Steve Bryant

DataMgr 2.5 Beta 1

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:00:00-0500

So I released the Alpha of DataMgr 2.5 more than a year ago. This is about as long as I have gone between a release. Why so long? Well, basically I have been neglecting DataMgr a bit to work on other things (more on that in another post). Also because DataMgr has been doing everything I want. Finally, however, I have the first beta of DataMgr 2.5 ready. [More]

Jason Dean Presents on ColdFusion Security

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:45:00-0500

The Tulsa CFUG is proud to host a Connect presentation by Jason Dean on ColdFusion Security today (August 31, 2010) at 12:30 PM central. The details on are the Tulsa CFUG meetings page. Every time I read Jason's blog entries on security, I find it frightening to see just how much I still have to learn on the subject. I'm excited to learn more today. If you are in the Tulsa area, we would love to see you on location where you can pick up some swag and talk to other local ColdFusion programmers. Otherwise, feel free to watch on line. A big "Thank you" to Jason for graciously accepting the invitation to present to our little group. Meeting URL

DataMgr 2.2.0.3 Released

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:30:00-0500

DataMgr 2.2.0.3 Released This may be the first release of DataMgr in which I have made no significant contribution myself. This is a small point release, but could actually have a big impact. This release consists of a few small database-specific bug fixes from the 2.5 branch and two significant enhancements. [More]

Records / Manager Form

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

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]

Records / Manager

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 09:30:00-0500

It occurred to me recently that I haven't yet blogged about one of my favorite tools in my com.sebtools package. It makes the most common CRUD tasks dead simple (I think more than any other CRUD tool that I have seen). Records.cfc is one of the only components in the com.sebtools package that is used by extension rather than composition. Normally, I prefer composition but I think the benefits are worth it in this case. Rather than try to describe what it does in generic terms, let's start with an example. We can start with a completely empty folder. [More]

Another Fun Framework

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 09:15:00-0500

With all of the ColdFusion frameworks that have been released this year, this feels a little like "me to". The fact of the matter, however, is that this framework has been in development for a few years and is being used on a dozens of sites. Moreover, it is different from other ColdFusion frameworks in some pretty significant ways. The framework doesn't have a name yet. I have been calling it "AFF" ("Another Fun Framework" or "Anti-Frameworks Framework") so far, but it needs a better name pretty soon. I'm open to suggestions, of course. I wasn't sure how to approach my first blog entry on the framework, so I decided to just answer the questions that I normally ask when I see a framework. [More]

Barney Boisvert presents on CFGroovy

Mon, 24 May 2010 09:45:00-0500

The Tulsa CFUG is proud to host a Connect presentation by Barney Boisvert on CFGroovy tomorrow (May 25, 2010). The details on are the Tulsa CFUG meetings page. If you are in the Tulsa area, we would love to see you on location where you can pick up some swag and talk to other local ColdFusion programmers. Otherwise, feel free to watch on line. A big "Thank you" to Barney for graciously accepting the invitation to present to our little group.

Updated SpamFilter Definitions

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:30:00-0500

This is just a quick note that I have updated the spam definitions for SpamFilter.cfc. So, if you are using SpamFilter.cfc and have the second argument of init ("getNewDefs") set to true, simply re-initialize it and you will have the updated definitions. [More]

"Set IIS Root" ColdFusion Builder Extension is Gold

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:30:00-0500

Several months ago, I posted my first ColdFusion extension. It allows me to switch the web root on IIS to any folder in ColdFusion Builder. Since my primary development machine is Windows XP, this has proven pretty handy. In the intervening months, I have found that I have used this several times a day. In that time, I haven't needed to change the underlying code at all. So, I am going to go ahead and call it a full 1.0 version. [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.

Introducing Manager.cfc

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:00:00-0500

I have been told by some people using DataMgr that it should handle files as well. The problem with that is that managing files is outside the purview of what DataMgr should do. I actually do have another project called FileMgr (part of the com.sebtools package) that does a little bit of what DataMgr does, but for files. Mostly, it handles uploads and makes sure that the needed folders exist - one less thing to worry about on deployment. What would be nice, is a component that works like DataMgr but handles files (and even image resizing) just as automatically as DataMgr handles data. The component is (showing no imagination on my part) called Manager.cfc. [More]

(Re-) Introducing Layout Components

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:00:00-0500

I have been using the same approach for site layout code for about five years. I have written about it a little bit in the past, but I decided (finally) that it made sense to package it up as a download and write some real documentation around it. If you are already using an MVC framework on a project then it probably has a solution for layouts backed-in, if not then I would recommend taking a good look at Layout Components. They make layouts easy without introducing any of the challenges that usually come with layout solutions. [More]

DataMgr hits 2000 Downloads!

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:20:00-0500

I happened to look at my RIAForge page yesterday and I saw that DataMgr has been downloaded 2,000 times. This doesn't actually encompass all of the downloads as the project had been around since before I put it on RIAForge, but it is still an exciting milestone. What is DataMgr? This really inspires me to double my efforts on DataMgr 2.5.

Dynamically Adding Methods to a CFC

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:15:00-0500

When ColdFusion 9 came out, I found that FileMgr.cfc would not work on it. For one function, I had directly copied the DirectoryList UDF by Ray Camden. This allowed me to use cfdirectory recursively in CFMX (the "recurse" attribute not being available natively until ColdFusion 7). This worked great until ColdFusion 9 came out. ColdFusion 9 added a built in function named (you guessed it!), DirectoryList. As a result, the FileMgr.cfc threw an error whenever it was instantiated on the code attempting to create a DirectoryList method. The problem here is that I have a lot of external code using that method, so renaming it would be a bit difficult. I would have to track down and change code in several different sites on several different servers. Not only that, but as FileMgr.cfc is publicly available code, everyone using it would have to do the same. Needless to say, this isn't a desirable outcome. Fortunately, ColdFusion makes it easy for me to maintain my API and still avoid the error telling me that I can't have a function named "DirectoryList". The surprising thing about this is how easy it is. [More]

com.sebtools Build 8: FileMgr and Mailer Updates

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:15:00-0500

John Whish found a couple of bugs in FileMgr (ColdFusion 9 compatibility and a bug in the getFilePath method) that should be fixed now. I also added getNoticeMethod to Mailer.cfc which should make it easier to see what it is doing when sending notices as well as make it possible to interject a step after the notice email is compiled but before it sends. com.sebtools is open source and free for any use.