Recent Web Log Entries By Ben Nadel
ColdFusion 10 - Parsing Dirty HTML Into Valid XML Documents
Posted: February 28, 2012 at 9:50 AM by Ben Nadel
As I blogged earlier, ColdFusion 10 now supports XPath 2.0 in the xmlSearch() and xmlTransform() functions . This might not sound like a very exciting upgrade; however, when you realize that ColdFusion 10 now enables the parsing of "dirty" HTML code into valid XML documents, suddenly, the world of XML becomes a lot more interesting. NOTE : At ... read more »
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ColdFusion 10 - XmlSearch() And XmlTransform() Now Support XPath 2.0
Posted: February 28, 2012 at 8:57 AM by Ben Nadel
In today's world, we don't often work with XML; the majority of data exchange is done using JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). Even APIs that support both XML and JSON seem to be dropping XML support in their roadmap (I know this from personal experience). That said, XML is still a data type that will inevitably be a part of our lives for some tim... read more »
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ColdFusion 10 Beta - Generating Hash-Based Message Authentication Codes With Hmac()
Posted: February 27, 2012 at 9:14 AM by Ben Nadel
We are entering the age of APIs - Application Programming Interface(s). Many of our applications now interface with 3rd party APIs like Twilio, Twitter, EmailYak, FullContact, Face.com, and Facebook. The list goes on and on. The available functionality is simply mind-blowing; unfortunately, when we interact with 3rd party services, we do open ours... read more »
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Hostek.com Offering Free ColdFusion 10 Beta Hosting
Posted: February 24, 2012 at 10:03 AM by Ben Nadel
Yesterday, I learned that Hostek.com is offering free ColdFusion 10 beta hosting . It's really easy to setup. Simply add the ColdFusion 10 beta hosting to your cart, select a sub-domain, and checkout. The service is free but they will ask you for your credit card information. After your order is submitted, you'll receive an email with FTP and Con... read more »
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ColdFusion 10 Beta - Miscellaneous Parsing Bugs And Oddities
Posted: February 24, 2012 at 8:58 AM by Ben Nadel
As I've been poking around in the ColdFusion 10 beta, I've come across a few parsing bugs and oddities. I blogged before about a critical bug with function expressions ; and, I'm happy to report that the bug has already been fixed internally for the next ColdFusion 10 build. The following are some more parsing bugs and oddities that I have found.... read more »
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Join Me At InVision - We're Looking For Another ColdFusion / JavaScript Developer
Posted: February 23, 2012 at 4:14 PM by Ben Nadel
These are some very exciting times! As you may have seen, my new company - InVision - has just raised $1.5 Million in venture capital (see TechCrunch). InVision is a UX prototyping tool that makes creating and collaborating on interactive prototypes easier than ever before. And, with our new funding, we're looking to revolutionize the way soft... read more »
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ColdFusion 10 Beta - Closures, Function Expressions, And Functional Programming
Posted: February 23, 2012 at 11:01 AM by Ben Nadel
ColdFusion 10 Beta introduced two revolutionary concepts to the ColdFusion language: Closures and Function Expressions . Closures allow functions to retain their lexical bindings when passed out of context; Function Expressions allow us to define functions as part of larger expressions. These two new features really facilitate the use of "functio... read more »
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ColdFusion 10 Beta - Closures And Components And The THIS Scope
Posted: February 22, 2012 at 9:29 AM by Ben Nadel
The last couple of days have been really exciting as we've been exploring the new Closures and Function Expressions that have been added to ColdFusion 10. First, we looked at the general structure and behavior of closures and function expressions ; then, we looked at how closures interact with threads ; now, I'd like to take a quick look at how ... read more »
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ColdFusion 10 Beta - Closures And Function Expressions And Threads
Posted: February 21, 2012 at 10:02 AM by Ben Nadel
Yesterday, I really started to dig into the Closures and Function Expressions that were introduced in ColdFusion 10 . I didn't really get into the pros and cons of using them; but, after the post yesterday, I hope we can start to agree that they are fairly badass. Today, I wanted to continue exploring closures and function expression in ColdFusio... read more »
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ColdFusion 10 Beta - Critical Bug In Compiling Function Expressions / Closures
Posted: February 20, 2012 at 10:40 AM by Ben Nadel
The ColdFusion 10 beta was released last Friday . So, naturally, I had to dive in and start experimenting - it was like a second Christmas! I was so excited. The first thing I wanted to explore was probably one of the most controversial features of ColdFusion 10 - Closures and Function Expressions . As I was digging around, I came across a criti... read more »
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ColdFusion 10 Beta - Closures And Function Expressions
Posted: February 20, 2012 at 9:37 AM by Ben Nadel
For the last year or so, people have been very curious about the idea of adding Closures to ColdFusion 10 - code name, Zeus. Some of these people are excited about the power of closures; others are confused as to what a closure is and how a closure can even add value to the ColdFusion workflow. I, for one, love closures and every bit of value that... read more »
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ColdFusion 10 Beta, Apache Tomcat, And Symbolic Links On Mac OSX
Posted: February 19, 2012 at 1:05 PM by Ben Nadel
As you have probably heard, Adobe has released a public beta of ColdFusion 10 - code name Zeus . After many many months of meetings, gathering feedback from clients and developers, dropping hints, and demoing new features, the wonderful engineering team has finally unleashed ColdFusion 10 on the general public. So, first things first: ... read more »
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Building Executable Scripts For The Mac OSX Command Line With Node.js
Posted: February 14, 2012 at 10:55 AM by Ben Nadel
Recently, I learned that there was a whole world of programming that could be performed at the command line of the Mac OSX terminal. In a previous post, I made a very simple Bash script that could be used to simplify the execution of a different, more complex command. Today, I wanted to explore the use of Node.js as an alternate interpretor for ... read more »
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Using jQuery.whenSync() For Asynchronous Form Validation And Processing
Posted: February 13, 2012 at 10:54 AM by Ben Nadel
Lately, I've been playing around with Node.js on Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) . Coming from a ColdFusion background, moving into an asynchronous event loop can be challenging. Simple things like form processing can become complex workflows when even one step of Validation or Processing needs to be performed asynchronously. I've been trying... read more »
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Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) AJAX Requests Between jQuery And Node.js
Posted: February 10, 2012 at 11:10 AM by Ben Nadel
After reading the REST API Design Rulebook by Mark Masse , I'm all jazzed up about API design! This recent enthusiasm has afforded me the motivation to attack a number of new topics all at the same time. If I'm going to be experimenting with API design, why not try it on an Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) Micro instance ? And if it's on EC2, ... read more »



