Sorcerer's Tower

International Regular Expressions Day

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:20:26 GMT

It's 1st June 2010 today, and that means we're celebrating for the third time the annual International Regular Expressions Day.

Ben Nadel kicked off this event two years ago, in order to promote the use of Regex, especially amongst those who might consider them something scary and obscure.

As before, Ben is running a contest, this year's prizes being some O'Reily Regex books and IIS Mod-Rewrite Pro licenses.

Entry to the competition requires writing some code, and the deadline is today, so if you're interested then hurry up and read the blog entry to find out more.

Happy Regex Day!

Railo: Still Awesome!

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:42:41 GMT

It's nearly a year on from my last Railo blog post so it is well overdue that I write another - just in case there is anyone still sitting on the fence, unsure if they should use Railo - or indeed, anyone who might be unaware of Railo's very existance!

So to start with, a quick summary of what Railo is:

Railo, pronounced /ˈraɪ.ləʊ/, is super fast Enterprise-level sofware for RAD webapp and website creation.
Railo is LGPL-licensed Free Software, so anyone can use it how they like.
Railo runs on any Java EE server, (but doesn't require Java knowledge), and is a Jboss.org project.
Railo uses the CFML language, like Adobe ColdFusion (the primary CFML engine), OpenBlueDragon, and others.
Railo is really awesome.

Find out why Railo is the perfect choice for your next development project.

The Magnificent Art of ElDavo

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 23:53:36 GMT

I've recently been working on a gallery website for my brother, a brilliant artist and illustrator. The site is still under construction, but he's already got some great examples of his drawings and sculptures on there, and it is definitely worth checking out.

Head over to eldavo.co.uk to take a look, and if you like the work take a look at his blog where he has more of his art.

On the technical side, the main site is pretty simple, so far, with extra complexity coming later on. It runs on Railo and uses jQuery. The (private) admin part of the site was my first opportunity to use cfimage functionality, allowing thumbnails to be generated from uploaded images. I used jCrop for the client-side crop selection.

Beehive Forum 0.9 has been released!

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:50:21 GMT

Version 0.9 of Beehive Forum, probably the greatest forum software there is, has recently been officially released.

Since the previous v0.8.4 there have been a variety of fixes and improvements, particularly to client-side caching and UTF-8. There is also now support for Google Analytics and for displaying optional Google Adsense adverts. For full information on what has changed, you can check the release notes.

Download Beehive Forum 0.9 from SourceForge

Also, Beehive is currently a Finalist in the SourceForge Community Choice Awards!

If you're a fan of Beehive and haven't yet voted, please vote for Beehive now:

There is a lot of competition, with many thousands of votes already having been cast, so please help spread the word to as many other Beehive users as you can, to help vote for Beehive to win, and gain the recognition it deserves!

Welcome to the Isle

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:50:47 GMT

This is my new and improved weblog, where I will be posting on a large assortment of topics which I hope you will find interesting. All of the old blog messages have been ported across, and re-catalogued into more useful groupings.

For anyone wishing to read posts only on particular areas, there are three sub-blogs available, which filter the messages from this main blog according to their respective focus. Combined with the ability to subscribe to feeds for individual or multiple tags, it should be easy to get at only the content you wish to read. And to follow all the messages, you can simply read just the main blog.

Currently, everything is still rather basic, but over the next few months I will be adding to, extending and improving the various features that are available, and I welcome any feedback you might have.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy your stay, and please feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Java RegEx Utilities - v0.7 preview

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:47:00 GMT

Java RegEx Utilities, or jre-utils, is a CFC which provides a convenient way to access Java's regular expression functionality.

Whilst ColdFusion, Railo, and openBD are all built on Java, and CFML does have regular expression functions, they do not actually use the Java regular expression engine, which supports many useful regex constructs.

The purpose of jre-utils is to provide this extra power to CFML developers in a familiar and easy to use way.

I will shortly be releasing v0.7 of jre-utils, which adds a number of new functions, as well as making things more consistent, so I decided I would give this quick preview of what it contains.

Open Source Railo

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:03:00 GMT

Earlier today, the eagely awaited Railo 3.1 public beta was announced!

And the reason for much of this eagerness?

Railo is now Open Source and Free Software, released under the LGPL v2.

This license requires that any changes to Railo's sourcecode itself must also be released under LGPL v2 (or later version).

However, unlike the full GPL, it does not require that you release any packaged applications under a compatible license - so you can still use whatever license you like for your own CFML code, Open Source or otherwise.

Along with the announcement comes two new Railo websites: The commercial-oriented getrailo.com and the community-oriented getrailo.org, which also contains wiki-based documentation.

Details on updating this documentation, as well as information about the new features in Railo 3.1, will come later this week - stay tuned to the Railo blog for the latest details.

The next four months are going to be a very exciting time for Railo and CFML!

Why Railo 3?

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 02:53:53 GMT

It's been nearly half a year since Railo 3 was released, and with 3.1 just around the corner it is a good time to write a post about some of the features that continue to make Railo such an excellent CFML engine!

This blog entry gives ten reasons for using Railo 3...

Switch on String in Java

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:50:41 GMT

For anyone working with any other modern language, (such as CFML, C#, JavaScript, Ruby, and more), using a String within a switch-case statement is not an issue, and probably something you've done many times without thinking about.

However, when working in Java you cannot use strings in a switch statement.

Fortunately, despite what many sites suggest, there is a solution.

QueryParam Scanner - v0.7 Released, v0.8 in progress...

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:09:31 GMT

I have released v0.7 of QueryParam Scanner, which introduces a variety of improvements over v0.6.1:

Significantly faster processing
Multiple output formats (HTML, XML, WDDX).
Ability to override Request Timeout.
Option to specify file/directory exclusions (regex).
Option to include/exclude Query of Queries.
Option to include/exclude built-in CFML functions.
Eclipse Plugin for easier execution.

For more details and download information, visit the project page at Hybridchill.

Future Improvements

The following release, v0.8 will have three key features:

A Fix mode, allowing you to manually or automatically correct missing cfqueryparams.
A flexible exclusion system, allowing you to ignore paths and variables you know are ok.
Integration and examples of use for Apache Ant and MXUnit.