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ColdFusion Splendor – When to use invokeCFClientFunction

I have seen some confusion when it comes to using invokeCFClientFunction. I have been asked this question a few times, more recently on LinkedIn, so I thought explaining it in a blog post might be a good idea.

If you don’t know already, ColdFusion Splendor has added support for client side CFML (<cfclient>) and this code is translated to JavaScript.  You can call JavaScript functions from cfclient and vice versa.

cfclient also makes calling asynchronous functions of PhoneGap easy by providing synchronous access to them. All device APIs are asynchronous in nature, but in cfclient block you call then as synchronous functions and ColdFusion translates them to asynchronous PhoneGap functions. All function starting with ‘cfclient.’, e.g. cfclient.camera.getPicture(), are asynchronous. In addition to device APIs, data access function, executeQuery and tag, cfquery, are also asynchronous in cfclient.

When you call asynchronous functions in cfclient, ColdFusion takes care of chaining callback functions – any code following an asynchronous function goes in the success callback function. But if you call asynchronous cfclient function form JavaScript code block, then ColdFusion compiler does not touch it. Note that if a UDF in cfclient block calls any asynchronous function (e.g. cfquery or any device APIs) then that function also becomes asynchronous.

Let’s see an example. In the following code, I have a UDF in cfclient block, createDatabase. It does not need any argument, but let’s say it takes one argument, arg1. This function calls queryExecute function, which is an asynchronous function – so createDatabase function also becomes asynchronous. If you call it from JavaScript and have some JS code to be executed only after database is created, then calling createDatabase function directly from JavaScript is not going to work as expected – Continue reading “ColdFusion Splendor – When to use invokeCFClientFunction”

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Parsing JavaScript code using Mozilla Rhino

Last year I had blogged “Understanding AST created by Mozilla Rhino parser“, where I exaplained how to traverse AST to get all functions and variables. Since then I have received some comments, public and private, to provide sample code. So here is an example of how to parse JavaScript code and get all functions and variables using Mozilla Rhino.

Note that my intention here is not to build the complete symbol table for any given JavaScript code. And I have not run a lot of test cases on this code. The idea is to show how AST could be traversed and how hierarchy of symbols (functions and variables) be built .

So, for example, if you feed following JavaScript code to this program –

function func1()
{
	var local1 = 10;

	global1 = 20;
}

obj1 = {
	objFunc1 : function()
	{
		var local2 = 30;
	},
	objProp1 : "prop1"
}

You will get following output –

Function : func1
		local1
	global1
	obj1
	obj1
		objFunc1
		Function : objFunc1
			local2
		objProp1

Yes, I know there are duplicates for object and closure – because they are first processed as variable names and then object/closure. This can be easily fixed, but I am going to leave it that way to keep the code simple. Continue reading “Parsing JavaScript code using Mozilla Rhino”

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CFMobile Example – Accessing remote data from mobile application

So far I have posted CFMobile examples that were mostly standalone applications (except a photo application that uploaded image to server). However many mobile applications may need to interact with server, for example to show data from a remote database, to modify data or for many other purposes.

CFMobile features in ColdFusion Splendor make accessing remote CF server very easy. I will demonstrate this using a simple example – I will build a mobile app that displays employee records fetched from a remote CF server. The client side (cfclient) code calls a CFC on the server side which fetches data and returns result to the calling page. You will see that creating and accessing a server side CFC is as easy as it is in a completely server side CFML code – you don’t need to worry about writing code to make AJAX calls. cfclient does that for you transparently. I should mention here that this feature to call server CFCs from cfclient is not limited to mobile application, you can even use it for any web application.

Here is a screenshot of the application –

2014_03_25_image5

Continue reading “CFMobile Example – Accessing remote data from mobile application”

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CFMobile Example – Record and playback audio using ColdFusion Splendor

In this post I am going to show how easy it is to record audio and play it back in a mobile application using ColdFusion Splendor. If you haven’t already, you can download it from Adobe Labs.

I have tried to keep the application simple. There are two buttons, Record and Play. When you click Record button, the recording starts and the Stop button is displayed. Speak into the phone microphone to record your voice. When done, click Stop button. You can play back the audio by clicking Play button. You can also stop playback any time by clicking Stop button.

Here are the screen shots –

2013_03_18_screen1 2014_03_18_screen2

Continue reading “CFMobile Example – Record and playback audio using ColdFusion Splendor”

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ColdFusion Thunder – It's all new IDE

Though ColdFusion Thunder is the next version of ColdFusion Builder (the last version was 2.0.1), it is like a new IDE because it’s a major re-write. Past versions of ColdFusion Builder were built on top of Aptana. I had noted some of the challenges in implementing ColdFusion Builder a couple of years back, when CFB 2.0.1 was released.

ColdFusion Builder (till version 2.0.1) used a very old version of Aptana. Aptana later re-wrote and improved their IDE and released it as Aptana Studio 3.  The integration points in Aptana Studio were changed to such an extent that integrating CFB in it would have meant re-writing it. So we decided not to base ColdFusion Thunder on Aptana and implemented many features that Aptana had contributed earlier – most notably editors for HTML, JavaScript, CSS and XML. This also meant CFML editor had to be re-written because it was based on Aptana APIs to integrate HTML, CSS and JS editors in it.

The task was huge and we, in the ColdFusion team, had been working very hard during the past two years to – first build all (or most) the features of CFB 2.0.1 in Thunder, and then to add some more features. If you have used ColdFusion Builder in the past, then you will see great performance improvements in all the editors in Thunder. Specifically you should see difference when editing large files. The memory footprint is also improved.

Here are some of the new/improved features in Thunder –  Continue reading “ColdFusion Thunder – It's all new IDE”

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CFMobile Example – Taking picture and uploading to ColdFusion server

In this post I am going to show you how to create a mobile application using ColdFusion Splendor that can take a picture and upload the picture to CF server. This application uses Camera and File APIs.

The application is very simple – it has two buttons, one to take picture and the other one to set URL where pictures are to be uploaded. You can set URL of the server before taking a picture or after, just before it is to be uploaded. Once the URL is set, it is stored in the localStorage and will be remembered.  There is a messages div where the application displays messages about different operations it is performing.

2014_03_04_image1 2014_03_04_image2 2014_03_04_image3

Continue reading “CFMobile Example – Taking picture and uploading to ColdFusion server”

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CFMobile Example – Using Geolocation APIs in ColdFusion Splendor

I was going to cover a use-case of taking picture in a mobile app and uploading it to ColdFusion Server in this post, but I found some issues in packaging an app that used Geolocation APIs when helping someone and thought that I would cover geolocation first.

This sample application is very simple – it gets your current location and displays a marker at that location on the Goole Map APIs. Here is how the application looks – Continue reading “CFMobile Example – Using Geolocation APIs in ColdFusion Splendor”

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Creating database mobile application with ColdFusion Splendor

In my previous post, Simplify Mobile Application Development Using ColdFusion, I posted a video that showed how easy it is to create mobile application with CFMobile features of ColdFusion Splendor (Server) and ColdFusion Thunder (IDE). In that video I created a simple app called ‘Simple Expense Tracker’. But the code was not optimal, because the main purpose of the video was to show you features of CFMoible. I also mentioned that I will post a better example of the same app.

So In this post I will show you how to create a database application, where user interface code is separated from the data access code. I will also use JQuery for DOM access and Bootstrap for UI. Continue reading “Creating database mobile application with ColdFusion Splendor”

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Simplify Mobile Application Development Using ColdFusion

Public beta of next versions of ColdFusion Server (code named Splendor) and ColdFusion Builder (code named Thunder) were released yesterday on Adobe Labs. I have been closely involved with implementation of some of the features in both Splendor and Thunder, specifically Mobile features in Splendor and editors in Thunder.

Splendor and Thunder together provide a complete workflow to create HTML5 Mobile applications – you can easily develop, test, debug and package applications for mobile. I have created a short video to explain this workflow with a simple example, and this video is available on adobecoldfusion channel on YouTube. Continue reading “Simplify Mobile Application Development Using ColdFusion”

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Record and Playback Drawing in HTML5 Canvas – Part II

A reader of my blog post De/Serializing Recordings in Recordable HTML5 Canvas had asked me how to change stroke color and size when recording. I told him that this could be done by adding actions, like setColor and setStrokeSize. For more information about how the recordable canvas was implemented, see my blog post Record and Playback Drawing in HTML5 Canvas . I have updated the example with following new features –

  • Setting stroke color and size – both for drawing and recording
  • Pausing and resuming recording. You may want to pause recording if, for example, you do not want to record time delay when you select stroke color/size. Duration of time that the recording is paused is skipped when playing back the recording.

Here is the demo of how the new features work. Select a color by clicking on any color box on the right side of the canvas. Default selection is black. Currently selected color is displayed in a little bigger box with rounded corner. To select stroke size, I have added a few predefined circles of different sizes on the right side. Currently selected stroke size is displayed in black.

Continue reading “Record and Playback Drawing in HTML5 Canvas – Part II”

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