Posted: October 20, 2006 at 7:55 AM by Ben Nadel
I want to change the names of the fields in a CFQUERY result set after I have retrieved the results from the database (ie. I can't use "AS" in the original SQL statement). I can think of 2 ways to do this - use the query-a-query (CFSQL) feature or just build and populate a new query object. Do you know which of these would be more efficient? And i... read more »
Comments (12) | Post Comment | Ask Ben | Permalink
Programmatically Deleting Scheduled Tasks In ColdFusion
Posted: October 18, 2006 at 3:34 PM by Ben Nadel
Inspired by Mike Schierberl's use of Java to programmatically delete ColdFusion scheduled tasks, I decided to try and to accomplish the same thing with plain old ColdFusion. I have tried to do this in the past, but always failed (and ended up creating a phantom task on the server - yikes!). I would have never been able to do this without Mike's ... read more »
Comments (20) | Post Comment | Ask Ben | Permalink
Strange ColdFusion Application.cfc Error Update - It Works AND It Breaks
Posted: October 18, 2006 at 12:23 PM by Ben Nadel
So, I have an update to my very strange Application.cfc errors. I took the advice of some people and I tried moving the code into new files in new directories to see if it was a template caching issue. Now, I only have an Application.cfc, and index.cfm, and trace.txt files. The methods in the Application.cfc ONLY do a CFFile / Append to the trace.... read more »
Comments (7) | Post Comment | Ask Ben | Permalink
PLEASE HELP! Why Is This Application.cfc Throwing Errors?
Posted: October 18, 2006 at 8:16 AM by Ben Nadel
Can anyone help me out on this error? I thought that I had solved the problem in my other post , but it turns out, that was not causing the ColdFusion event error. The error popped back up again. Here is error: An exception occurred when invoking a event handler method from Application.cfc The method name is: onApplicationEnd. What is going on... read more »
Comments (8) | Post Comment | Ask Ben | Permalink
ColdFusion Error Thrown When Application.cfc Has Method Named "Trace"
Posted: October 17, 2006 at 8:25 PM by Ben Nadel
The following is NOT the error. I am still debugging this and I am about to kill myself with frustration! This was driiiiiving me crazy! I was testing events in the ColdFusion Application.cfc method when my OnError method kept firing during the OnApplicationEnd event. The error that I was getting was not helpful at in the least: An exception... read more »
Comments (3) | Post Comment | Ask Ben | Permalink
ColdFusion Application.cfc OnRequestStart Returns False To Kill Page Load
Posted: October 17, 2006 at 7:37 PM by Ben Nadel
I just happened upon this totally by accident, but apparently, if the OnRequestStart method of your Application.cfc returns false, none of the other request-events will fire. This leaves you with a rather confusing blank page. I wonder what this is used for. I am used to the return( false ) mentality from Javascript, but I wonder how this translat... read more »
Comments (4) | Post Comment | Ask Ben | Permalink
Skin Spider : Starting Iteration 2 With Application Reflection And Evaluation
Posted: October 17, 2006 at 6:40 PM by Ben Nadel
To learn all about Skin Spider, click here . To view the most updated application, click here . To view the current code base, click here . I think the Skin Spider application is at a point now where we can be done with Iteration One . Iteration One was a shot-gun approach to web development; really shooting from the hip, getting ideas down... read more »
Comments (0) | Post Comment | Ask Ben | Permalink
ColdFusion CFQuery Tag To Pull From Two Data Sources (a.k.a. Faking It With Bad Programming)
Posted: October 16, 2006 at 3:33 PM by Ben Nadel
Is it possible to get the cfquery tag to pull from two data sources? I know that I can do a query of query type query, but this doesn't quite accomplish what I need to do. Any suggestions? I just want to start this off by saying I do NOT recommend doing this. The following is just an exploration of ideas. As you already know, ColdFusion query of... read more »
Comments (4) | Post Comment | Ask Ben | Permalink
My First GreaseMonkey Script For Full As A Goog
Posted: October 16, 2006 at 9:01 AM by Ben Nadel
I just authored my first every GreaseMonkey script. In the past I complained about the fact that Full As A Goog opens up links in the same window. To remedy this, I have created a GreaseMonkey script that grabs all the feed links and sets the TARGET attribute of their links to be "_blank". And just like that, the links work perfectly. I have ... read more »
Comments (0) | Post Comment | Ask Ben | Permalink
Creating ColdFusion Components In Parent Directories (From Sub Directories) Without Mapped Paths
Posted: October 15, 2006 at 3:57 PM by Ben Nadel
I was over on Peter Bell's blog talking about my philosophy of building applications without any sort of mapped paths when he raised an excellent point about security: I'd have to spend some time playing with different names, but I'd probably eventually hit on the name of one of your cfcs. I honestly don't know whether I'd get anything of use i... read more »
Comments (25) | Post Comment | Ask Ben | Permalink
Project HUGE : Phase II / Week 4
Posted: October 15, 2006 at 1:27 PM by Ben Nadel
I just completed week 4 or Project Huge which kicked off Phase II of my program. In this Phase II, I have switched up exercises as well as emphasis of the program. Day one is still legs as I am in the eternal battle to get my legs to catch up with the rest of my body. Day 2, though, I have switched from pressing movements to pulling movements. I a... read more »
