Today I filed a bug with Adobe #2903404 – No file context menu in Team Synchronizing (right-click)
 – Go vote for this bug if you have the same issue  –

I was made aware by a co-worker of mine about the fact that you could not get a file context menu in ColdFusion Builder 2.0 while in the Team Synchronizing perspective (right-click on file). Though I thought I remembered that context menu before in v1, I just though it was what it was and it sucked. Come to find out there’s a workaround.

Thanks to CFgears here’s the workaround:

1. Look in the plugins folder of the CF Builder install. There is a plug-in folder called “com.aptana.ide.syncing_X.X.X.XXXXXX”.
2. Open up the “plugin.xml” file in there.
3. Change all occurrences of “synchronize to “aptanasynchronize (include the initial double-quote… there should be 16 replacements).
4. Save the file.
5. Start eclipse/cfbuilder from the command line with a “-clean” flag.

Update 2/23/2012 : 2.0.1 Public Beta ticket 3121975

Yesterday Adobe ColdFusion Builder 2 was released. With this includes the option to pay for a license ($109 upgrade / $299 full) or to use the express edition for free after your 60 full featured trial.

Referencing a couple of matrix charts from Adobe here’s some key differences between ColdFusion Builder 1, ColdFusion Builder 2 Standard, and ColdFusion Builder 2 Express. Only new features are being referenced.

http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion-builder/buying-guide.html
http://blogs.adobe.com/cfbuilder/2011/05/feature-matrix-for-full-vs-express-edition-of-coldfusion-builder-2.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/coldfusion/articles/cfb2-whatsnew.html

All of the above information is gathered from the above links. If you find an inaccuracy please let me know and I will update the matrix appropriately. Thanks!

While doing a little tinkering in my ColdFusion Builder 2 Beta I accidentally ran across some features while editing a ColdFusion file. These appear to be all new from version 1 and will be a great time-saver for me!

Code hyperlinks for CFCs and UDFs
Component names and UDFs are hyperlinked if you press Ctrl and hover over the object name. Clicking the hyperlink opens the corresponding code. According to Adobe Help, code hyperlinks are available for:

• UDFs: local, included, and cfc.udfName
• Template in <cfinclude template=””>
• CFCs in createobject(), <cfobject>, <cfinvoke>, new keyword, and extends attribute.

Ctrl+Shift+R (Open Resource…)
Another resource worth mentioning, but is not new is the Open Resource window. Apparently it’s been around a long time in Eclipse, but I just learned about it.

When you open the window, you can start typing a name of a file which will bring up a list a matching files located in your project. For example “tests” may bring up “TestSuite.cfc”, “TestSimple.cfm”, and “TestSomething.html”. In addition you can select the resulting file to find its path and open it either in its specific or default editor.

However the best part of this is if you highlight a file reference in your code, then press Ctrl+Shift+R it will bring that highlight into the search filter readily giving you access to the file you are searching for. This can be especially handy if you can’t use the code hyper-link due to component searching, which ColdFusion Builder can’t resolve yet.

Explore Files and Copy Path(s) to Clipboard
While a file is open to edit, right click for the context menu. Here you will see two commands listed:

• Explore Files
• Copy path(s) to clipboard

“Explore Files” will open your Windows Explorer to the path of that currently open file and focus to the file name.

“Copy path(s) to clipboard” will copy the path of the open file to your clipboard. Example: “C:\websites\myfile.cfm”

I don’t know how many times I’ve had to lookup how to turn on word wrap in ColdFusion Builder. I’m guessing most people will only need to do this once, but I’m constantly messing around with new installations and alpha/beta releases. So mostly as a reference for myself, here’s how to turn on word wrap inside ColdFusion Builder:

1. Open Window > Preferences from the toolbar
2. Go to HTML > Editors in the left navigation
3. Click the Advanced tab
4. Click the checkbox for “Enable word wrap (requires editor restart)”
5. Click the “OK” button
6. Restart ColdFusion Builder

Microsoft SQL 2008 introduced the hierarchyid datatype helping with child/parent relationships. However this causes an issue if you try to select its data via ColdFusion’s Microsoft SQL Server driver. This breaks in ColdFusion 9.0.1 and I assume prior versions.

Example Table:

CREATE TABLE Org_T1
(
EmployeeId hierarchyid PRIMARY KEY,
EmployeeName nvarchar(50)
)

Example SQL Call:

SELECT * FROM Org_T1

Now first of all you should try to avoid “SELECT *” when possible anyway to increase efficiency. Otherwise the table columns are looked up before querying for results, adding an extra process step.

The way around this would be to list the columns you actually need in the select statement. If you need the data from the “EmployeeId” column you could append the “.ToString()” function to the column name. Example:

SELECT EmployeeId.ToString(), EmployeeName
FROM Org_T1

This will in effect change what data you receive however. The raw data looks something like “0xf0”. The result of the ToString() method looks something like “\1\” and I believe will be of varchar type.

There is a bug entry with Adobe here: http://cfbugs.adobe.com/cfbugreport/flexbugui/cfbugtracker/main.html#bugId=83590 . Feel free to go vote on this issue to increase its visibility with the ColdFusion team.

I’m getting my hands dirty using MXUnit Testing w/ MockBox recently. The basics where fairly easy to pickup, but I’ve now hit a road block. Lets say I need to test this method:

<cfcomponent extends="message" output="false">
    <cffunction name="send" access="public" returntype="void" output="false">
        <cfargument name="name" type="string" required="true">
        <cfif name neq "test">
            <cfset super.send(name=arguments.name)>
        </cfif>
    </cffunction>
</cfcomponent>

So following unit test ideology, I should just test what’s happening in this method and not attached methods.  If I had instantiated an object or the method was in the some component I could just mock the method being called. However since the method is located in the component’s parent, this does not appear to be working. The test contains:

variables.mockBox = new mockbox.MockBox();
variables.component = CreateObject('component', 'thisComponent');
variables.mockBox.prepareMock(variables.component);
variables.component.super.$('send');

This returns the error: “Expression: Element COMPONENT.SUPER is undefined in a Java object of type class [Ljava.lang.String; referenced as ””.

Now technically I could wrap the super.send call inside another local method and mock that method. However that would be coding for the test and would be worthless code and processor usage outside the test.

I’ve Googled this and searched ColdBox’s site for a solution to this, however I’m not getting anywhere.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?