I ( like many programmers I know) get just a little befuddled when trying to use regular expressions.  Over the years I’ve used numerous online RE parsers to test code.   Recently  I found a small RE parser that I have absolutely love called “The Regex Coach”.

This little gem of a program  is great.  (As a bonus it is  free for both commercial and non-commercial uses.) Unlike other RE testers that I’ve used over the years, this one lets you actually step thru the parsing sequence and also see the execution tree of the RE.  These are very handy.  I find I am able to get to a functional RE statement in about a 1/4 the time as before.   You can get “The Regex Coach” from here.  http://weitz.de/regex-coach/

As a little bonus… here is a little gem of an RE statement (for field validation) for a field that must contain no value or one or more three digit numbers separated by commas.
(^(\d{3})(\,\d{3})*$)|(^$)


so in JavaScript the RE literal would be
/(^(\d{3})(\,\d{3})*$)|(^$)/


ReadWriteWeb discusses Squad, writing: “Sounds sexy indeed! Like a developers-only, less-crowded, actually useful version of Google Wave“. Having just started to try out Google Wave, I’m not exactly ideally placed to comment on Wave, but I’m inclined to give Wave a thumbs-up. So the words “actually useful” seem misguided to me; I can see a lot of practical use for Google Wave, even for developers…

By the way: you can use Squad to edit ColdFusion code – after all, that looks a lot like HTML, isn’t it?

Lately it seems like it is becoming harder to program an effective user interface without the use of javascript.  I for one must admit I have drank the jQuery kool-aide.  I was working on a site for a client and needed a way for the users to change their password.  The site in question also makes extensive use of the Colorbox jQuery plugin and I know that Colorbox can display inline HTML so I thought this would be a good chance to check it out.  It will be aesthetically pleasing and it would be one less page I would have to write, I could just add the code to my current member page.

First after including the appropriate scripts we just need to setup some basic HTML and write the jQuery code to control it all.

Some content<br />
<a href="#">show box</a>
<div style="visibility: hidden;">
    <div id='password_change' style="padding:10px; background:#fff;">
      <strong>Change your password</strong><br /><br />
      <form id="password_reset" action="ajaxProxy.cfc" method="post">
      <input type="hidden" name="Method" value="updatePassword"  />
      Password: <br />
      <input type="password" name="password1" />
      <br />
      <br />
      Verify Password: <br />
      <input type="password" name="password2" />
      <br />
      <input type="submit" value="Update"	 />
      </form>
      <div id="formStatus"></div>
    </div>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
  $(document).ready(function(){
    $('#password_reset').ajaxForm({
      success: showResponse,
      clearForm: 'true'
    });
    function showResponse(responseText, statusText)  {
      $('#password_reset').hide();
      $('#formStatus').html(responseText);
    };
    $().bind('cbox_open', function(){
      $('#password_reset').show();
      $('#formStatus').html('');
    });
    $(".inline").colorbox({width:"300px", height:"250px", inline:true, href:"#password_change"});
  });

</script>

That is basically all that is required.  The inline content that will be displayed in Colorbox is in the hidden div.  Basically the jQuery block is setting it up to post the form as an ajax form (using the jQuery form plugin).  The only thing out of the ordinary going on here is binding to the Colorbox open event.   I did this because the form may or may not be displayed.  If the user has tried to set the password before he will only see a message letting him know whether the password was changed or not.  I am just forcing the form to display when the box is opened.

Here is the code for “verifying” the password:

<cfcomponent output="no">
  <cffunction name="updatePassword" access="remote" output="no" returntype="string" returnformat="plain">

    <cfset var ret = "" />
    <cfscript>
       if(password1 is password2){
	ret = 'Password updated.';
       } else {
	ret = 'Passwords did not match';
       }

      return ret;
    </cfscript>

  </cffunction>
</cfcomponent>

If you would like to see it in action you can find it here: http://www.kisdigital.com/tests/colorbox/

Uses Colorbox and jQuery form plugin.

iText is the “background” engine driving PDF creation and modification for CF.

The API for iText is entirely JAVA, but the flexibility it provides goes much deeper than tags such as CFDOCUMENT and CFPDF.
Check back here for articles on how to create, update and manipulate PDF’s directly with the API as well as other advanced techniques such as reading and validating Digital Certificates using BouncyCastle and Sun JAVA classes.

YouTube – FusionDebug Introduction (with Railo) – Part 1 of 6 http://bit.ly/8bNDXo

ColdFusion on Wheels | Google Groups http://bit.ly/57s0kQ

CFWheels Documentation Search http://bit.ly/6ARRYF

Using Git with CFML http://bit.ly/4zmVHt

ColdFusion Survey http://bit.ly/5RlVgI

CF Code Highlighter in ColdFusion http://bit.ly/5soOtZ

Extending ColdFusion Builder @ Adobe TV http://bit.ly/1mtMRl

Setting Up a Riaforge Project with Git and Github (4 parts) Part 1: http://bit.ly/JUFCG

ColdFusion + Rails = ColdFusion on Wheels Framework http://bit.ly/qQN62

Learning ColdFusion as a Service http://bit.ly/8luISH

I’m a big fan of ColdFusion Builder.  However, like most Eclipse-based GUIs, it can difficult to find the settings you’re looking for.  For those of you who are convinced there is no word wrap feature in CF Builder, here’s the information you’re looking for:

Preferences > HTML > Editors > Advanced tab > Enable word wrap

CFWINDOW is a great tag available originally with ColdFusion 8. It provides similar functionality to the CFPOD tag with a bit more flexibility in positioning and UI controls.

I recently ran into an issue on a newly launched Staging server while testing the modal display of a CFWINDOW. For some reason, instead of getting the modal window, all you would see is the text and graphics of that window inline with the rest of the content. After spenging way too much time troubleshooting we stumbled on the problem when we moved the functionality off to another testing server.

Basically what was happening was permissions to the CFIDE/scripts folder was blocked on the new Staging server. When this happens the client no longer has access to the javascript necessary to display the modal window properly in its default implementation. The trick? Use the CFAJAXIMPORT function:

This opens up access to the scripts and allows the modal to display normally on a locked down CF install. This same fix can be utilized to enable any Ajax type functionality in CF. This import tag also allows the use of a specific path to the custom tag folder if one is required.

Cheers,
Alex Kersha

ColdFusion9 and scripted components and hql syntax – Stack Overflow http://bit.ly/8beshv

TWiCF 05 – Solid Software http://bit.ly/5ZBBUt

I have seen several posts recently about installing Railo for local development, so I figured I would point out a nicely pre-configured Railo/Tomcat package out there from the folks at Vivio Technologies, which can be found here: http://railo.viviotech.net.  They have packages for both Windows and Linux, so you should have your bases (and operating systems) covered.   One other benefit of using the package is no web server is required.  Tomcat will act as its own web server.

It is very easy to install new webs using the package, the only thing required is editing your Tomcat server.xml file and add a new entry into the virtual hosts section.  A typical entry will look like this:

<Host name="site1.localhost" appBase="webapps">      
    <Context path="" docBase="C:\Sites\site1.localhost" />
</Host>

After you have made the appropriate changes to your HOSTS file and restart Tomcat you will be in business.

Estes procedimentos devem ser executados para integrar o ColdFusion MX7 com um banco de dados MySQL com versão mínima 4.1:

1. Baixar Conecctor JDBC do site do MySQL.:

• http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/3.1.html

1. Acesse o site Connector/J 3.1 e faça o donwload do arquivo *.zip;
2. Descompacte o arquivo que hoje está na versão mysql-connector-java-3.1.12 e copie o arquivo mysql-connector-java-3.1.12-bin.jar para a pasta C:\CFusionMX7\wwwroot\WEB-INF\lib;
3. Reinicie o CF Server;
4. Entre no admin do CF e para criar um datasource, vá em Data Sources;
5. Em Data Source Name dê um nome ao seu banco e em Driver, escolha Other;
6. Clique em Add: Entre com a JDBC URL: jdbc:mysql://[host]:[port]/[database] (exemplo: jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/testes);
7. Entre com o Driver Class: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver;
8. Digite o username e senha para acesso ao mysql;

• Uma outra opção é habilitar a acentuação brasileira para o mysql: Clique em Show Advanced Settings Em Connection String coloque: useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=ISO-8859-1

First we set up a simple page that will contain our search box and has the div container that will hold our search box:

Search: <input id="search" type="text" />

<br />
<br />

<div id="userlist"></div>

<script type="text/javascript">

	 $('#search').bind('keyup',updateQuery);

	function updateQuery(){
		$('#userlist').load('query.cfm?search='+ $('#search').val() );
	}

	$(document).ready(function(){
		$('#userlist').load('query.cfm');
	});

</script>

Everything here is pretty self-explanatory.  I created a text input creatively named search, then bound the key up even to the updateQuery() function which in turn updates the userlist div that holds our search results.  The page that actually populates the results, query.cfm, is listed below:

<cfparam name="search" type="string" default="">

<cfquery name="q" datasource="datasource">
	SELECT MemberID, LastName, MiddleName, FirstName
	FROM members
	<cfif len(search)>
	WHERE Concat(FirstName, ' ', MiddleName, ' ', LastName)
	LIKE <cfqueryparam cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" value="%#search#%" />
	</cfif>
	ORDER BY LastName, FirstName
</cfquery>

<cfoutput>#q.recordCount# User(s) Found</cfoutput>
<br />
<br />
<cfoutput query="q"> <a href="somepage.cfm?ID=#MemberID#" style="color: blue;">#LastName#, #FirstName# #MiddleName#</a><br />
</cfoutput>

The page accepts one parameter, URL.search which is supplied by the calling page and if it is not supplied, it defaults to an empty string.  If the search parameter is sent, I am combining individual fields in the database to get the members full name and searching against that.

With a few lines of code we get a pretty cool effect.  This can be easily modified to fit any given situation so maybe someone will find it useful.