Digital Ninja

Quick post tonight, as I'm between tasks. I've been wanting for a long time to get more familiar with ExtJS, a most excellent JavaScript application framework (can I call it that?). It's the good stuff that's built into ColdFusion 8, but that was version 1.1. Since then they've gone all the way to 3.0, and the platform is getting better and even more expansive.

What I wanted to do was get into it, but I kept getting sidetracked. It can be a bit to digest in one sitting - or even 10. Eventually, I heard of ColdExt, which is a ColdFusion, er, helper application... well, it's like training wheels. I hope that doesn't offend anyone - particular the ColdExt gang. It's really amazing what they've done. Using their imported tags you can get off the ground really fast using the familiar tag-ness that is ColdFusion but when it's processed and sent to the browser it's all proper ExtJS JavaScript.

Now, I LOVE this. What it's doing is providing me, the developer, those all-important positive and productive feedbacks we call "success". In no time I had an AJAX-powered grid with a CRUD form hooked up to the rows. Even better is that some of the things I wasn't completely familiar with in the ExtJS syntax was getting written for me. A quick view-source and I was staring at a guide for how the under-hood-goods were written. This has helped me gain mountains of comfortability with this JavaScript framework!

So, even if you don't want to use ExtJS through a layer of ColdFusion tags in the end, I highly recommend you ease into the deep and incredibly powerful world of ExtJS via ColdExt. It put the "RAD" back into my AJAX/Rich Client applications. That's just awesome.

After keeping up with Adam Haskell's frustrations with Fusebox (well, with the vested interests, to be fair) it got me thinking about what Fusebox means to me. I mean, sure, I've thought about ColdBox and ModelGlue and even on a particularly spunky day Mach-II. But each morning I wake up and I'm still a Fusebox developer after 9 or so years.

So with project Fusebox being somewhat of a rudderless ship, or coffee-less donut, or Guinness-less me (you get the picture) where does that leave the Fusebox community? As rich as it ever was, I say!

It's a great framework because it started out dead simple. I started on FB2 and then wrote most of my professional code in FB3. Man, those were the days! Pop some variables into the ole' fbx_Settings file and away you go! It was a snap to get new hires up and running. Then FB4 came, and with it came XML - some kind of new, alien acronym that looked all foreign-like. ;) We pretty much ignored that version. Then along came FB5 and I had to figure out what all the hub-bub was about, so I immersed myself in that. Now I'm a FB5 fan through and through. Yep, you heard me right - a fan of the leader-less, roadmap-less framework.

It's left behind a great legacy with the community. So many applications (many still running) and so many wise lessons learned the hard way. It taught us why a framework is good, it inspired us to try to better it (nod to the sibling frameworks) and it gave some much-needed shape to the wonderfully flexible language that Allaire- er, Macromedia- er, Adobe had given to us.

Personally, I'm going to revel in my continued embrace of Fusebox. Having a fleet of major applications deployed using that technology might have something to do with that, but it's also a feeling of trust and familiarity. Let's not forget, too. We do have FuseNG! Let's wish the Fusebox/FuseNG community further longevity, whether it be called tomayto or tomahto. Just don't call the whole thing off.

Chronicled within this somewhat lengthy post I detail my growing knowledge about how the current implementation of the custom Coldspring lexicon for Fusebox is falling short of my needs. I decided to do some research and try to make it better. Lots of progress was made, but there's more to go. Read on for details and code samples...

Read more...

If I had a quarter for every time this tag, which was forged upon the anvil of evil and chaos, got the best of me and my time I'd be able to... I don't know. Hire Adobe to write my code for me?

The CFLOGIN tag and the attribute-of-disdain known as loginStorage has smote me. It's my own fault for not understanding the difference between choosing "cookie" (the default, and my God just leave it be!) and choosing "session". I chose "session", thinking of course I'd like it in the session. All session based things, authentication included, ought to be in the session. Uh... no.

What started happening was that I would authenticate fine, establish my CF login and my roles, and it all looked okay. A CFDUMP of my credentials immediately following the CFLOGINUSER would yield just what I expected. However, the very next request would forget who I was entirely!

<cflogin>
	<cfloginuser
		name="#attributes.j_username#" 
		password="#Hash(attributes.j_password)#"
		roles="administrator" />
</cflogin>
<cfdump var="#GetAuthUser()#" />
<cfdump var="#GetUserRoles()#" />
<cfabort />

Now I'd like to give some credit to Ray Camden for his frustration with this a long time ago, which is featured on this blog post. Also, please take note of this adorable post in the Adobe Knowledge Base about the issue, which basically says don't use loginStorage="session" because it's a security risk. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?

This week I found myself taking another look at ExtJS. It's a JavaScript framework, I suppose one could say it's something along the lines of Prototype or MooTools. But as far as I've seen, the good folks at Ext have really taken this whole frame work thing a few steps farther down the road than the rest of the competition.

I'm working on a freelance project and we've really extended the amount of time and effort invested into the front end of the web site. Now it's time for me to pull the back end together and I'm trying to expedite my journey to the finish line without compromising quality. This is when I remembered the ExtJS library that's built into ColdFusion 8. I also remembered that the version that's coupled with Adobe's product isn't the most recent.

I hit up the Ext website and downloaded version 2.0. With the help of one of the sample script I quickly had a JavaScript powered grid pulling data in from a web service I had already written. The best part is how easy it was to adapt the sample. It was using a static XML file, which was usurped into a data store. Just a slight change in the code allowed me to use a URL call to my service as a JSON store.

The next step will be making it editable. I haven't built the service layers for that but it shouldn't take long. And I suspect that, given the incredibly rich set of features a JSON store object has in ExtJS it won't be difficult to have it talking back and making changes, and thereby a fully editable JS grid interface to my data.