CodFusion 8 adds three new attributes (characters, file, and array) to the CFloop tag that make it a little easier to loop through the contents of files and arrays. The array attribute is pretty cool, but the file/characters attributes are really exciting for me. In previous versions of ColdFusion, to loop through an array you would create the loop to basically count from 1 to the length of the array, then access each item in the array within the loop like:
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ColdFusion 8 has a new attribute in the CFLocation tag called StatusCode. In previous versions, if you wanted to do a 301 redirect, you had to use a combination of two CFHeader tags to accomplish it. As you can see by comparing the old method to the new method below, the good folks at Adobe have saved us 57 keystrokes per redirect by adding this new attribute. As a typical lazy programmer, I sincerely appreciate their efforts.
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The Ext.QuickTips functionality provides attractive and customizable tooltips for any element. Adobe didn't add any QuickTips functionality to ColdFusion 8, but the JavaScript files to support it are included with the other Ext related files in the "CFIDE/scripts" directory, so I am going to show you a couple simple ways you can utilize them to enhance your tooltips.
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ColdFusion 8 added the CFWindow tag which creates a pop-up window in the browser, which is not really a pop-up window, but rather it is a div layer that looks like a window and can be hidden and shown via JavaScript. Today, I am going to demonstrate a couple ways you can expand your use of the CFWindow tag by incorporating some JavaScript that interacts with the underlying Ext.BasicDialog object.
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A couple weeks ago I posted an entry on how to save the state of selected CFLayout generated tabs on a page. Then it was asked how that example could be expanded to save the state of multiple tab layouts on a page. I have created an example of how to do that below.
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Once of the most important things when developing a website is making sure that it is easy for people to find the information they need. Site maps and site searches are probably the most commonly implemented functionalities for making a sites content easily accessible. Whenever I build a site that is more than just a few pages, I usually create a site map that dynamically generates links to every page on the site. Then I use the script below which reads the sitemap and then crawls the whole site and indexes the content into a verity collection to power my search functionality.
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I have blogged a lot about the new AJAX related functionality that comes with CF8, and some of my examples have demonstrated how to utilize the underlying EXT and YUI JavaScript libraries that power these great features. There are 5 functions that ColdFusion provides that give you access to the JavaScript objects, and if you are proficient at JavaScript, I highly recommend you spend some time researching each of the libraries so you can be familiar with how you can customize them to your needs.
If your not familiar with JavaScript, get familiar. More and more attention is being focused on making websites more engaging for users, and knowing how to use javascript to implement AJAX related features is a powerful tool to have at your disposal.
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Yesterday I blogged about how to create a custom date renderer for CFGrid. Today I am going to add to that example how to validate the data entered into the CFGrid before it is sent to the cfc to update the database. The CFGrid (Ext.grid.EditorGrid) object has an event called "validateedit", which fires after a cell is edited, but before the value is set in the record. We will be adding a listener to that event that will validate the data that is being submitted and, if the data is not valid, display an alert message and cancel the changes.
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One of the coolest things about the ColdFusion 8 implementation of the CFGrid tag is that you can do a lot of customization, if you know your way around the Ext objects. I have found several blog entries about using custom renderers with the CFGrid tag. However, could not find a working example of one for date fields, so I decided to build one.
As of ColdFusion MX, there are several tags and functions that make working with XML a snap. In this tutorial I am going to demonstrate how to use these tools to generate an XML document.
The first step is to write a query to get the data we want to export. We are going to export a list of books from the cfbookclub database that comes with ColdFusion.
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