At last nights Orange County ColdFusion Users Group meeting (occfug.org) I presented on the topic of integrating the Google Maps API into a ColdFusion application. I made a custom tag for the presentation that generates a Google API powered map, and I am posting it here for all the people that wanted access to the source code.

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Michael Asked:

As a matter of fact, the Ext.BasicDialog object that powers the CFWindow tag does have a "collapsible" configuration option. However, Adobe did not add that as an attribute in the CF8 implementation of CFWindow. They currently have it hard-coded so that all CFWindow generated dialogs are set to "collapsible:false". Hopefully they will add a collapsible attribute to the CFWindow tag in some future release, but until then, adding the Minimize/Maximize button onto the CFWindow tool bar is a fairly painless job with the snippet of JavaScript that you can find below.

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I was working on a project the other day that was using CFGrid to manage some data and there was a button on each row to perform a certain action. However, we didn't want the background color of a row to change when the user clicks on a row or on the button. I created this little javascript that adds a listener to the "beforerowselect" event in the underlying Ext.grid's Row Selection Model and cancels any row selections, preventing the row from being highlighted.

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The CFWindow tag is built using the Ext.BasicDialog object. This object has several public events that you can add listeners to. You can use the Ext.BasicDialog objects on() function to add listeners to these events that will fire a specific function when the specified event occurs. You can program the listener functions to react as necessary to the various events. Here is a list of the events that you can set up listeners for:

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In a previous post I created a CFC to save simple variables into the session scope. In that CFC I had set up two functions, "SetSessionVar" and "GetSessionVar". However I ended up only needing the "SetSessionVar" function for my example so I never really tested the "GetSessionVar" function. Someone asked me today how to invoke it, and that is when I realized there were a couple little problems that I needed to fix.

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In a previous entry I demonstrated how you can use the underlying Ext framework to enhance your CFWindow. And then Matt left a comment asking if it was possible to dynamically resize the CFWindow. The answer is yes and it's quite easy actually. The CFWindow utilizes the Ext.BasicDialog object which has a function called setContentSize, which resizes the dialog to fit the specified content size.

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I ran accross a noteworthy question on Experts-Exchange today regarding a javascript error that occurs when you have a cflayout that navigates to a page with a cfchart tag.

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Between Ben Nadel's blog and my blog, there has been some discussion on the use of CFLock, and a lot of the comments and questions are related to what we as a community consider "Best Practices".

Most ColdFusion developers consider it "Best Practice" to always lock the application scope every time you use it in your code. A lot of this really stems from the early versions of ColdFusion, when not locking your application scope could cause memory corruption. As of CF MX memory corruption is no longer an issue but race conditions are still possible, so Adobe still recommends that you lock your application variables as a "Best Practice" to be on the safe side.

Unfortunately, many developers really don't understand CFLock, and many developers don't understand that "Best Practices" are not always black and white.

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We have an opening available for a Senior ColdFusion Developer at See's Candies (www.sees.com). If you are interested check out the job description and apply online at Monster or Dice. I'll be coming to the Orange County ColdFusion Users Group on Thursday, January 17th. As the Web Development Manager for See's, I will be the direct supervisor of the successful candidate. So if you live in the Los Angeles/Orange County area, come to the meeting and let me know you are applying.

In my first year or so of developing ColdFusion applications, I didn't really understand how to use CFLock. That caused me a lot of headaches, and I have learned to use it properly since then. In the last year or so I have had several calls and emails from people who's sites aren't performing well under load where I was able to identify their problems were due to improper use of CFLock. It is important to use CFLock to protect the integrity of data that is shared across requests in your application. However, you need to make sure you do it right. Improper use of CFLock may not cause any noticeable problem in your development environment, but once your application starts to experience a significant amount of load, poor locking implementations can cause your application to grind to a halt.

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