ColdFusion $ sign at the beginning of functions? - coldfusion

So I was reading through some ColdFusion code and I ran across a function that had the dollar sign in front of it so $myFunction. I would like to know if this is some ColdFusion convention if not then what is the purpose of using such a coding style?

We do that for three reasons in cfwheels:
You know what is a private/public method that belongs to the framework API just by looking at them.
We don't collide with the new methods names that are now part of full script support.
We don't take up a popular method names for components.

Related

Best Practice - REST API versioning: Where and How to physically store source code

My question is not about best practices for REST API URI design.
I've decided for myself, that i'm going to use the following approach:
https://theserver.com/api/v1/whatsoever
I'm much more curious about how to design the actual sourcecode in advance to easily extend the API with more versions.
Let's assume we've used a classic MVC-Framework for your favorite programming language. Our API works fine but we want to add & change functionality that is not backwards compatible. We did think about a nice URI design, but didn't think how our code should look in order to work nicely with different API versions. Crap.. What now?
Question: How should the source code for a versionable REST API look like?
Nice to have:
Not mixing up the different versions
Still best use of DRY
Don't reinvent the wheel over again
will be extended
Possible answers i can think of:
Same project - different Namespaces & Subfolders
Namespace: namespace App\Http\Controllers\v1\Users;
Folder: {root_folder}\app\Http\Controllers\v1\Users\UserLoginController.php
Different projects
Point https://theserver.com/api/v1/whatsoever to project 1
and https://theserver.com/api/v2/whatsoever to project 2
Here is my logic: - First of all we need to answer to the question "Why we need versioning?"
- If we can extend our API in way it is backward compatible, in that case we don't need versioning (All applications and services are going to use the same API and no changes are needed).
- If we can not can not provide backward compatible API in that case we need to introduce next version of our API. This will allow all applications and services to migrate smoothly to new version while to old one is working. After a time period (one year), first version can be obsoleted and stopped.
So based on the answer above I would keep API versions in separate branches in my repository. One codebase, multiple branches for each version. First branch corresponds to v1 which is stable and receives only fixes. No active development here. Second branch corresponds to v2 which has all new features.

how to handle multiple languages on website

I have a website that I am translating into different languages. I have the content translated and stored in a database. I also wrote, into the php files, different mechanisms that will display the language based on a global define I set high in the code. I am happy with all of this. My question is how do I control this global define?
I currently have a javascript toggle that sets a cookie and then reloads the current page. And every subsequent page just reads that cookie to set the global define. It works very well, however I am running into two big problems. (1) I can't just can't have a url to send to somebody that has the language in it (I could do something like domain.com/forwarder.php?lan=spanish&gotopage=page.php that would set a cookie and then forward, but that's ugly). And (2), search engines can't view the multiple languages since they don't really use cookies and javascript.
So how do I solve this? Does anybody have experience in this? Can you share your experiences?
I'm leaning towards just using the url and dropping the cookie; that seems popular among various international sites I've seen. So I'm guessing the urls would be:
domain.com/page (for english, equivalent to domain.com/en/page)
domain.com/es/page (for spanish)
domain.com/fr/page (for french)
etc ......
Is this a good idea? I will have to go through my code and prepend all my href's with the language code, which might be a pain.
So does anybody have any comments on this? Is this a good plan? Am I neglecting to realize something?
It's been a long time, but can't you use the $_SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE"] and set it automatically. And prior to writing the cookie for the first time, leave message on the screen in either english or another language in the array asking if this is the correct language, with a drop down of available languages? Once it is selected, store that as default website language.
You can use string constants in global resource files. Have only one website that calls those string constants based on the current language.

When should one use Custom Tag in CFML?

What are some common use cases for implementing CFML Custom Tag (not CFX tag)? In 3 yrs of my CF exp I've never written one. Would someone please enlighten me, under which use case / situation would one choose custom tag over cfc / udf?
Remember that custom tags were, at one time, the only method available to extend CFML (up until version 4) - UDFs came later (CF 5) and CFCs later still (CF MX). They're not as commonly used as they once were for the simple reason that there are more options.
Custom tags are basically procedural in nature in a language that, with CFCs, become more and more OO in practice. This is another reason that they're not very common.
But there's still cases where they come in handy (but are never required) - mostly for interface work. The ability to create both a start and end state can definately come in handy. A simple example could be a "wrapper" for page content the opening tag might add the HTML header and page navigation while the closing tag would add the footer and end the page.
In this way your page content could be nothing more than:
<cfmodule... >
Page Content!
</cfmodule>
Of course there are other ways to do this as well - but sometimes the classics still have value. ;^)
Look at the CFUniform project for a great example of custom tag usage. Custom Tags are great when building reusable pieces for the UI portion of an application.
I think that, for the most part, custom tags have mostly fallen by the wayside since UDFs, CFCs, and integration with Java (and to a lesser degree .NET) allowed easier and more straightforward ways to do similar things.
Looking back to when I started in CF5, I can think of several examples. A good one might be CFX)Zip, which allowed interaction with Zip files before that was available directly through CF.
The only use I can think of offhand in a more modern context would be to provide precompiled code that wasn't written in Java or .NET, such as proprietary doodads written in C. That's a pretty niche use, though.
Honestly, I imagine at this point they exist more or backwards comatibility than anything else.
Ever since CFCs came out I've stopped using custom tags simply because of the overhead. They take too long to initiate and execute. But like #Jim Davis said, they may be useful where you need to write a tag that wraps around other content.
But in a well defined solution, you can do way with them all together.

Is there a way to get email of some user in the domain without usage of COM?

I found a way to get email address of some principal using ADsGetObject. However, it requires COM.
My app doesn't use COM and I don't want to initialize it, just for the sake of doing one API call.
Have you seen any Windows API which allow to get a user email?
Active Directory programming requires COM, there is no lower level API.
Looking for alternatives: there is no great advantage to using C++ when dealing with something like email. It tends to work just as well from a scripting language, the bottleneck is not the language. Using ADSI from a scripting language (or especially .NET) is quite easy, they have runtime environments that take care of the COM plumbing.
The twenty dollar solution: add the required config instead of trying to read it back from AD.

How do I create a certain control using Windows Forms in Visual C++?

I am new to using Windows Forms in C++ (and just in general), and I am not exactly sure of the name or if it's even possible to do.
Currently I am currently working on a school project in which we must make a program for an imaginary bookstore. I am trying right now to make a sort of list that shows what the "customer" is buying. I have to make it sort by price and ISBN and any other variable that the book has.
In essence I am trying to make something like the following:
I just need to know how to get started. I can't figure out what the name of the control is or how to even get it to sort every time the user clicks on the header.
You need to write a managed C++
Please look at
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/miscctrl/mfcandwindowsforms.aspx?fid=3422&df=90&mpp=25&noise=3&sort=Position&view=Quick&select=2509859
Try to do your control same way.
The WindowsForms control you are looking for is called a DataGrid
It's not entirely clear by your question, but if you are trying to access Windows Forms from standard c++ you are out of luck. Windows Forms lives in the Managed world while c++ is unmanaged. To use windows forms you'd have to switch to C++/CLI or C#. Which if you are doing something for a school project may not be an option.
If it is an option to switch languages like that. I'd start looking at C++/CLI documentation to get a feel for how things might work for you.
If you want to know Windows UI inner workings, I recommend you to stay away from .NET for now, and learn some basic things in C++ and WinAPI. Sometimes programming .NET (or C++ / COM) requires you to invoke unmanaged components/functions and you'll be glad you understand how the low-level things work.
If your project requires .NET, go on, but don't forget to make yourself some time to learn good-old Win32 / C++ programming.
Please give some more details about the question Dalze->
is there any requirement about using managed controls? or not using them?
What's your prof want you to learn from this exercise (and is how to use stack overflow to do your homework one of them)?
There's several ways to skin this cat.
If you are supposed to or want to used managed code:
DataGrid mentioned is a good simple database tool link text
An sql database could also hold all the information and allows sorting on the various sub elements.
If you choose not to use managed code you can build a few simple objects to carry the information you need, then add some sort functions for each of the variables of interest.