Category: Development

Are all your CFC variables Scoped? Find Out!

I was reading Ray Camden's blog and my interest got peeked by his post on a CF app called varScoper. I downloaded the app from RIA Forge and had it parse my MachBug's source code within about 30 seconds. Depsite how meteculous I try to be with my scoping I was suprised when I found almost a dozen fumbles in my ruffly 320 cffunctions spread across 39 CFC files.

I had never thought of whipping something like this up, but this would be fantastic rehashed as an Eclipse plugin...

Untill then, I definetly recomend you check out this helper app (varScoper).

1 comments - Posted by Russell Brown at 1:04 PM - Categories: ColdFusion | Debugging | Reviews | Development

Install a new SQL Server Instance from Command Prompt

I was having some issues doing a standard install of SQL Server 2005 SP2 (Standard). No matter what I did, the install complained about versioning issues. I knew you could blindly run a full install from command promt but I had never needed/wanted to. Out of desperation I decided to give the install a try from command the prompt and had great succcess.

setup.exe /qb INSTANCENAME=EGPS ADDLOCAL=SQL_Engine SAPWD=***** AGTACCOUNT=ComputerName\Services AGTPASSWORD=***** SQLACCOUNT=ComputerName\Services SQLPASSWORD=***** SQLAUTOSTART=1 SECURITYMODE=SQL

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0 comments - Posted by Russell Brown at 11:55 PM - Categories: SQL | Windows XP | Development

How to find a table based on a column name

I've been asked how to do this about a dozen times by developers who were not very entrenched with SQL and I've had to do it my self a handful of times.

I know the column name (or at least part of it) but I have no idea what table in this massive DB it lives in; how do I find it?

A simple query will net you the results you need:

SELECT
    so.name AS [Table], sc.name AS [Column],
    so.xType AS [Table Type], st.name AS [Data Type]
FROM dbo.syscolumns AS sc
    LEFT JOIN dbo.sysobjects AS so
        ON so.id = sc.id
    LEFT JOIN dbo.systypes AS st
        ON st.xtype = sc.xType
WHERE sc.name LIKE '%Partial Column Name Here%'
ORDER BY so.xType, so.name, sc.name

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0 comments - Posted by Russell Brown at 11:31 AM - Categories: Debugging | SQL | Development

ColdFusion to Confluence Gateway/API

I needed to write some import scripts to move data from a dozen or so seperate simple apps into a  Confluence Site [Atlassian]. The Confluence SOAP API is actualy very nice. My only major complaint so far is that there is no way to find out what the current version of a file is, aside from looping from version 1 - * until you get an error.

I wanted to write a single wrapper that would maintain my connection and handle some translation into some more friendly functions, so I wrote this API Interface. I didn't include a lot of commentary, although in a future release I will make sure to add more. That said, it should all be fairly self explanatory.

Download ColdFusion to Confluence Gateway/API

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0 comments - Posted by Russell Brown at 11:07 AM - Categories: ColdFusion | Confluence | Development

Javascript Date Picker using YUI

In a recent project I had the need to have multiple objects tied a single date picker pop-up. What I was really going for was a DIV field to show the date so it was true read only and to stuff the value into a hidden text field as well.

I needed to use it in multiple places and it needed to be flexible for future uses, so I came up with this quick package YAHOO.EGPS.Utils.DatePicker. It allows you to choose multiple targets (for the resulted value) and multipletriggers that will make the date-picker "pop-up".

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0 comments - Posted by Russell Brown at 6:18 AM - Categories: Development | YUI | JavaScript

Now Mango Powered

Following in the footsteps and recomendation of Andrew Powell I've started to use Mango Blog (I even stole the title from his blog). Months ago I started having some odd issues with my HostMySite account and MachBlog. It worked fine until they upgraded my server and then all of a sudden nothing using ColdSpring would init correctly. I don't really have a good reason for not trying MachBlog again other than for the reason that I get bored and like to try new things a lot.

But now I'm back blogging and slowly [manually] migrating over old posts, but unfortunetly I've lost almost all my relevent ColdFusion/Flex/AJAX content.

I have run into multiple NULL Pointer errors with Mango Blog so far, and will in the future start to document them but usualy a reload of the page clears the problem right up. The interface is certainly nice and clean and looks more polished than my previous experiences with other CF blog packages; so KUDOS to the developer(s).

2 comments - Posted by Russell Brown at 7:15 AM - Categories: Development | General News | Mango Blog

Confluence Plugin: Advanced Attachment Viewer

I needed a configurable way to display lots of attachments in a Confluence [Atlassian] application/website. This Macro plug-in gives a pretty high level of customization compared to the default one available with the program.

Click read more to download the file and read about it's usage.

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5 comments - Posted by Russell Brown at 1:16 PM - Categories: Confluence | Java | Development