Recent Updates Page 17

Unknown's avatar Chris 11:42 pm on December 13, 2011  

Coding Assets – Monitors

Coding for CF Webtools has been a privilege. Owner Mark Kruger, aka ColdFusion Muse, has recognized that an equipped developer is a happy developer.

Along with the infamous “office with a window” that everyone seems to long for in their career, I have items that equip me as a developer:

  • Large Desk : The real estate of a desk is a great thing. Enough room to comfortably rest your arms on while still allowing for a monitor in front of you along with more room to place documents or other electronics on is a considerable advantage.
  • Computer : It just couldn’t be done without it. Speedy processor and large RAM availability will also make your day.
  • Logitech Wave Keyboard : the “wave” design conforms nicely to the natural curve of my hand using the asdf-jkl;-space grounded typing method. It has a few fancy quick buttons I never use and take up a bit of space I could get back, but it’s a good trade-off.
  • Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse : This mouse has seen its days and could use a bit of an upgrade for cleanliness reasons, but it’s been a true trooper. Its optical sensor prevents any jumping or sticking those ball-mice do. It also has a programmable button that I use for zooming, along with a 4-way scroll wheel. But after the optical sensor, the grip conforms with my hand pretty well and is comfortable to use all day.
  • Mouse Pad : This cushioned mouse pad prevents those hurtful desk impressions left on ones hand after a long day of work.
  • Headphones : A developer needs his/her inspirational music to develop to. Invest in a good pair that sound good and feel comfortable all day long.

But on to what I really created this post for…

Where the action really happens is on the screen. Over my programming career of about 14 years I have seen about this kind of monitor hardware timeline:

14″ CRT -> 15″ CRT -> 17″ CRT -> 21″ CRT -> 15″ LCD -> 17″ LCD -> 19″ LCD -> 20″ LCDs

Except for the past few years, I have used a single monitor to do all my programming with. In the earlier years it was all okay because you just didn’t have the complexity of today’s programs nor the visual experience to compliment it. However as time went on the need for large screen real-estate grew. But all my prior employers, except one on-site contract, just didn’t see the need to spend that extra $200-$300 on another monitor. That was their mistake.

When I was hired with CF Webtools I was provided with two 20″ LCD wide-screen monitors and a heavy-duty adjustable dual monitor stand.  Immediately I recognized the benefit of the extra real-estate. I’m pretty positive that my productivity increased tremendously. I might say 50%, but then I might be held to that standard 😉 .

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Unknown's avatar Chris 9:18 pm on December 6, 2011
Tags: Custom Error Page,   

IIS 7 Custom Error Page Not Showing

As I recreated a production environment on my local development platform, a requirement was to assign a custom 404 Error Page. The web server is IIS (Internet Information Services) 7 on production and development.

In IIS Manager, I’d click the website name, double-click the “Error Pages” icon and then double-click the 404 Status Code row. I would change the “Execute a URL on this site” value for the URL to the 404 ColdFusion page I needed. This exactly replicates what I saw on production.

However, when I would go to the URL I had binded to the site (http://mysite.local), the default IIS error page would show. I checked, rechecked and re-verified the settings to no avail. Then I noticed this “Edit Feature Settings…” link under the Actions menu on the right of the Error Pages page. This is where I found my solution.

Apparently you can get different error displays if you are locally browsing the site as opposed to normal (remote) traffic. Here’s the fix:

  1. Open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager
  2. Click your website name
  3. Double-click the “Error Pages” icon
  4. Click the “Edit Feature Settings…” link under Actions on the right column
  5. Change the “Error Responses” value to “Custom error pages” (the default is Detailed errors for local requests and custom error pages for remote requests)

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#custom-error-page, #iis

Unknown's avatar Chris 11:10 pm on November 17, 2011  

Earth : Low Light Camera Time Lapse View

I still remember being amazed by the stunning video of Earth from space while watching one of the few IMAX productions I’ve seen in life. It was probably back in 1997 with the “Mission to Mir” IMAX documentary. Shown on a specially coated silver screen stories high shot with large format film; It was the beginning of high-definition video.

Since then we’ve grown used to being able to see house-wide images from space on our computer screens and smart phones. The view of Earth has become mainstream and lost a bit of its artistic appeal – until Michael Konig pieced together 18 time-lapse video shots from the International Space Station from August to October of 2011. These time-lapse videos where taken with a low-light camera and bring back the art of the Earth at night including clips of the Aurora Borealis.

This is a must see check it out in full-screen mode.

 

Unknown's avatar Chris 7:05 pm on November 9, 2011  

Adobe Flex Builder 3 Download

I had to track down a download location for Adobe’s Flex 3 install today. It was a little hard to find so I thought I’d share this link for a Windows install:

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flex/flex_builder/FB3_win.exe

Why it’s at a macromedia.com address I have no clue, but hope this helps someone out. This defaults to a 60 day trail and you can enter your license as well.

Unknown's avatar Chris 4:20 pm on October 18, 2011  

Drop Test of the iPhone 4S and Galaxy S II

My opinion of the iPhone, while I’ve never owned one, was that the glass was not prone to much breakage due to their impact resistant glass. In the iPhone 4S Apple is stating it is aluminosilicate glass; stuff they use in the windshield of high-speed trains and helicopters. Unlike the older iPhone models, the iPhone 4 has both the front and back made of this kind of glass, which Apple says is chemically strengthened to be “20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic.”

Acording to  “iFix your i” , the glass covering the display on the older iPhones was recessed and protected by a chrome bezel, while on the iPhone 4, the glass sits on top of the steel frame, which exposes it more to damage.

For reference I’ve never been a fan of the Galaxy S models because I’ve seen a lot of breakage in their screens as well. But check out this video:

So basically if you drop it from the height of your ear down to a solid surface after some prior abuse (which you could fully expect from any user), there’s a good chance your iPhone will be no longer usable without glass shards getting stuck in your ear.

Here’s another video to back that test up:

I personally own an HTC Incredible and have never broken my screen even after a number of drops. I remember going into Verizon’s store one day and the sales associate dropped the Samsung phones about 6″ and then the HTC phones 6″. You could hear how more solid the HTC’s where compared to the Samsung, also stating that the Incredible’s where using Gorilla Glass for the screen. So I’m glad I made that choice.

None of these drop tests where scientific, but it appears Apple really dropped the ball on durability with the iPhone 4. But I’m sure iFixYouri appreciates the business.

Unknown's avatar Chris 4:10 pm on October 13, 2011  

Proper Parentheses Placement In Ternary Statements

Consider the following code:

a = b = c = 1000000;
r = (a > 10000) ? a/1000 : a & "/" & (b > 10000) ? b/1000 : b & "/" & (c > 10000) ? c/1000 : c;

(if you think the first line is odd – see Chaining ColdFusion Assignment Operators)

My thought was r would return “1000/1000/1000” — however it actually returned “1000”. Where did I go wrong?

Now if I change a,b,c to 1000 it would blow up to a “cannot convert the value “1000/NO” to a boolean” error.

So what’s going on? The third argument of the statement becomes another ternary statement but can not convert the evaluated “1000/NO” to a Boolean – thus blowing up. If a,b,c = 1000000 then the operation never gets to the third argument and returns only “1000” never considering the ampersand in its logic.

So correct code would be:

a = b = c = 1000000;
r = (a > 10000 ? a/1000 : a) & "/" & (b > 10000 ? b/1000 : b) & "/" & (c > 10000 ? c/1000 : c);

Or depending upon your preference:

a = b = c = 1000000;
r = ((a > 10000) ? a/1000 : a) & "/" & (b > 10000) ? b/1000 : b) & "/" & (c > 10000) ? c/1000 : c));

Now there are three seperate ternary statements concatenated together with a slash between them.

Unknown's avatar Chris 8:15 pm on October 6, 2011  

Serving Files with Spaces in the File Name Using CFContent

I ran into an issue where using CFContent to serve a file with spaces in its name was truncating the file name. For example the file “Foo Bar.xls” was saving as “Foo”, lacking ” Bar.xls”.

<cfheader name="Content-Disposition" value="attachment; filename=#getFileFromPath(filePath)#">
<cfcontent file="#filePath#" type="application/octet-stream">

You can find many examples of this type of code out there for securing files using ColdFusion and its cfcontent, so apparently it’s a common oversight.

The fix to truncated file names is very simple but no so obvious.

What doesn’t work:

  1. Don’t wrap the file name value in anything
  2. Wrapping the file name value in single quotes
  3. Wrapping the file name value in double quotes

What does work:

  1. Wrap the file name value in escaped quotes (doubled up such as “”#filename#””)
  2. Wrap the file name value in character valued double quotes (chr(34))

The new example would look something like this:

<cfheader name="Content-Disposition" value="attachment; filename=""#getFileFromPath(filePath)#""">
<cfcontent file="#filePath#" type="application/octet-stream">

Thanks to Ben Nadel for providing this solution.

See my previous blog on serving files with CFContent at https://christierney.com/2009/08/12/securely-serving-files-via-cfcontent/ .

Unknown's avatar Chris 6:03 pm on September 13, 2011  

Chaining ColdFusion Assignment Operators

Thanks to Mike Henke, I found out you can chain assignment operators (“=”) in ColdFusion.

An example of this would be:

var1 = var2 = var3 = 123;

Resulting in:

var1 = 123
var2 = 123
var3 = 123

Behind the scenes it’s interpreted such as var1 = (var2 = (var3 = 123));
(It is right-associative, being the last assignment operation is evaluated first and propagated leftward. Also, don’t try that interpreted code in CF because it will fail.)

While not a major find in programming history, this little flick of keystrokes can save you some repetitive typing should you ever need to set multiple variables to the same value.

Unknown's avatar Chris 2:23 pm on August 25, 2011  

Read XML from a HTTP POST

I program scripts to read XML posts just every once-and-awhile, and although very simple, every-time I forget how to do it.

Let’s say that we receive a XML HTTP POST via this code:

<cfhttp url="http://yourdomain.com/xml.cfm" method="post">
<cfhttpparam type="XML" name="MyXML" value="#myxml#">
</cfhttp>

This is what you would use to read that POST:

<cfset xmlPOST = GetHTTPRequestData().content>
<cfset xmlDOM = XmlParse(xmlPOST)>

The key here is the GetHTTPRequestData().content. Notice how we do not use form.MyXML.

Now we can manipulate the XML data using standard dot notation such as xmlDOM.Content.Value.XMLText.

Unknown's avatar Chris 10:44 pm on July 13, 2011  

jquery.validate Range Method Patch

If you use the range attribute inline to validate against using the jquery.validate plugin 1.8.1, your validation will probably always fail and receive the message “Please enter a value between NaN and {1}.” or “Please enter a value between {0} and NaN.”.

This drove me nuts for almost a whole day looking for a fix. I finally got smart and looked at the current issues in the Github project. “markusblair” submitted a patch, but that was also incorrect.

To correct this issue, modify the jquery.validate.js file on line 852:

		$.each(['rangelength', 'range'], function() {
			if (rules[this]) {
				rules[this] = [Number(rules[this][0]), Number(rules[this][1])];
			}
		});

and replace it with:

		// Patch by Chris Tierney (CF Webtools 7/13/2011)
		// Issue logged at https://github.com/jzaefferer/jquery-validation/issues/112
		$.each(['rangelength', 'range'], function() {
			if (typeof rules[this] == 'string') {
				rules[this] = rules[this].split(",");
			}
			if (rules[this]) {
				rules[this] = [Number(rules[this][0]), Number(rules[this][1])];
			}
		});

Be sure to update your minified version as well and this should solve the range and potentially a similar rangelength method issue immediately.