Steve Bryant - sebtags

Records / Manager Form

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:30:00-0500

Much of this entry has been updated as Super Easy CRUD/File Management. I did a rough introduction to Records.cfc last time - just enough to show how it can make really basic CRUD operations easy. This time I want to show how you can take advantage of it to help keep your applications DRY. In addition to the methods that I discussed last time, Records.cfc components (that is, components that extend Records.cfc) also get another method that I would like to discuss today: [More]

New Documentation for cf_sebForm (and other SebTags)

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:30:00-0500

I have been blogging about cf_sebForm and its related tags as part of the SebTags custom tag set for some time, but I feel like I have done a pretty poor job explaining their capabilities thus far. I am hoping, however, that the new documentation will go a long way towards fixing that. The documentation currently consists of about 50 separate pages of documentation that should be a pretty thorough explanation of the capability of this tag set. If you have ever gotten tired of much of the tedium that goes into writing forms and tables (and especially client and server-side validation) then I would encourage you to take a look. The plan has long been to release the tags as version 1.0 as soon as the documentation was ready. The documentation is ready (though I do keep adding to it), but the tags are not yet 1.0. All that I am waiting for now is for me to keep my hands off of them for three (3) weeks straight. I keep having new ideas for small features that has kept that from happening. Hopefully, however, I will be able to keep my hands off of them long enough to call it a 1.0 version soon. In the meantime, I would love any feedback anyone has on what to do in the next version (I have some ideas, but it is still pretty loose) or on the documentation. The SebTags custom tag set is open source and free for any use.

sebtags 1.0 RC4 (security issue)

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:00:00-0500

Pete Freitag recently pointed out a security issue with file uploads. This affected file uploads in cf_sebForm so this update addresses this issue. The update also has other tweeks and features, but no point in covering those until I have some real documentation (soon, I hope). Anyway, if you are using the sebtags custom tags set, upgrade now.

sebtags 1.0 RC2 for ColdFusion 8.01

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:30:00-0500

Like a bolt from the sky, forces have converged to alert me of sebtags incompatibility with ColdFusion 8.0.1. As CodeCop runs on sebtags, that meant that CodeCop wouldn't work on ColdFusion 8.0.1 either. Fortunately, the problem was easy to fix. While I was at it, I wrapped up a few other small bug fixes and enhancements for sebtags and put it all together as sebtags 1.0 RC2. I also updated CodeCop to use the newest version of the custom tags, giving it a version of 1.0.1.2. So, everything should run now on ColdFusion 8.0.1. Sorry for any trouble.

Introducing cf_sebTable

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:00:00-0500

Over the years, I have had to create countless administrative data tables. Most of them are similar to one another. A few years ago, I saw that my friend, Tim Jackson, had created a custom tag to manage this. I thought the idea was brilliant, but I felt that the implementation could be improved. [More]

sebtags 1.0 Release Candidate Released

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:00:00-0500

After years of working on my sebtags custom tag set, I think it is now stable enough to put it in release candidate stage. If all goes well, this will exactly match the final release which will come out soon. [More]

sebtags Beta 3 (joy of open source)

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 07:00:00-0500

I have the third beta of my sebtags custom tag set ready now at RIAForge. I spent a lot of time fixing how things worked in ways that I have intended to fix for a long time, but was not properly motivated to do so. Nothing like releasing something to the public to motivate you to clean things up. The code is still ugly, but the functionality is what counts. [More]

Preventing Form Spam in cf_sebForm

Wed, 21 May 2008 06:00:00-0500

I use cf_sebForm for all of my contact forms. Form spam is a constant problem for those forms. So, I set up a generic way to do filtering in those forms and wrote both cf_sebForm and SpamFilter.cfc to follow the same guidelines. [More]

cf_sebForm Presentation and sebtags Beta 2

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:30:00-0500

Today I released the second beta of my sebtags custom tag set. The only major remaining work that I should have before the full 1.0 version is cleaning up and adding some default skins. [More]

Uploading Files with cf_sebForm II

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 07:00:00-0500

In my last entry on handing files with cf_sebForm, I ended the entry by saying that the method I had just covered for handling files with cf_sebForm wasn't the one that I actually used. It was close, but a few differences save me some typing.

[More]

Uploading Files with cf_sebForm

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 07:00:00-0500

In my ongoing series about using cf_sebForm, I have so far left out one important feature - the ability to upload files. This is essential functionality whether you are saving a record or sending email.

[More]

Send Email with cf_sebForm

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 07:00:00-0500

I saw two blog entries recently (by Ben Nadel and by Mark Mazelin) on generic solutions to automatically send email with a form. This is a common need for a lot of web sites, especially on contact forms. These entries motivated me to show how cf_sebForm handles this.

[More]

Skinning cf_sebForm

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 08:00:00-0500

When I was working on cf_sebForm, I knew that I wanted it to work on any site. That meant that I had to be able to use the same code for different output on different sites. At first all of my forms were tabular, with code like the following:

[More]

Validation in cf_sebForm

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 07:00:00-0500

Although I briefly touched on validation in cf_sebForm, it is certainly a topic that deserves more attention. This is especially true in light of Ben Nadel's great entry on data type validation versus data value validation (and his final thoughts on the same topic). It is an important distinction and I want to cover how cf_sebForm deals with the challenge.

[More]

Global Custom Tag Attributes

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 08:00:00-0500

While working on my custom tag set, I discovered that I often have attributes that will be the same across a whole site. These attributes need to change from site to site.

For example, I have a "skin" attribute to skin the output of my custom tags. Every tag in a site should use the same skin. If I copy some code from one site to another, it should automatically use the skin of the site to which it is copied.

[More]