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Recent Blog Comments By Sean Corfield

• Exploring ColdFusion Component Runtime Class Properties And Serialization

  Posted on Mar 21, 2010 at 3:59 PM

  @Elliott, according to Ben's experiment, serializeJSON() doesn't access the private data by default - it doesn't even access the getHair() method - so trying to clone a Girl.cfc via serializeJSON/deserializeJSON wouldn't actually work. @Ben, very interesting approach to modify the component... read more »

• Mom! Ben Broke My CFInterface!

  Posted on Jan 8, 2010 at 11:56 AM

  @Tristan Lee, Much is going to depend on whether there is a suitable "default implementation" for a method. If there is, it's reasonable to provide a base component and extend it to override / add other functionality. If there isn't, an interface might be appropriate. Personally I thi... read more »

• Getting Certified In ColdFusion 8 Scares Me

  Posted on Jan 5, 2010 at 12:07 PM

  Looking back through this thread I see Andy Allen posted links to Sun's Java certification (and Microsoft's .NET stuff). Both test knowledge of infrastructure / technology, rather than the language itself and / or your ability to solve problems...... read more »

• Getting Certified In ColdFusion 8 Scares Me

  Posted on Jan 5, 2010 at 12:03 PM

  @Ben Nadel, I'm trying to think of any certifications that go with languages . I suspect there may be certifications for some Microsoft languages - but even then I suspect they are really testing your knowledge of Microsoft tools and technologies as much as your knowledge of... read more »

• Learning ColdFusion 9: CFScript Updates For ColdFusion Components

  Posted on Jul 23, 2009 at 11:04 AM

  One thing that I think will be controversial is using comments to change the meaning of code. The /** ... */ comments - called JavaDoc style comments BTW - are not the only way to specify the attributes. You can say: property name="foo" getter="true" setter="false"; The CFML Advisory... read more »

• A Problem With My Coding Methodology That's Driving Me Crazy

  Posted on Jun 22, 2009 at 12:11 PM

  @Ben, that begs the question: would you stop using a LOCAL struct if CFML let you declare VAR anywhere? FWIW, the CFML Advisory Committee will specify VAR can be used anywhere in a function as part of CFML2009 (and some vendors already support this).... read more »

• Why My Queries Hate Application Service Layers

  Posted on Jun 19, 2009 at 4:05 PM

  ORMs like Hibernate can be asked to handle object joins in either a lazy or non-lazy manner, even on a specific query. That's nice because it means you can say contact / contact_information is lazy but still override it with HQL (Hibernate Query Language) when you want a non-lazy version: <... read more »

• Why My Queries Hate Application Service Layers

  Posted on Jun 18, 2009 at 2:09 PM

  @Matt, I hope no one actually tries that! You illustrate well the trap that folks can fall into if they take the drive for reuse too far. Any given application contains an inherent amount of complexity. You can put it all in one file/method (and have the ultimate procedure app) or distribut... read more »

• Why My Queries Hate Application Service Layers

  Posted on Jun 18, 2009 at 1:59 PM

  @Ben, yes, the JOIN ON / WHERE logic can get a bit hairy if you have lots of options in a method. It's a fine line to walk figuring out what should go in a generic method vs when to add a custom method for a complex query. @Hal, that's a good question. If a query really only used in one pla... read more »

• A Problem With My Coding Methodology That's Driving Me Crazy

  Posted on Jun 12, 2009 at 4:26 PM

  As a suggestion for readable descriptive names where the representation is important, you could also use: dataAsString = ... dataAsXml = xmlParse( dataAsString ); I'm not averse to having something in the name that indicates the functional type of the data if that is important o... read more »

• Do Remote CFC Method Calls Add Any Value In ColdFusion?

  Posted on May 18, 2009 at 7:09 PM

  Since my name was invoked... HTML frameworks (like Fusebox etc) are designed to take an HTTP GET/POST request of name/value pairs and return a text string - using HTML but it can be XML or JSON if you want to do the conversion manually. You can't use that approach with Flex/Flash (AMF... read more »

• You Cannot Delete Application.cfc Methods In The Pseudo Constructor

  Posted on Apr 6, 2009 at 10:08 PM

  @William, you are correct. For some reason Adobe (well, Allaire or Macromedia) decided to use 'private' for what is more like 'protected' variables in other languages... but then several other languages use 'this' to refer to both public and private variables so... :)... read more »

• Is It Time For "Practical" Object Oriented Programming (OOP)?

  Posted on Apr 2, 2009 at 8:22 PM

  @TJ, well, that's why I recommend CFers learn some radically different language to get a completely new viewpoint on development (Smalltalk, Prolog, Haskell...). Sounds like using different languages gave you that different perspective which is good. I will admit to benefitting from being a... read more »

• Is It Time For "Practical" Object Oriented Programming (OOP)?

  Posted on Mar 31, 2009 at 5:59 PM

  To people who say CFML is not an OO language: why? What do you think is the problem here that prevents CFML from being an OO language or that causes CFML to get in the way of learning OO?... read more »

• Is It Time For "Practical" Object Oriented Programming (OOP)?

  Posted on Mar 31, 2009 at 5:55 PM

  @David Stamm, you talk about functional programming and mention JavaScript in the same paragraph - not sure connection you're drawing there? Also, you say "You also face the challenge of a global programming culture that has fixated on the Java / Gang of Four vision of what object-oriented... read more »

• Is It Time For "Practical" Object Oriented Programming (OOP)?

  Posted on Mar 30, 2009 at 12:34 PM

  Like the others I can only reiterate there is no One True Way(tm). Once you get beyond the basics, there are only tradeoffs really - and that is core to every design pattern (and something that almost no presentation ever touches on!). If you make a choice to model your problem domain in a... read more »

• OOP Philosophy: Invalid State vs. Invalid Method Call

  Posted on Mar 30, 2009 at 11:57 AM

  A week away from reading blogs and I've missed Ben having a "crisis of faith". Oh noes! This is a very interesting problem to analyze because it really speaks to some fundamental concepts of OO that go beyond just "object = data + methods" which is where most people start. First off,... read more »

• You Cannot Delete Application.cfc Methods In The Pseudo Constructor

  Posted on Feb 28, 2009 at 1:49 PM

  @Stefan, the docs for Application.cfc are very clear as to why onRequest() cannot be used with remote calls (a lot of people haven't read that section of the docs which is why I mention it). onRequest() is a way for you to completely handle the request, whether it is a page request or a rem... read more »

• A Serious CFThread Bug In ColdFusion?

  Posted on Jan 25, 2009 at 12:52 AM

  Yes, the thread context CFC - like the view context CFC - is a lightweight CFC that you create (on each request) and initialize with just the data needed to run the thread (or view). The CFC then runs the cfthread tag (or includes the view file) so that you have thread safety as well as a variabl... read more »

• A Serious CFThread Bug In ColdFusion?

  Posted on Jan 22, 2009 at 8:58 PM

  Glad someone posted my rant about duplicate() and CFCs (thanx Todd). Yes, cfthread is a pain in the ass because of the deep copying of attributes. It made it really painful for me to implement an encapsulated threading model in Edmund (my event-driven framework). I solved it by creating a t... read more »