This is odd and undoubtedly just another case of my embarrassingly limited capacity for problem solving causing issues BUT - We have an API that we've been using since October of 2012. Changes are VERY few and far between (as in maybe, two or three tweaks total).
About 3 months ago is APPEARS as though this.datasource in application.cfc stopped being recognized. The server was reporting this.datasource = ''.
Does anyone have any experience with this or insight into the circumstances under which this could happen? I'm more than happy to wear the dunce hat on this one but it has nme a bit emotionally bedraggled and I just 'gotta know'...my ninja theory isn't getting much traction in the office.
I've had similar issues before. To fix it I moved <cfset this.datasource = "whatever" /> to the OnApplicationStart function in application.cfc.
After you do so, remember to reinit the application.
Strictly speaking, the this scope in Application.cfc refers to fields that are specific to the application file itself. For example, sessionTimeout, applicationTimeout, loginStorage and so on. You may loosely interpret them as the application's meta data. Fields defined with this are therefore not meant to be accessed elsewhere in the application.
Datasource is the kind of property that refers to the application. You should therefore define it in onApplicationStart as:
application.datasource
Related
I've been using ColdFusion 9 along with the ColdFusion on Wheels Framework for about 6 months now. I still consider myself a beginner, but I am comfortable doing most things I need to.
I recently started writing full CF Script components, and I'm loving the cleanliness of the syntax. I am disappointed to lose some of the simplicity afforded by CFQuery, CFLoop, and so on... but I can live without this for now.
Recently, a few people have mentioned that Railo has better CFScript support. I'm considering switching for that reason.
What things should I keep in mind, and how do the two platforms stack against one another in terms of functionality and ease of use?
Here are the things you need to look for as far as differences between Railo and ColdFusion. This page lists all of the things that Adobe CF has that Railo doesn't, and vice versa:
http://www.getrailo.org/index.cfm/documentation/compatibility/cfml-compatibility/
Mel,
well the easiest way to try it out is to create a mapping called "/" that points to "/" and then compile this mapping from the admin. That should give you a good result on how compatible your code is in terms of compilation.
And a good thing to consider. If you are really happy with CF9, stick with it. You never change a winning team. I am of course proud of Railo and convinced it is the best CFML engine. But I am biased and you should only consider a switch if it is really necessary for different reasons. Costs, performance, memory footprint. But again, if your system runs very well on CF9, just save the money and do something else with it.
Gert Franz
Railo Technologies GmbH
Be careful making decisions based on anecdotes! ColdFusion 9.0.1 brought even more support for cfscript:
Support for the following:
for-in construct (for arrays) in CFScript
var declaration within for loop in CFScript
Function argument metadata
Function equivalents for cfile action="upload" (FileUpload) and cffile action="uploadall" (FileUploadAll)
The following script functions have been implemented as CFCs:
dbinfo
imap
pop
ldap
feed
From:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/847/cpsid_84725.html
If you are doing much work with PDF generation (CFdocument) or charting (cfchart), you'll want to try these out in Railo and see how they compare to what you are currently getting with Adobe CF. When I tested charting in Railo I found the Adobe CF engine to produce much nicer looking graphs. I think the PDF engine is better in Adobe CF also.
I think I just realized how restrictive my web host is when they wouldn't let me use cfdump. This actually kind of angers me, cause really, what harm is dump going to do? Anyway my question is has anyone written a cfdump alternative that will kick out complex types of data or can link me to a site with a code example? Can't really used cfc's or udfs either cause guess what, they're blocked too. Anyway looking for something simple that I can just paste in my cfml and I will be happy. It's sad that I used to be able to do this, but have forgotten a lot of that skillset since I moved into Flex and AS.
oh and they're using cf7, so no cf8 or 9 tricks ;-)
Thanks in advance.
You probably don't want to hear "Change to another hosting company" but if they're that restrictive, you're really limited in what you can do. I've actually never heard of a host that blocks cfdump although I know of a few that still, stupidly, block createObject().
Depending on exactly what they've blocked, you may be able to copy WEB-INF/cftags/dump.cfm from your local ColdFusion installation to a folder inside your application and then invoke it with cfmodule:
<cfmodule template="dump.cfm" var="#something#"/>
#Sean Corfield is right -- switch hosts.
In the meantime, there was a custom tag called "cf_dump" from the era of CF4. I have no idea if it will work on 7, but you could always try to get it working.
cf_dump at Adobe
In case anyone else comes across this old thread as I have just done, do not blindly following to the advice of "change your host", as this is very poor advice. make the effort to speak with your host before jumping to conclusions.
The host have likely not blocked cfdump they have blocked Java, which is a good thing as this means they take security seriously. CFdump uses java, thus why it does not work.
Allowing Java in CF is a very serious security issue as it completely bypasses all security sandboxes and without giving too much away basically means that any other customer on the same server could hack your site and steal your data as well as hacking/crashing ColdFusion itself.
Unfortunately blocking java does disable quite a lot of useful features and breaks most frameworks, so it is a toss up between functionality or security, so bear this in mind before you decide to go and find a host that enables everything and has no security.
At the end of the day if you want access to all of ColdFusion's functionality then you need your own server or VPS.
I've actually been looking for this for some time and today I actually stumbled across the solution. Unfortunately, I didn't come up with this. Thanks and credit goes to John Whish.
http://www.aliaspooryorik.com/blog/index.cfm/e/posts.details/post/using-onerror-method-of-application-cfc-47
Basically he's figured out most of the CFDump data can be called in the Application.cfc onError function.
I've been adding this to my pages:
pagewithinclude.cfm
<cfinclude template = "_pagename.cfm">
_pagename.cfm
<cfif Not IsDefined("variables.included_pagename")>
<cfparam name = "variables.included_pagename" default = "1">
rest of page
</cfif>
Is there a better way in CF? Something similar to PHP's include_once?
Nope, what you've done is probably the best way to do it. Although I'd use a Request variable instead.
This question was asked in 2010 (and many answers were then or 2011). Since then, in 2012, CF10 added the optional runOnce attribute for CFINCLUDE (or its script equivalent). Marques had added a mention of that attribute in a comment on the original question, in 2016, but it could be missed as an "answer".
I was helping someone who was seeking a solution to this problem, and I found this discussion, but noticed its lack of a clear answer. (And while there may be technicalities that distinguish CF's runonce from PHP's include_once, they are close enough in concept that it seems worth pointing out, even if it may not be the exact solution to the OP's question--if they even cared, now 10 years later.)
Let me first say I am aware of this faq for Mach-II, which discusses using application specific mappings as a third option when:
locating the framework in the server root is not possible and
creating a server wide mapping to the Mach-II framework directory is impossible
Using application specific mappings would also work for other ColdFusion frameworks with similar requirements (ColdSpring). Here is my issue however: my (I should say "their") production servers are all running ColdFusion MX7, and application specific mappings were introduced in ColdFusion 8. I most likely will be unable to do option 1 or 2 because they involve creating server wide changes that could conflict with other applications (I don't have a final word on this but I am preparing for that to be the case).
That said, is there anybody out there who was in similar bind and has done an option 4, in any ColdFusion version, or with any similar framework? The only option 4 I can think of is modifying the entire framework to change this hardcoded path, and even if that worked it would be time consuming and risky. I'm fairly sure that if there was a simple modification or other simple solution it would already be included in the framework (maybe it's included in version 1.8 of Mach-II and I don't know about it yet).
Any thoughts on solving this problem or even unorthodox setups with libraries that have specific path requirements would be appreciated. Any thoughts from Team Mach-II would especially appreciated...we're on the same team here Matt! ;-)
EDIT
Apparently, the ColdBox framework includes a refactor.xml ANT task which includes a target that refactors the ColdBox code to use a different absolute path as a base along with several other useful refactoring targets. So problem solved for ColdBox users.
Looking at the build.xml for Mach-II (1.6 and 1.8) I don't see any target in there that would allow me to refactor the code. I thought about creating a feature request ticket for such a task for Mach-II but frankly I don't think creating such an ANT task is a big priority for the MachII team since the need really only relates to either
a) users of ColdFusion versions below 8
b) someone who wants to use multiple Mach-II versions in the same application, a use I doubt they want to support
The ColdSpring code I have doesn't come with any ANT tasks at all, although I do have unit tests, and I bet if I poked around the SVN I'd find a few build scripts.
Using Ant tasks to refactor and retest the code, or the simpler (and sort of cop out) solution of creating a separate ColdFusion instance for the application are the best answers I've been able to come up with. I don't need this application to exist in the shared scope of other applications, so my first solution is going to be to try and get a dedicated CF instance for this application.
I'm also going to look at the ColdBox refactor.xml ANT task however and see if I can modify it to work generically to recognize and refactor CFC references with modified absolute paths. If I complete this task I'll be sure to post the code somewhere and edit create an answer to link to it. If anybody else wants to take a crack at that or help me out with it feel free.
Until then I'll leave this question open and see if someone comes up with a better solution.
Fusebox is not so strict, I think.
In XML mode (maybe I call this not 100% correcly, just mean using the Application.cfm) it's just proper include in index.cfm, something like:
<cfinclude template="fusebox5/fusebox5.cfm" />
In non-XML mode it will need proper extending in the root Application.cfc:
<cfcomponent extends="path.to.fusebox5.Application" output="false">
All you need is to know the path.
Perhaps you could create a symbolic link and let the operating system resolve the issue for you?
I've been playing with FW/1 lately, and while it may look like you need to add a mapping and extend org.corfield.framework, you can actually move the framework.cfc file into your web root and just extend="framework". It's dead simple, and gets you straight into a great framework with no mess and very little overhead.
It should be as simple as dropping the 'MachII' folder at the root of your domain (i.e. example.com/MachII). No mappings are required to use Mach-II if you just deploy at the root of the domain of your website.
Also:
Please file a ticket for the ANT task you mentioned in your question. Team Mach-II would love to have this issue logged:
Enter a new ticket on the Mach-II Trac
If you want to tackle an ANT task for us, we can get stuff like this incorporated into the builds faster than waiting to for a Team member to work on the ticket. Code submissions from the community are welcome and appreciated.
We don't keep an eye on Stack Overflow very often so we invite you to join our official community group at called "Mach-II for ColdFusion" at Google Groups. The Google Group is the best place to ask questions or comments like this if you want feedback from the Team.
Google does not really deliver much content (or my query sucks). Has anyone made the switch and can share the experience?
We found that when we upgraded to CF 8:
Carraige returns are stripped in plain text emails. We found we had to be explicit about line feed characters by creating a var like so <cfset CRLF = "#Chr(13)##Chr(10)#"> and inserting it in the plain text email where we needed the line feed. We eventually went to HTML emails.
Third party jar files caused problems due to the order in which jar files are loaded. Certain jar files must appear first in the java classpath as defined in cfroot/runtime/bin/jvm.config. This was a messy workaround and we have discontinued using that jar.
Also make sure to patch immediately to 8.0.1. We had a performance nightmare becuase of this issue.
Best of luck!
I haven't had any CFMX 6.1 apps to switch across, but Railo is definitely my CFML engine of choice.
Compatibility-wise, there is very unlikely to be any significant issues migrating from CFMX 6.1, and you can easily test this with the Express version - no installation required!
Railo can be stricter about certain aspects of CFML, so you might get a few errors if you exploit bugs/weaknesses with CF, but nothing really to worry about.
And, if you do get stuck on anything, the Railo mailing list is active with plenty of friendly helpful people who can help to get you going again.
We made the switch about a year ago and if you are talking about only on the code side, then the change from cf6 to cf8 shouldn't require any changes as long as your setup remains the same. One change is the way that CF handles verity collections, so if you make use of cfsearch then it might be something you look into. There are a number of improvements from cf6 that you should look to implement. The few that we have found especially helpful are cfdocument, cfimage, cfpdf, and cffeed. Here is a good link with other key points... http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/upgrade/
If you are upgrading from CFMX 6.1 to Railo 3.1 almost no problems should occur. There are some things that we do not support (like CFREPORT or C++ CFX tags). Besides that it should be very easy to migrate existing CFMX 6.1 code over to Railo. By default Railo is configured to be as compatible as possible with CFMX.
There are some other things you might watch out for:
If you create a struct like this in CF: <cfset a["image.x"]> you will be able to call that variable by using the "." notation, although it's misleading. So in CF you could do <cfoutput>#a.image.x#</cfoutput> whereas in Railo you would have to write: <cfoutput>#a["image.x"]#</cfoutput>
Inside functions creating variables in the local scope that are named like scopes will work in CFMX but not in Railo. So this: <cfset var url = "whatever"> will work in CF but not in Railo.
In Railo you cannot use the application scope or the session scope before it was initialized with cfapplication. Well in CF you couldn't either but there CF will create a local variable in the variables scope called "application" or "session". This sometimes leads to confusion.
Besides these things, it should go flawlessly. If you have of course any problems, just contact our Railo Google group or us directly at www.getrailo.com
Gert Franz
Railo Professional Open Source
I'm not aware of any depreciated tags or functions from CF6.1 to CF8. CF8 has been optimized for performance so you will most likely see an improvement in your application depending on what was used.
I successfully upgraded a large application from CF4.5 to CF8 with no problems. If the application consists of pretty straight forward use of ColdFusion tags and functions, you shouldn't have much problem.
However, since the developer version is free to use, you should really setup a test environment and determine the answer to this question yourself by testing your application. All datasources, custom tags, etc will have to be migrated and tested. If any CF6.1 applications used any of the lower level java api available in some things, you may need to test that thoroughly to make sure the underlying implementation of the coldfusion hasn't changed and fix what's necessary.
As for Railo3.1, there may be some tags or functions not implemented yet. You will again need to setup a test environment and determine this yourself. Somewhere on the Railo site there should be a list of compatibilities between the difference versions of CF and Railo.