Just thought I would share some previews of our new office with our funky new furniture, it’s so exciting! It’s an amazing building to be working in.

You’ll find more info about our move here

 

Quite often I need to remove carriage returns and usually I use the following code:

Replace(myvar,”#chr(13)#”,”",”ALL”);

However I have found this doesn’t always remove the carriage returns.

How did I fix it? I used the following code:

REReplace(myvar,”#chr(13)#|\n|\r”,”",”ALL”);

This works everytime, its very handy for writing html with javascript

for example:

<cfsavecontent variable=”thecode”>
<cfinclude template=”#dynamicCFMfile#”>
</cfsavecontent>

<cfscript>
newDefaultCode = Replace(thecode ,”"”",”\”"”,”ALL”);
newDefaultCode = REReplace(newDefaultCode ,”#chr(13)#|#chr(9)#|\n|\r”,”",”ALL”);
</cfscript>
<cfoutput>theHTML = “#newDefaultAdCode#”;</cfoutput>

document.write(theHTML);

This allows me to dynamically write a coldfusion template to the page via javascript.

 

 

We’ve just signed up with Flickr (about time!) and we are going to be posting examples of our work, cool photos and us just generally having fun! Come and have a look

We have just launched our new website.

We’ve updated our branding and website to reflect how Coast Digital has evolved.

Check it out

http://www.coastdigital.co.uk

I have been fighting with recursion for ages now and have found it to always be a real problem effecting performance, quite often you have to use complicated caching techniques, until now!

Using XSL you can perform recursion techniques on flat XML data. It sounds complicated but really it isn’t.

 Say you have node data like the following (in a flat structure).

<tree>
<node icon=”" id=”1″ objectID=”9″ parentID=”0″ recordID=”15″ ref=”sites” title=”Sites”/>
<node icon=”" id=”2″ objectID=”9″ parentID=”0″ recordID=”28″ ref=”media” title=”Template Media”/>
<node icon=”" id=”3″ objectID=”9″ parentID=”0″ recordID=”31″ ref=”templates” title=”Templates”/>
<node icon=”site.png” id=”4″ objectID=”11″ parentID=”1″ recordID=”1″ ref=”refresh–test” title=”Refresh”/>
<node icon=”page.png” id=”5″ objectID=”1″ parentID=”4″ recordID=”134″ ref=”home” title=”Home”/>
<node icon=”form.png” id=”6″ objectID=”12″ parentID=”5″ recordID=”60″ ref=”enq_form” title=”Enquiry Form”/>
<node icon=”form.png” id=”7″ objectID=”12″ parentID=”5″ recordID=”61″ ref=”site_review” title=”Site Review”/>
<node icon=”menu.png” id=”11″ objectID=”5″ parentID=”4″ recordID=”8″ ref=”topnav” title=”Top Nav 2″/>
<node icon=”" id=”12″ objectID=”9″ parentID=”0″ recordID=”33″ ref=”users” title=”Users”/>
</tree>

Using XSL you can build a hierarchical tree from this data:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=”http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform“
version=”1.0″> <xsl:template match="tree">  

<!-- Starts the tree -->
  <ol>   

<xsl:apply-templates/>  

</ol> 

</xsl:template> 

<!-- Selects root nodes -->
 <xsl:template match=”//node[@parentID=0]“>   <xsl:call-template name="process-branch">
   <xsl:with-param name=”id”><xsl:value-of select=”@id”/></xsl:with-param>
   <xsl:with-param name=”parentID”><xsl:value-of
select=”@parentID”/></xsl:with-param>
  </xsl:call-template> </xsl:template> <!-- Recursive function -->
 <xsl:template name=”process-branch”>
  <xsl:param name=”id”/>
  <xsl:param name=”parentID”/>  <xsl:choose>

   <!– If element has no sub-nodes –>
   <xsl:when test=”count(//node[@parentID=current()/@id])=0″>

    <!– Writes the node –>
    <li>
     <a href=”" mce_href=”"><xsl:value-of select=”@title” /></a>
    </li>

      </xsl:when>

   <!– If element has sub-nodes–>
      <xsl:otherwise>

    <!– Starts a node with children element –>
    
    <li>
    <a href=”" mce_href=”"><xsl:value-of select=”@title” /></a>
    <ol>
    
        

     <!– For every sub-nodes of current node –>
     <xsl:for-each select=”//node[@parentID=current()/@id]“>

      <!– Recurse the branch processing –>
      <xsl:call-template name=”process-branch”>
       <xsl:with-param name=”id”><xsl:value-of
select=”@id”/></xsl:with-param>
       <xsl:with-param name=”parentID”><xsl:value-of
select=”@parentID”/></xsl:with-param>
      </xsl:call-template>

     </xsl:for-each>
     
    </ol>
    </li>
      </xsl:otherwise>

  </xsl:choose>

 </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Obviously you can replace the html with whatever elements you wish, even build hierarchical XML.

You then use the (rather handy) coldfusion function

#XMLTransform(XMLParse(xmldata), xslSheet)#

And there you have it, no long loops with recurring queries!

About 4 months ago we purchased a license for a coldfusion e-commerce software package, but only now am I finding functionality missing that I assumed would be there. For example the system allows you to enter discounts, but it doesn’t cater for “buy x get x free” and today a customer wanted to know how many customers they had. I went to reporting and couldnt find a report for this simple piece of information. I had to do a search on the customers and read how many results were returned. Not ideal.

I think it’s very hard to think about all the functionality you require when you are buying an e-commerce solution. It’s also hard to find something that does everything you want but doesn’t cost too much per-license. Most people who are looking to start a shop don’t often have a lot to spend and they see advertisements like “E-commerce solution £9.99 a month” which makes them question why they have to pay such a hefty price tag for your solution. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts and If you have any recommendations for any other software packages.

I don’t know if any of you have used Blog CFC but it’s a great little app. I have been implementing it into our CMS. I have found a few problems with it though, for example if you want the admin completely seperate in a different folder structure it’s very hard to get the links to work.
I also didnt really like the calendar aspect of the tool so I have written my own “pod” for just showing the months and years with posts.

in the blog.cfc i have written the following function:

<cffunction name="getActiveMonths" returnType="query" output="false" hint="Returns a query of months and years with Entries.">
  <cfargument name=”year” type=”numeric” required=”false”>
  
 <cfset var months = “”>
<cfset var posted = “”>     <cfif instance.blogDBType is "MSSQL">
   <cfset posted = “dateAdd(hh, #instance.offset#, tblblogentries.posted)”>
  <cfelseif instance.blogDBType is “MSACCESS”>
   <cfset posted = “dateAdd(’h', #instance.offset#, tblblogentries.posted)”>
  <cfelseif instance.blogDBType is “MYSQL”>
   <cfset posted = “date_add(posted, interval #instance.offset# hour)”>
  <cfelseif instance.blogDBType is “ORACLE”>
   <cfset posted = “tblblogentries.posted + (#instance.offset#/24)”>
  </cfif>    
  
  <cfquery datasource=”#instance.dsn#” name=”months” username=”#instance.username#” password=”#instance.password#”>
   select distinct
    <cfif instance.blogDBType is “MSSQL”>
     datepart(mm, #preserveSingleQuotes(posted)#)
    <cfelseif instance.blogDBType is “MYSQL”>
     extract(month from #preserveSingleQuotes(posted)#)
    <cfelseif instance.blogDBType is “MSACCESS”>
     datepart(’m', #preserveSingleQuotes(posted)#)
    <cfelseif instance.blogDBType is “ORACLE”>
     to_char(#preserveSingleQuotes(posted)#, ‘mm’) 
    </cfif> as posted_month,
    <cfif instance.blogDBType is “MSSQL”>
     datepart(yyyy, #preserveSingleQuotes(posted)#)
    <cfelseif instance.blogDBType is “MYSQL”>
     extract(year from #preserveSingleQuotes(posted)#)
    <cfelseif instance.blogDBType is “MSACCESS”>
     datepart(’y', #preserveSingleQuotes(posted)#)
    <cfelseif instance.blogDBType is “ORACLE”>
     to_char(#preserveSingleQuotes(posted)#, ‘yyyy’) 
    </cfif> as posted_year
   from tblblogentries
   where
    
    blog = <cfqueryparam value=”#instance.name#” cfsqltype=”CF_SQL_VARCHAR” maxlength=”50″>
    and #preserveSingleQuotes(posted)# < <cfqueryparam cfsqltype=”cf_sql_timestamp” value=”#blogNow()#”>
    and released = 1
    ORDER BY posted DESC
  </cfquery> <cfreturn months>

 </cffunction>


Then in the front end in the calendar.cfm pod I commented out the calendar and put in the following code:

<cfscript>
monthsQuery=application.blog.getActiveMonths();
</cfscript>
<ol>
<cfoutput query=”monthsQuery”>
<li><a href=”#application.rooturl##posted_year#/#posted_month#” mce_href=”#application.rooturl##posted_year#/#posted_month#”>#monthAsString(posted_month)# #posted_year#</a></li>
</cfoutput>
</ol>

It seems to work a treat!

An independant source has released a report on the security of the new version of Coldfusion, with the conclusion being “ColdFusion 8 exhibits a high degree of resilience to application layer attacks with no compromise on functionality provisioned by the new features.”

There is also mention of the new Authentication and Authorization model ( you can now have more than one login for the coldfusion administration)  and that it has raised the security of the overall product.

Here is the report http://www.dcooper.org/ColdFusion_8_Product_Security_Brief.pdf

Recently I’ve started using a more object-orientated way of programming but have found it is really starting to hurt my head. The main problems I have found seem to be with coldfusion itself. I am currently developing in CF7 and it doesn’t support multiple inheritance, it also doesnt have interfaces, as far as I understand, interfaces allow you to share methods across classes (components). I have found many articles written by Hal Helms on this subject which have helped but i’m still unsure that I am understanding the whole thing correctly.

Here is some code to show you what I have done so far…

contactObj=createObject("component","components.contact").init();
titleObj=createObject(”component”,”components.contact.title”).init(); titleObj.setTitleID( form.titleID )
contactObj.setTitle( titleObj );
contactObj.setFirstName( form.firstName );
contactObj.setLastName( form.lastName );
contactObj.setEmail( form.email );
contactObj.setUsername( form.username );
contactObj.setPassword( form.password );
contactObj.setContactID( form.contactID );

As you can see I have a setTitle() Method and this creates an object within contact of type “title”. The set title method looks like this:

<cffunction name="setTitle" access="public" returntype="void" output="false" hint="I set the title property">
<cfargument name=”title” type=”components.contact.title” required=”yes” hint=”title value” />
<cfset variables.title = arguments.title />
</cffunction>

The whole thing seems to work fine, but i’m still unsure i’m actually doing things correctly, sometimes you can go down a path and find out later that you should of been doing it a different way and it will cause you a headache further down the line.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on Aggregation using components and I’d also like to know if i’m doing it correctly.

Hi there WordPressers!

I’m Matt and I work for a web agency called coastdigital. I’ve decided to try out this blogging malarky and hopefully get some responses from the public about my methods of programming and to discuss what is the best way of doing things!

 My main role in the company is developing our content management system called Refresh.