OO, Farmers, and Dead Oxen

Brief thought: Giving someone the OO capabilities of CFCs without showing them how they can be used is like replacing a medieval farmer's plow with a modern tractor. The farmer would hook his oxen up to the tractor to try to drag it around, and quickly label it as too heavy to even think about using it.

The same goes for OO: Yes, it's heavy stuff. Learning to use it is a massive shift, and leaping before you look is likely to kill your oxen.

2 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 6:32 PM - Categories: ColdFusion MX

CFCs: OO is more than function libraries!!!

From a list: "They are just an array of functions you call from a separate file." Whoa! CFCs are a lot more than a library of functions - they open ColdFusion to object-oriented thought.

CFCs are to CF what a Class is to Java, C++, C#, VB.NET, or [insert OOP language here].

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2 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 6:09 PM - Categories: ColdFusion MX

Macromedia, Penguins, and Yeti Olympics

While the Holiday Fun "Penguin Dive" game from Macromedia is a cool demo of Flash technology, for some truly addictive penguin fun, check out the Yeti Olympics at http://www.yetisports.org/y/en/online.html (warning: connection is slow to the United States, I recommend downloading the games from the "Download" section).

The Pingu Toss and Albatross Drive are my favs (spoiler: A Yeti uses a Pink Flamingo to play golf, with the Pengiun as the ball!) .

1 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 9:49 AM - Categories: Off Topic

Quick Peek at Plum

Thirty Minutes with Plum

Ok, so I've downloaded Plum to try to answer the question posed on CF-Talk: "BUT what does it &@#$%^ DO?????" I've read a little about it, and it sounds like it simplifies creation of master/detail apps and integrates generated forms and lists with a content management system and user framework. What follows is a first impression of Plum, and isn't meant to be a thorough, in-depth review.

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14 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 4:05 PM - Categories: ColdFusion MX

Pretty Practical Pattern Post

When was the last time you changed an application from database storage to XML storage by only editing a config file? Here's an example application that can do just that through application of design patterns.

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6 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 11:02 AM - Categories: ColdFusion MX

Getting all sessions and their data.

A client needs to grab a list of all current user's session.username value. A little looking into undocumented CF features (and, well, Googling to Ray Camden's blog) reveals the following:

Nice, neat, easy.

3 comments - Posted by Joe Rinehart at 2:36 PM - Categories: ColdFusion MX