You can find many hidden jems in the coldfusion.runtime.ApplicationScopeTracker Java class.

appTracker = createObject( 'java', 'coldfusion.runtime.ApplicationScopeTracker' );
writeDump( var = appTracker );

List all application scope names:

applications = appTracker.getApplicationKeys();
while( applications.hasNext() ) {
writeOutput( applications.next() & '<br>' );
}

Dump a specific application scope:

appScope = appTracker.getApplicationScope( 'myAppName');
writeDump( appScope );

I spent a bit of time tracking down why I kept seeing two exact same threads (run by thread()) being run simultaneously. These threads are spawned by FrameWork One’s (FW/1) setupRequest() method. After tracing the methods with some console dumps, doing some research via Google and process of elimination, I finally got a clue.

Let’s say I hit http://mysite.com and this site requires a login. If you are not logged in lets saw we use a location() call to get to the login page. I also use a log-in imitator via a UI to see how different account look under their login, which also uses the location() method. Because of these location() calls, the onRequestStart method is called once before the redirect and once after the redirect.

Now, thinking I can overcome this by wrapping the thread() call in if( !isDefined( “myThreadName” ) ). However – apparently the onRequestStart calls come so quick that the thread name isn’t created in time to be detected. So two threads are still spawned.

I could probably add a flag to the session scope wrapped in a lock operator. However what happens if the thread is terminated manually? This may not be the best option, but it’s not bad as long as your site admins are aware of that consequence.

In this case I’m going to reassign my statements to my log-in handler instead of my setupRequest() method and call it good.

Let me know if you have any other ideas on how to handle this. I’m all ears.

In July 2012, I presented to the Nebraska ColdFusion User’s Group on the topic of FrameWork 1 (FW/1) for ColdFusion. Thanks to Ryan Stille for recording this.

Also be sure to check out “A crash course in MVC with FW/1” with Steven Neiland as this provides a much better method for presenting this topic.

Continue reading →

NOTE: This is now obsolete. Use the method renderData() instead.

I really haven’t found a method I like that returns JSON via FW/1 until I saw a presentation by Steven Neiland the other day. Basically you have a few choices:

1. Call a service directly: This leaves you w/o any FW/1 features and the service is not initialized.
2. Create views that return JSON: This can become tedious and seems unnecessary, but FW/1 features are available
3. Have onMissingView handle it: Views do not need to be created and FW/1 features are available

My approach uses #3.

Example jQuery AJAX call:

$.ajax({
	url: 'index.cfm?action=products.attributesAJAX',
	type: 'GET',
	dataType: 'json',
	data: {parentPartNumber: $('#productForm').data( 'parentpartnumber' )}
});

You’ll notice it requests the section “products” and the action “attributesAJAX”. We will not create the view for the action, but we will create the controller method for it.

component {

	function init( FW ) {
		variables.FW = FW;
		return this;
	}

	// AJAX
	void function attributesAJAX( required struct RC ) {
		FW.service( 'productService.getProductAttributes', 'data', { parentPartNumber = RC.parentPartNumber } );
	}

}

To return JSON data w/o creating a view, we let the Application.cfc’s onMissingView method handle the return:

function onMissingView( required struct RC) {
	// if a data key exists, assume this is for AJAX and render as JSON
	if ( structKeyExists( RC, "data" ) ) {
		request.layout = false; // turn off default layout
		new services.utility().showDebugOutput( false );
		getPageContext().getResponse().getResponse().setContentType('application/json');
		return serializeJSON( RC.data ); // convert data to JSON
	} else {
		return view( 'main/pageNotFound' ); // set view to the missing page message
	}
}

You’ll notice that if the view’s missing it looks for the RC.data value. If it exists it assumes you want to return JSON back. Otherwise it will call the “pageNotFound” view (which you need to create). Note how the layout is turned off, it calls a method to turn off debugging (for development), and sets the content type to JSON.

This is the utility I created to turn off debugging:

<cfcomponent output="false">

	<cffunction name="showDebugOutput" output="false" returntype="void">
		<cfargument name="switch" default="false" type="boolean">
		<cfsetting showdebugoutput="#arguments.switch#">
	</cffunction>

</cfcomponent>