Off the Main Road

I first heard about Transfer when Sean Corfield presented Model-Glue and Reactor to my local CFUG (Portland CFUG at the time, now it's the Portland Adobe Developer User Group). He mentioned a promising new project called "Transfer" that he was just looking into. (Having a procedural background, I asked some pretty naive OOP questions in the Q&A) Since then, I've followed Transfer blog posts and webcasts, but I've just recently had reason to dig into it.

Constructing an XML Object map doesn't seem worth the effort involved until I experienced the pain of building all those objects manually for a sizable project. For the small projects I worked on prior to that (4 tables max), Coldfusion's native proceedural methods with the occasional service cfc was a much faster route. (Both in building and final performance). However, once I started working on much larger projects I started to understand why tools like Transfer are useful.

I appreciate that Mark Mandel kept the XML Object Map from being verbose, but here's a question: Why do all of these Coldfusion OOP tools use XML for configuration? I imagine it's easy to parse, and easy to read if you know what the valid format is SUPPOSED to be, and Eclipse allows for helper plugins.... yet, it's a stumbling block for many CF programmers. Why is that?

• Coldfusion does not report XML parcing problems well.
• XML can be case sensitive unlike CF.
• Requires a separate config file; cannot modify configuration programatically.
• The elements involved are already in either SQL or CF, why map it out again in XML?

I would think there would be a Coldfusion way of initilizing these frameworks. Either a config CFC (with built in error checking) or a struct. Yet, XML seems to be preferred.

In the case of ORMs, it would be really cool if a SQL script could be parced by a config CFC to build out the initial config which could then be modified as needed. (renaming columns, modifying relationships, etc.)

But since all of these frameworks were created by programmers much more experienced than I, I suspect these were considered but XML was chosen despite it's downsides. Frankly, it's not hard to manage once you get used to the specific syntax, I'm just thinking out loud.

Well my attempt to test BlogCFC has been a failure so far. The installation was easy enough, and the admin site works well, but the public site has errors without a clear solution:

ErrorCode: 1047 - Communication link failure: Unknown command
Error Executing Database Query.
Communication link failure: Unknown command
The error occurred in \org\camden\blog\blog.cfc: line 1341

Reading through the forums, some say it could be my hosting company HostMySite.com, so I'll have to check in with their tech support.

Initial thoughts (from the parts that did work):

• Undecided: The admin is very plain, although for a guy like me that types in HTML, it seems fairly useful and doesn't get in my way. I usually look for the "HTML" button on rich text editors anyway - probably better for advanced users. Mango's admin seems super polished in comparison - better for non-techie users.
  
• Good: I like how it handles "categories/tags" better than Mango Blog. Simple, but EASY!
  
• Good: There is documentation on how to install multiple instances of the blog.
• Undecided: The default template is super plain, but usable. Since most of us customize our template anyway, it's probably a moot point.
• Untested: Unfortunately, I had high hopes for BlogCFC's code formatting, but I was unable to test it completely because of my database error.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single programmer in possession of a web development skills, must be in want of a blog...¹

Alternately:

Call me Daniel²

This is a blog for occasional thoughts on Coldfusion programming by a part-time, Portland area programmer. I enjoy following the existing Coldfusion Blogs, but we all need a place for longer comments and off topic posts.

I'm also evaluating Blog applications, so this should be a good test. I've already looked into the following:

• Blogger (Google Hosted)
• Wordpress
• Mango Blog (This site)

Hopefully I'll get a chance to look at Blog.cfc as well.

Quick thoughts on Mango Blog:

• Good: Simple, straight forward installation. I was up and running very quickly!
  
• Good: Simple, clean, user-friendly, interface.
• Good: Nice set of useful plugins that are REALLY EASY to configure.
• Undecided: Really basic rich text editor - probably a good thing. Good writing doesn't need too many bells and whistles.
• Undecided: Caching seems a little bit agressive. Many changes, even blog post updates, seem to require a visit to the Cache page.
  
• Undecided: The excerpt feature is useful, but seems unnecessarily redundant in implementation. I prefer Wordpress' use of a specific HTML comment to add a page break.
  
• Bad: Adding new categories cannot be done on the fly. (Like BlogCFC for an example).
• Bad: It doesn't like to display Coldfusion code in a posting.
  • It strips Coldfusion tags in the HTML window
  • It escapes Coldfusion tags in the rich text window, but there is no Code format option so it applies HTML formatting which looks bad.
  • It's possible to break the escaping so that I end up with ugly gibberish:
    <cfscript>
  • Update: Mango Blog and Remote Synthesis each have work arounds to this behavior to make adjustments tolerable.
    

I'm looking forward to digging into the templating features and custom pages

¹ Blatant rip off of Jane Austen's, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
² and again for Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)
From 100 best first lines from novels