Andrew Schwabe's Blog - ColdFusion

Building Facebook apps with CFML

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:08:00 -0400

Packt Publishing put up an article I wrote about getting started with Facebook application development using CFML. This was based on a presentation I did at NCDevCon last month. Take a look, let me know if it helped ya... http://www.packtpub.com/article/facebook-application-development-with-coldfusion-railo I'm considering writing another article about using the new Facebook Social Plugins and the new Graph API since it is a bit different from the old RESTful API that most developers have been using.

NCDevCon Facebook and CF Presentation Files

Sun, 23 May 2010 10:09:00 -0400

For those attending my talk today on building Facebook applications, here is the Powerpoint file and code examples. Enjoy! Facebook_CF_Presentation.zip (2.2 MB .zip File)

I've been invited to speak at NCDevCon 2010!

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 01:10:00 -0400

Following the success of the CFinNC conference last October, the Triangle Area ColdFusion User Group (TACFUG) is proud to announce NCDevCon 2010. This conference is planned for May 22-23, 2010 and will be held at the College of Textiles on the campus of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. Did we mention that the cost for this conference is the same as last year? That's right. It's free! I will be presenting on building Facebook applications with ColdFusion, and going "beyond the basics" including some of Facebook's new APIs for 2010. Check it out online at http://ncdevcon.com/

Flash Builder 4 (aka Flex 4 aka "Gumbo") is released!

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:27:00 -0400

Lots of aka's (i know). Flex 4 SDK (open source) has been out for a while, or at least as a public beta. Now that Flash Builder 4 (the new IDE that replaces Flex Builder 3 -- note the product naming difference), there is a lot to be excited about. A new skinning system that brings in the best of declarative graphics and fixes quirks with scale 9 and manual skinning of components. Supposedly everything is a lot more efficient and light weight. Flex 3 was pretty to look at, but a bit memory intensive. I don't have specifics on that yet, but all improvements are welcome to make it scalable for larger apps. It is also designed for backward compatibility, so hopefully all our Flex3 apps compile nicely. Looks like a great upgrade! If you are into ColdFusion/Railo as well, be sure to check out their bundle of Flash Builder 4 and ColdFusion Builder at a good price. Here are some details: http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/overview/

My new articles on packt publishing

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:44:00 -0400

Packt Publishing asked me to write a bit about Railo. It took me forever due to being busy (as always), but here they are! Enjoy and share the love. Introduction to Railo Open-Source CFML Engine:
http://www.packtpub.com/article/introduction-to-railo-open-source Tutorial: Rendering web pages as PDF using Railo
http://www.packtpub.com/article/rendering-web-pages-pdf-using-railo-open-source

Multi-web configuration for Railo 3.1 and BlazeDS

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:54:00 -0400

Seems like lots of people are having a problem with Railo configured for multiple websites on a single host, but also need to support AMF via BlazeDS. The common symptom is when you restart railo services, sometimes you will get a big error instead of your web page that says something like:


MessageBroker failed to start: flex.messaging.config.ConfigurationException: MessageBroker already defined from MessageBrokerServlet with init parameter messageBrokerId = '__default__'

Here is what I found to work for me: 1. Read this post by Roland Ringgenberg at the railo google group and follow the directions to install the java jar and edit the flex/services-config.xml file:


    
        
        
                
		
        	
            	yourcustomBroker

2. For me, railo runs on port 8600 internally, and I have IIS configured to serve up content. BlazeDS however doesn't get mapped through IIS, so you need to talk on the native port (again, for MY configuration, YMMV). So to access it, i needed to open TCP port 8600 through the firewall. 3. Once i could talk to the server over port 8600, I changed my flex app that uses remoting to point to http://myserver:8600/flashservices/gateway/ and eveyrthing worked great! One other interesting observation... When using Flash remoting with CF7/8/9, you can talk to your CFCs and invoke methods that are set to "public." With BlazeDS, your methods need to be marked as "remote" to be accessible. Minor syntax difference, but a huge impact on security. make sure you secure your CFCs!

CF United 09 Presentation Files - Google App Engine and Flex

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:42:00 -0400

Ok folks, here are my preso files for my CF United 2009 talk on Google App Engine and Flex. Is this the final version? Sure. Until I change it. I shall resist doing that... Here is the powerpoint presentation download: 294_Andrew_Schwabe_Google_App_Engine_Flex.ppt Here is the full download (warning, this is big!) Contains all 4 google app engine java projects, all 4 flex projects and the powerpoint file. The download is big because of all the jar files. I will try to have a USB key with me so if you want a super fun time instant copy instead of downloading it, I should be able to do that. Full download (94MB, zipped): CFun09_GAE_Files.zip For those of you web surfers interested -- demo 4 project includes a fix for allowing Flex app using AMF to retrieve Google Account information (using ajax and a custom auto servlet) so your Flex apps can determine if you are logged in, and get your user identifier if you are logged in.

CF United Update: Google App Engine + Flex

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:02:00 -0400

My talk at CFUnited has changed a bit... Since the topic was chosen a while back, Google has released a Java developer environment and eclipse plugin for Google App Engine (GAE). Since Java is a whole lot closer to CFML than python is, I've updated all my code and presentation to focus on the Java application architecture, and how to connect it to Flex. I've even got some tidbits on how to get CFML running on Google App Engine ! Be sure to come on out and learn about the exciting new "super scalable" web application system running on Google's free hosting infrastructure.

FusionDox 2009 is released!

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:53:00 -0400

After many months of hard work, we have released the 2009 edition of FusionDox. Lots of fun things in this edition, including PDF previews of documents, a document conversion API so you can write your own code to convert documents, split/merge PDFs and more. New Flex/AIR based FusionDox client (aka the FusionDox Authoring System) for live editing MS Office/OpenOffice documents directly through your browser, and it works for Macintosh and Linux computers too! There is some preliminary info online, with more to come. http://www.fusiondox.com/

Converting a query to Array ... and Back again, for Flex sake...

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:36:00 -0400

There have been a few blog posts on how to convert a query into an array of structures. Here is Ben Nadel's, Here is Carlos Gallupa's, and there are more out there. Now that you are a master at converting query to array-of-struct, how about converting it back to a query? No, not just for kicks, but perhaps for that crazy array you built, that you now want to pull via CFC into a Flex app ? (this is the reason I bothered, b/c u know that CF queries get auto-translated into ArrayCollections in Flex, don't you ??) [More]

CF United Speaker Interview

Tue, 12 May 2009 16:26:00 -0400

1. Have you spoken at CFUnited in the past? What would you tell someone who hasn't been to CFUnited before? Yup. I've been speaking at CF United events for the last 4-5 years or so. Lost count. CFUN is cool because you get to hang out with all the movers and shakers in the industry. 2. Why should people attend your session(s)? Why not? I'll be showing an example of using Flex to talk to Google App Engine (GAE), so its just pretty darn cool. 3. Do you have any projects in the works that you will be revealing at CFUnited? I'm hoping to have a brand new product ready to demo called FusionDox Access, which is a way cool easy way to share large files with people, and easily integrates into your web projects. All build in Flex of course :) 4. Besides your topic, what other sessions are you looking forward to? Flexy goodness, especially looking forward to Flex 4 graphics enhancements. 5. What are some of the hot topics you'd like to see at RoundTable discussions? How to beat down the industry's impression that ColdFusion is dying. 6. Where can people find you at CFUnited? (At the bar, networking, working, in your room, etc.) Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes. Also email me. aschwabe(at)gmail(dot)com. 7. What's the latest news with you? Has anything changed since last CFUnited? New version of FusionDox is coming out. See http://www.fusiondox.com/blog/ 8. What is unique about CFUnited? Everything is approachable at CFUN. Talk to whoever, everybody is sincere about wanting to transfer knowledge so that everybody grows. 9. When you are not working what do you like to do in your free time? Playing guitar, riding my motorcycle (bmw k100), going to the shooting range with the family, travel, eat, drink, being merry. 10. Feel free to make up your own question and then answer it. Q: Why? A: Because.

Presentation Files from CFUnited Express New York on April 20 2009

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:31:00 -0400

Here are the presentation files I used during my talk in NYC yesterday. The unexpected "intermission" has been omitted from the Powerpoint file :) http://www.schwabe.net/2009%20Charting_with_CF_Flex.zip Thanks again to Liz, Nafisa, and the others from CF United, the speakers and PACE University for making this a great event! Looking forward to seeing you all in August at CF United!

I have been invited to speak at CF United Express in NYC on 4/20/09

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:50:00 -0400

Thanks to Liz Frederick and the CF United team for their invitation! I will be presenting on "Charting with ColdFusion and Flex" and will go through step by step on how to build charts using Flex's charting package. In addition, we will go over how to build a reusable chart project where you can use the Flex/Ajax bridge to push chart data into your Flex app using Javascript/JSON/etc. Should be a good time, come on out! The details are online here: http://express.cfunited.com/go/newyork/2009/ Don't forget that I will also be speaking at CFUnited August 12-15 2009 in Leesburg, VA about integrating Flex with Google App Engine (GAE). Details are at www.cfunited.com.

I will be speaking at CF United 2009

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:19:00 -0400

I have been invited to speak at CFUnited 2009 in Leesburg, VA, August 12-15 2009. If you haven't attended CF United before, be sure to sign up, as it is a fantastic program, and a great place to network with some of the most skilled developers in the world. This will be the 5th CFUnited event that I have spoken at, and the second time I will be presenting on a Flex topic. This year I will be going through the architecture of building a Google App Engine (GAE) app, powered by Flex. This allows you to create an application hosted by Google's application architecture, and using a Flex application as the user interface. It's a mashup of multiple technologies, and should be a lot of fun. Be sure to stop by!

CF United 2009 - Vote for the tracks you want to see!

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:01:00 -0400

From now until Dec 20th, you can vote for which topics you want to see at CF United. I have two topics submitted for Flex development (google maps/craigslist mashup and google app engine) and one track for open source (TaskCFC). (hint! hint!) Give it a go, and I look forward to seeing you there! http://cfunited.com/blog/index.cfm/2008/12/4/CFUnited-Topic-Survey--VOTE-NOW