Some CFML code that doesn't work

G'day:
I was sitting at Lord's yesterday watching England v NZ (and, um, we'll have no comments about that, thank-you very much), and a sudden thought popped into my head "Adam Presley might've been onto something there... if I leverage that....I wonder if I could get that code down to one statement?"

And that of course will mean nothing to anyone.

CFML: and, for that matter: not everything that looks like a struct actually is a struct

G'day:
Coincidentally very similar issue (to "CFML: just cos something looks like an array doesn't mean it is an array") came up on Friday.

ColdFusion 10 & 11: new updaters released

G'day:
This just came to my attention courtesy of Ron Stewart on Twitter:

#ColdFusion folks: Adobe has apparently released hotfixes for both ColdFusion 10 and 11: https://t.co/fR2fxVkKPU
— Ron Stewart (@oneofwe3geeks) April 14, 2015

So exactly what does Adobe's ColdFusion 'Extended Support' get you?

G'day:
This comment from Anit was fairly astonishing:

@BugTracker_News @aandrewdixon @ColdFusion Extended Support doesn't include bug fixes/patches/hotfixes.
— Anit Kumar Panda (@anitkumar85) March 30, 2015

Hotel California

G'day:
Yeah, told you I was gonna be quiet for a while.

Anyway, something topical... I'm back to doing CFML again for the time being. My forays into PHP have been parked. But only for a coupla weeks.

I dunno whether to laugh or... cackle maniacally.

So yeah. I'm back.

--
Adam

Guerilla tactics to force Adobe's hands

G'day:
It's Friday afternoon and I'm in a cheeky mood.

Adobe ColdFusion Team getting their act together?

G'day:
On the heels of ColdFusion update 4 coming out yesterday, I see that there is now ColdFusion 10 Update 16 prerelease build available (37 fixes), as well as ColdFusion 11 Update 5 prerelease build now available (119? fixes). Good work.

Note that these updates are still only pre-release quality, so only fit for testing. Do not put the into production.

CFML: the evolution of functionality

G'day:
Right, enough Lucee stuff for the time being. CFML. I still remember CFML.

As you all know, I am very unhappy about how Adobe and Railo had dealt with porting some residual tag-only functionality from tags to a script-sensible implementation.

I'm going to work through why they're both wrong and why I'm right in this article. Hey, I might as well lay my cards out, right?

<cfsavecontent>

Hands up: who has issues accessing the ColdFusion bugbase?

G'day:
There is a continuing issue with access to the Adobe ColdFusion bugbase: when clicking on a link (like this one: https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3909712), many many people get one of two things:

1. redirected to a login page (that URL requires no login, so that is invalid);
2. put into a perpetual redirect loop between ticket and login page.

I think other people have different symptoms too. And a select few actually get to see the bug. 75% of the time, I cannot get to the bug page unless I use an incognito page. Sometimes if I clear my adobe.com cookies I can get in without an incognito window, but often I still can't.

Adobe are looking at this (our man Kapil is the star there), but they cannot replicate it. This gobsmacks me, TBH, as so many people seem to have issues.

Do me a favour will you? Go click on that bug URL above, and post back what you get? Do you go straight to the ticket (lucky bugger), do you have to login? Do you get into a redirect loop? Something else? If you could let me know your OS, browser (/version) etc, that might help. If you can't get in initially, but blow awway your Adobe cookies, does that help? Anything relevant, really. If you're happy to liaise with Kapil directly, please let him know on Twitter: @KaroraKapil.

Cheers for your help.

--
Adam

PS: oh and vote for that bug, will you? Cheers.

ColdFusion 11 update 3 and ColdFusion 10 update 15 are out

G'day:
Adobe have finalised ColdFusion 11's update 3, and ColdFusion 10's update 15. Official word is on their blog "ColdFusion 11 Update 3 and ColdFusion 10 Update 15 are available now".

I'm in the process of running them now...

ColdFusion 11 updates to version 11,0,03,292480. It claims to fix 195 issues, btw. That's pretty impressive. Although, equally, not before time.

The update installation process went smoothly (I am just running the Express install).

ColdFusion 10 updates to version 10,0,15,292549. It just mentions a security update.

Note: both updates require reconfiguring the web server connectors. As I'm just running the internal web server on both of these, I've not needed to bother with that.

I'll probably go ahead and install Java 8 now, and reconfigure these CF instances to run atop of that.

Adobe have done a good job with their fixes for ColdFusion 10 and 11 recently. However they need to reduce their cycle duration down to 2-3 monthly minimum. Once a month would be better. They don't need to fix 195 bugs every month, just the most recent ones, and a few of the longer standing ones each time. Here's hoping they can achieve this.

But: good work, Adobe. Nice one.

--
Adam

Local scope bug (or not, if you're the ColdFusion Team)

G'day:
I just spotted this, and decided to look into it:

20:36 STATE CHANGED 3042593 (9.0.1) Bug 84833:(Watson Migration Closure)[ANeff] Bug for: Clearing local scope o…: http://t.co/9VX1qJx73J
— CF Notifications (@CFNotifications) November 28, 2014

This defines a bugsituationbug in ColdFusion wherein if one deletes a local-scoped variable from a function, then assign an unscoped variable, that new variable goes back in the local scope, not in the variables scope.

The Adobe ColdFusion Team are doing a bloody good job at the moment

G'day:
I know I am the first (and loudest, and most repetitive...) to whinge about Adobe's ColdFusion lads (/ladesses), but... fair's fair... there's very bloody little to complain about at the moment.

What should CFML's deleteAt() method return?

G'day:
This will be quick, as I'm out of time before I'm due to start work.

As I mentioned in my earlier article ("Weekend quiz: my answer (CFML version)"), Railo's (and ColdFusion's for that matter) Array.deleteAt() method returns a pointless boolean, rather than something useful. What do you think it should return?

If you're in the UK, can you please do me a quick favour?

G'day:
Hey, if you're in the UK, can you please run some code for me and let me know what you get?

Would you install a ColdFusion hotfix/updater/patch without testing?

G'day:
First things first, this is my position (and the one I believe anyone who's not a lunatic should have): "bloody hell no, are you insane?"

But I polled the community yesterday, via Twitter:

Quick #ColdFusion poll: do you ever apply these fixes Adobe releases directly to your production servers without first testing them?
— Adam Cameron (@DAC_dev) October 23, 2014

Adobe: stop closing ColdFusion bugs you haven't dealt with

G'day:
I've had a frickin' gutsful of Adobe's amateurish and disrespectful approach to dealing with bugs in the bug tracker. I spotted yet another "closed, not enough time" issue today. One which hit me back in 2011. It was first raised in 2009. Five years ago. It first cropped up in CFMX7. It's not a complicated one, it's just that the seem to have a glitch in working with leap years, for some date calculations. "Bug 82249:(Watson Migration Closure)Datediff function does not calculate differences correctly".

This has gotta stop, Adobe.

I checked the bugbase to see how many issues had been closed with "not enough time".

349.

Dating back to 2005.

These are all bugs that have impacted paying clients sufficiently for them to bring them to Adobe's attention. And Adobe's reaction is to just go "oh well... [shrug]... [clicks the 'Close' button]".

This is unacceptable.

Documentation for CFScript

G'day:
I am going to attempt to document all of CFScript, as a resource for people migrating from old-school tag-based code to script-based code. The reason I am doing this is because neither ColdFusion nor Railo provide much (or in the case of Railo: any) useful documentation of CFScript.

This is not a document for converting tags to script. It is not written from a point of view of "if you use <cfsometag> then you need to instead use [some script construct]". It simply documents CFScript. It does - however - set out how to perform all CFML functionality using CFScript. It is also not an exercise in teaching CFML (or at least the script part). It assumes you know what you're doing, and is purely a reference. I am contemplating another article / series of articles which teach CFML correctly (the various resources that exist to do this all take the wrong approach, and are a barrier to CFML uptake, IMO). [ed: obviously that plan has been permanently shelved now].

Also there won't be a great narrative structure to this article. It's just a loosely-structured series of sections covering coding topics.

I assume Railo 4.2 or ColdFusion 11, except where stated.

Update:

I have ported this stuff to GitHub. See "CFScript docs now on GitHub". The version below is a mirror of that. Given it's on GitHub, if you see any problems or want to augment these docs: DIY, and send me a pull request. Cheers.

Update regarding irritation: cheers Rakshith

G'day:
Y/day I got all ranty with this: "Please indicate your irritation @ the ColdFusion Team".

A bunch of people joined in the irritation (that sounds vaguely NSFW, I know), and fortunately Adobe have fed back:

@dacCfml @AdamTuttle @adobeCare @ColdFusion This issue will be reopened and evaluated. #ColdFusion
— Rakshith Naresh (@rakshithn) September 10, 2014

Adam made a good follow-up point, and Rakshith responded positively to that too:

@AdamTuttle @dacCfml @adobeCare That should have been the initial response itself. Something for us correct going forward.
— Rakshith Naresh (@rakshithn) September 10, 2014

This is all positive. I thanked him on Twitter, but I just wanted to say thanks here too.

Good man, Rakshith: thanks.

--
Adam

Please indicate your irritation @ the ColdFusion Team

G'day:
They've gone and done it again, as apporproately described by Adam Tuttle:

.@dacCfml here's a giant pile of @adobe bollocks: https://t.co/1bm94AJlHI http://t.co/lx6ZrucqUi
— [object Object] (@AdamTuttle) September 9, 2014

Repro of structCopy() bug

G'day:
I could put this in a gist or just post the code directly, but it gives me something to write about today. Be wary of structCopy(). There's a bug been raised about it not working on ColdFusion scopes, which Adobe don't quite seem to be able to understand. The ticket is 3815793.