Doug Boude (rhymes with 'loud')

CONDITIONAL INSERT IN A SINGLE QUERY

2010-05-17T13:33:00-05:00

Ever had the need to insert a record, but only wanted to do so if the record doesn't already exist? Typically the first approach to this is two queries: one to check for the existence of the values you want to insert, the second to peform that insert IF the first query returned no records. Well, I was in such a spot today, but hated the idea of having to hit the db twice to perform a conditional insert. Though I'm

Finally Found a Use for CFTHREAD

2010-01-04T16:15:00-05:00

You know how ColdFusion is so robust that oftentimes there are those tags and functions that exist, yet you've never once had an occasion to use them? Well, today I used a tag for which I've previously not had a need: cfthread. I figured I'd share my use case and implementation in case it piques the curiosity of other CFTHREAD virgins.

The Scenario

Our

A SWEET Little MySQL Function: Group_Concat

2009-12-21T11:29:00-05:00

The Scenario

You're writing code to perform authentication for a web-based app. Your users live in one table (Site_User), your list of site permissions live in another table (systemRoles), and the two are related via a junction table (jctUserRole) that manages the many to many relationship there. Your backend database: MySQL version 5 or better.<

Using a CFC as a Configuration File

2009-12-17T12:41:00-05:00

SO, you too find yourself needing to write something that could really benefit from having its settings contained in some external resource. Let's see, what are the choices...we could possibly store our settings in the database and retrieve them at application initialization, if our architecture permits that; we could create an xml file that contains our settings in a nice, nested, readable manner; we could (as one person I mentioned this to sugg

MySQL Query to Find the Following Thursday of a Given Date

2009-11-10T17:17:00-05:00

I found myself needing to update a MySQL table today with a calculated date, so thought I'd blog the sql in case it saves someone else some time later.

The Scenario

You have a table that contains a date field, but you need to know the date of the Thursday following that date. In this query, the number 5 represents the 5th day of the week (sunday=1, Mond

Security Snippet for canvasWiki

2009-10-02T11:04:00-05:00

I spent two days waiting to see if anybody would respond to my call for "code donations" regarding adding real security to canvasWiki, but no code came flying my way. Of course, in that time I could have just written my own, but I was being lazy. I did end up having to do it myself, though, so thought I'd share in case it saves someone else time later.

My security is based on a user having

Batch Script to Backup MySQL Database

2009-09-17T09:30:00-05:00

In setting up a new IIS7/Windows 2008 server, I had a need to automate the backup of my MySQL database and so pieced together a little batch file that I then scheduled via the Task Scheduler. The file first removes all backup files that are more than a week old, then performs a sql dump and finally zips the dump. Files are named according to the date and time they were created. Anyway, it took me quite a while to find all the pi

Managing Multiple Development Platforms with Limited Windows Laptop Resources

2009-09-13T01:42:00-05:00

Since I do a lot of my development work on my laptop, and since the thought of having services running and consuming my precious memory that are NOT necessary all the time bugs the bajeebies out of me, and since I do development in CF and .NET on my machine (and use different versions of SQL server for each), I wrote some batch files to start and stop the services required for each platform. Some others might find them useful (a

Locating Files Containing Specified Text in "*IX" Environment

2009-08-28T08:47:00-05:00

This is nothing revolutionary, but since it was new to me and it DID take me far longer finding the solution via Googling than it should have, I'm posting it here for my own and others' reference.

Let's say you need to do some search and replace of a specified email address within a BUTT LOAD of PHP files you inherited from your predecessor, but you don't want to have to download the whole can of wo

PHP Export to Excel Snippet

2009-06-30T13:06:00-05:00

For those PHPers out there who are doing an export to Excel, I thought I'd share the solution I came up with. I realize there are already a gabillion examples out there, but I merged some of the better approaches from a few of them that made it fairly elegant, I think (such as leveraging the implode, array_keys, and array_values functions).

Without further adieux...

Auto-Escaping Characters When Outputting JS Function Calls

2009-04-26T18:49:20-05:00

I'm blogging this little snippet mostly so that I have a place to find it the next time I need it, but perhaps it'll come in handy for someone else as well.

I'm creating some Javascript function calls on the fly as I output some query results. One of the parameters in the JS function is the value of an item's title which may at times contain characters JS tends to barf on, such as the single quote:

Changing Scriptaculous' Sortable ID Parser

2009-03-30T11:30:00-05:00

My scenario:

I'm using Scriptaculous and CF8 to create a "stacked" PDF based on a user's re-ordering of a list of uploaded files (you can check out the live app here). In order to do this simply, I'm making the file name part of the sortable list item's ID value, like so: ID="file~#filename#" . Well, Scriptaculous has a

Getting a Complete List of Timezones from Java

2008-12-17T07:16:11-05:00

I've been doing some research on i18n, locales, timezones, and all that jazz lately. Today I wanted to build a dropdown list of possible timezones, and came across a bit of Java code that I converted to CFSCRIPT. Thought I'd share it in case anybody else finds it useful. I will say that there are a LOT more timezones than I would have ever guessed (592 to be exact), and the results of my snippet probably aren't useful as-is to p

Very Useful Snippet

2008-12-13T01:20:03-05:00

<cfset objMojito = createObject("component","bar.drink").init(glassType="24oz");

<cfscript>
objMojito.add("freshLime",.75).add("crushedIce","toFill").crushAndStir();
objMojito.add("rawSugar",2).add("crushedIce","toFill").add("puer

Elegant Approach to Disabling Submit Button on Forms

2008-11-04T17:55:00-05:00

A while back I had a project that required the submit button of the login form to be disabled unless both the username field AND the password field had values. There are probably several ways to skin that cat, but my good friend Boyan Kostadinov offered a more elegant solution (he's always good for the most elegant approach!), and I thought I'd share it with whoever else may benefit.

This solution u

Sneaking Spiders Past Security

2008-10-13T03:22:57-05:00

The Scenario
You've created a web site that is secured, but you want the search engine spiders to be able to crawl the content. Okay, in this case it's not secured in the sense of needing a username and password, but is secured by requiring that the visitor first acknowledge some terms and conditions before they can access any other portion of the site. This initial requirement of a button click seems to st

Converting FusionChart to Image - Disappearing Chart Labels

2008-09-08T00:48:00-05:00

Fusioncharts, as of version 3, exposed via Javascript a method called saveAsImage(), which is what one uses when one wishes to convert the native Flash object to a JPG. I recently finished up a project where I had to do that very thing, and ran in to one little (or not so little) hiccup that perplexed me for quite some time. Following are the scenario, symptoms, and the solution I found.

After

Printing Multiple FusionCharts Charts/Maps

2008-08-02T04:05:00-05:00

This post is for others who are using FusionCharts/FusionMaps in their web development (if you're not, this post is PAINfully long and could be deemed a waste of your time to read). FusionCharts/Maps is an amazing product for the price, and does some very very cool stuff when it comes to charting and creating thematic, interactive maps. It does however present some unique challenges when it comes to actually PRINTING t

Viewing Option Text (in IE7) that's Wider than the Select List

2008-05-14T11:31:00-05:00

Though a "minor" cosmetic issue at times, it can be challenging to come up with creative ways to accommodate what I consider to be IE's shortcomings regarding the control of form items, in particular select lists. With at least one project I'm currently working on, I have a select list that lives in a fixed width div, yet there are times when the text values of the options are wider than the div itself. The client respect

Client-Side Drilldowns Made Easy

2008-03-09T22:46:00-05:00

Last September I shared a post on an alternative to Ajax for client-side interactivity leveraging Coldfusion's WDDX. I'd like to take it a step further now and share an approach (and corresponding code) I often use in my Model-Glue apps when needing to create tiered or drilldown-type select lists withOUT having to make numerous ca

Dynamically Outputting Query Data 'X' Columns Across

2007-09-21T05:34:21-05:00

Dynamically outputting query data in "X number of columns across" is no new thing, but since I found myself having to do that very thing this morning, I thought I'd share this sweet little snippet for the benefit of everyone (but mostly for my own snippet collection since I seem to tend to "forget what I once new"... lol).

In this example I'm going to output a series of short questions using the follo

Snippet: Outputting Reactor Validation Structures

2007-09-12T13:23:02-05:00

Reactor's built-in validation produces a validationError structure when it encounters something amiss, and passes it back to your viewstate. That structure is actually a structure of arrays.

I DO use Reactor's validation, and found myself copying and pasting the same snippet for outputting the validation error results a time or two this morning... figured it might come in handy for other folks, too.

Accommodating Dynamic Terminology in your App

2007-08-12T11:37:00-05:00

When building applications intended to service multiple clients, the ability to easily customize certain aspects is a must. In the health benefits management arena, this need couldn't be any greater, most notably with regards to terminology and phrasing. Whereas one client may wish to refer to their employees' usage of tobacco as "smoker certification", yet another will insist on calling it "tobacco usage".

Anti-Spam snippet

2007-07-23T02:17:00-05:00

When I first began blogging, I was naive enough to think that porn bots (or whatever they're properly called) wouldn't find me. Wrong. So, I enabled the Captcha that comes built in to BlogCFM (yep, not CFC...I'm a rebel). That immediately thwarted their attempts at decorating my blog posts with colorful solicitations. Then a month or two later, I got a sudden influx of the same spam! So, I swapped out my captcha with s

EgoSurf" Formette Snippet

2007-07-17T18:36:00-05:00

EgoSurf...I'm not really sure what to make of it, but it's an interesting use of asynchronous processing, to say the least. Anyway if you haven't heard of it, it's a site that will do deep searches of various search engines for you and your associated web site, then score you based on the results. I thought it was interesting enough to put a formette in my side nav, so thought I'd share the code in case anybody else was interested in doing someth

DEMYSTIFYING JSON (for myself)

2007-07-05T17:50:00-05:00

I'm doing this post because the term 'JSON' has continued to appear here and there within blog posts, conference sessions, articles, and emails that I consume as part of my professional growth regimen. Despite the fact that the term is so very often mentioned casually as if everybody has known about it since Kindergarten, the greater part of my understanding of JSON is barren except for the few clues I have man

Basic Event Security in Model-Glue Applications

2007-07-02T15:27:00-05:00

To anyone who has not yet breached the subject of model-glue event security, it can potentially be confusing at first, so I thought I'd share my approach to it in case it helps save someone a little time.

Understanding and being able to visualize the life-cycle of a Model-Glue event is a prerequisite to really grasping event security, so let me share my take on what a brief overview of that life-cycl

Custom Validation with Generic Commit: a Model-Glue Case Study

2007-05-25T01:30:00-05:00

Someone recently asked about how to specifically ensure that a submitted email address is unique when using a model-glue generic commit, so I thought I'd share an example since I recently had to do that very thing.

I'm assuming for the remainder of this post that the reader is already familiar with Model-Glue in a practical sense, and at least knows of the existence of Reactor's automagic validation. Still,

Sweet Little Snippet: Query to Arguments

2007-03-02T11:13:00-05:00

I have a CFC method with one argument that is an incoming, single-row query:

This method will call another

Faux Audio Streaming

2006-09-25T19:27:00-05:00

If you ever find yourself with the need or desire to build a streaming audio library but don't want to mess with incorporating REAL Server or some other formal product to do it, I came across a cool little workaround that I thought I'd toss out there just "FYI".

In my experiment, the test audio files are in MP3 format, but I assume that any format that can be natively played by Windows Media Player will work just as well.