2021-04-13 Weekly News - Episode 99

Watch the video version on YouTube at https://youtu.be/wmBusQHhs0w

Hosts:
Gavin Pickin - Software Consultant for Ortus Solutions
Eric Peterson - Software Consultant for Ortus Solutions


Thanks to our Sponsor - Ortus Solutions

The makers of ColdBox, CommandBox, ForgeBox, TestBox and almost every other Box out there.
A few ways  to say thanks back to Ortus Solutions:

- Like and subscribe to our videos on youtube.
- Sign up for a free or paid account on CFCasts, which is releasing new content every week
- Buy Ortus’s new Book - 102 ColdBox HMVC Quick Tips and Tricks on GumRoad


Patreon Support

We have 36 patreons providing 79% of the funding for our Modernize or Die Podcasts via our Patreon site: https://www.patreon.com/ortussolutions. If you love our podcasts and all we do for the #coldfusion #cfml community considers chipping in, we are almost there!
https://www.ortussolutions.com/blog/we-need-your-help



News and Events


New Release Candidate for Lucee 5.3.8

There is a new Release Candidate ( 5.3.8.167-RC ) available to download from our download page https://download.lucee.org or via the Lucee Admin.
https://dev.lucee.org/t/new-release-candidate-5-3-8-167-rc-rc2/8197


Adobe CF 2021 Lockdown Guide is available

This may not be “news” for everyone but somehow it had slipped by me: the ColdFusion 2021 Lockdown Guide has been available since December 2020 (and was updated slightly in Jan 2021). I find no mention of it here, so I thought it a good post to share.
The 2021 guide is about 9 pages longer than the 2018 version. The new version covers security-related aspects of new features in CF2021, such as CF package management (cfpm), as well as security-related aspects of new features in the CF Administrator, and some modest additions to coverage of security-related aspects in the Performance Monitoring Toolset (PMT) and the CF Api Manager.
https://coldfusion.adobe.com/2021/04/coldfusion-2021-lockdown-guide-available/


Mid-Michigan CFUG - Embracing the Jamstack with Ray Camden

Tuesday, April 13 at 7:00 pm
We are going virtual
Meeting URL:  https://bit.ly/3dGHjgE
http://www.mmcfug.org/


VS Code Live Stream - VS Code Notebooks: A Deep Dive

Thursday 15th at 8am PST
VS Code is adding Notebooks as a core concept in the API, on top of which extensions like the Jupyter Notebook are being built. Join Tanha to explore the capabilities of Notebooks in VS Code. We'll also look under-the-hood at the new APIs to build custom notebooks and visualizers, and how you can use them to build new extensions.
https://code.visualstudio.com/livestream?WT.mc_id=devcloud-18509-cxa


ICYMI - VS Code 1.55 Release Party

Thursday, April 8
VS Code team
Live event and Q&A with the VS Code team to discuss highlights from the March 2021, 1.55 release.
https://youtu.be/-YQ8UnjNQ1M


Adobe Webinar Series - API Creation and Management

Next Webinar:  4/28/21
ColdFusion Developers, do you want a first hand look at publishing APIs securely and at scale? Then mark your calendars for Brian Sappey’s upcoming webinars! This seven-part series will give you a 360 degree view of the API Manager and teach you how to build RESTful APIs with Adobe ColdFusion. Everything from securing, publishing and monitoring APIs, will be covered with hands-on examples, and easy discussions.
Dates: 3/24/21, 3/25/21, 4/28/21, 4/29/31, 5/12/21, 5/13/21, 5/24/21
Information: https://coldfusion.adobe.com/2021/03/webinar-series-api-creation-management/
Registration: https://coldfusion-api-management-solution.meetus.adobeevents.com/?fbclid=IwAR2q7aEI9u1ibBKrneeDvAhKWWW7V78bB_P1rTzWAh8x4e20q68gXLeMVrM
Recordings: https://t.co/ZQc637BSkv


ICYMI - Online CF Meetup - "CSS Crash Course for CSS Haters or Novices", with Jessica Keener

Thursday, April 8, 2021
11:00 AM to 12:00 PM CDT
This class is intended for a complete novice to CSS, or those who know enough to get by but hate everything about it. We will be covering the basics of CSS (including specificity), using preprocessors, as well as several practical best practices to keep you out of CSS hell.
https://www.meetup.com/coldfusionmeetup/events/277252125
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx7OqcqAw3Y


Online CF Meetup - "To the future with cbFutures!", with Luis Majano

Thursday, April 15, 2021
5:00 PM to 6:00 PM CDT
In this session we will explore the asynchronous and parallel programming constructs built into the ColdBox 6 Async Package. Java has supported a robust and functional approach to asynchronous programming since JDK8 and now it is available to us all in the Coldfusion (CFML) ⚡ World! To the future!
https://www.meetup.com/coldfusionmeetup/events/277112459/


Ortus Webinar - Building modern web apps with ContentBox Modular CMS with Luis Majano

April 23, 2021 Time: 11:00 AM CT
ContentBox is a professional open source modular content management system powered by ColdBox HMVC and ColdFusion. In this session, led by Luis Majano, we will get an overview of this CMS platform and how you can leverage it to not only deliver content based applications, but any modern web application thanks to its powerful headless API and ColdBox services.
https://www.ortussolutions.com/events/webinars


Reminder: New Book from Luis Majano 102 ColdBox HMVC Quick Tips and Tricks

Now Available on Gumroad - $29
http://gum.co/coldbox-tips




CFCasts Content Updates

www.cfcasts.com

CFCasts site updates!

Just Released
- CommandBox Zero to Hero (https://cfcasts.com/series/commandbox-zero-to-hero)
      - Server start and other Commands
      - Host, Port and Server.json
      - Artifacts
- What’s new with ColdBox 6 (https://cfcasts.com/series/whats-new-with-coldbox6)
      - Debugging and Profiling ColdBox Apps with the ColdBox Debugger

Coming up soon
- More CommandBox Zero to Hero
- More What’s new with ColdBox 6
- Up and Running with Quick
- LogBox 101
- Using DocBox

Send your suggestions at https://cfcasts.com/support


Conferences and Training


VueConf - Virtual Vue Love

April 14th - TOMORROW - Online - Free and there’s swag (first 500 registrations)
Hosted by Evan You
Live Video with Chat Q&A with speakers
Attendee Lightning Talks
Live DJ
Virtual Party
Workshops TBA
http://vueconf.us/


RedisConf 2021

Virtual: Apr 20-21
Rediscover the power of real-time data. Join us at RedisConf 2021 to hear from the Redis community, customers, and industry experts. Dive into the latest product experiences, get hands-on training, network with other Redis pros, and show off your skills by participating in a $100,000 hackathon.
https://redislabs.com/redisconf/
 

Atlassian Teams 21

Apr 28-30
Better teams starts with being better teammates. Check out Atlassian’s vision for Team 2021, formerly Summit.
https://events.atlassian.com/team21


AWS Summit Online - Americas

May 12-13
Online and Free
AWS Summit Online is designed for developers and IT professionals looking to learn how to build and innovate at scale using AWS Cloud. Hear the very latest from AWS executives, attend breakout sessions featuring customer stories, and engage with AWS experts to get your questions answered. Enhance your skills with hands-on labs and workshops, learn from inspiring demos, and discover what AWS and our Partner Solutions can do for your business.
This free online conference is designed to educate you about AWS services; and help you design, deploy, and operate infrastructure and applications.
https://aws.amazon.com/events/summits/online/americas/


DockerCon

May 27th 2021
DockerCon 2021 is a free, one-day virtual event that is a unique experience for developers and development teams who are building the next generation of modern applications. If you want to learn about how to go from code to cloud fast and how to solve your development challenges, DockerCon 2021 offers engaging live content to help you build, share and run your applications.
https://www.docker.com/dockercon-live/2021


Ortus Workshops - Dates coming soon

More Workshops dates to come
- CommandBox Zero to Hero
- ColdBox Zero to Hero
- ColdBox Hero to SuperHero

Ortus’s Possible Conferences for 2021

Dates subject to change

Due to Online conference overload, we are thinking about not expanding the number of events, but more content in more timezones with a different format.

ITB - Developer Week Style?? - (please be in-person!!!)
With some European Timezone Friendly slots from our European Community Members
September 2021
Call for speakers coming soon

ITB Latam
December 2021



More conferences

Need more conferences, this site has a huge list of conferences for almost any language/community.
https://confs.tech/

CFML Is now on the list - https://confs.tech/conferences/new



Blogs, Tweets and Videos of the Week



Blog - Charlie Arehart - ColdFusion 2021 Lockdown Guide available
This may not be “news” for everyone but somehow it had slipped by me: the ColdFusion 2021 Lockdown Guide has been available since December 2020 (and was updated slightly in Jan 2021). I find no mention of it here, so I thought it a good post to share.
The 2021 guide is about 9 pages longer than the 2018 version. The new version covers security-related aspects of new features in CF2021, such as CF package management (cfpm), as well as security-related aspects of new features in the CF Administrator, and some modest additions to coverage of security-related aspects in the Performance Monitoring Toolset (PMT) and the CF Api Manager.
https://coldfusion.adobe.com/2021/04/coldfusion-2021-lockdown-guide-available/


Tweet - James Moberg - Migrating Versions and using Lucee’s Unit Tests
While migrating #ColdFusion 2016 apps to CF2021 & Lucee #cfml, I've found the Lucee unit tests to be extremely beneficial. https://github.com/lucee/Lucee/tree/6.0/test
For example, Lucee has a null coalescing elvis operator, but adobe throws an error. #crossCFMLCoding
https://twitter.com/gamesover/status/1381661107228663818
https://twitter.com/gamesover


Blog - Ben Nadel - Experimenting With Try / Catch / Retry Semantics In Lucee CFML 5.3.7.47
The other day, when I was looking something up in the Lucee CFML documentation, I came across a page that outlined the CFRetry tag. This tag will jump the control flow back up to the CFTry ingress, re-running the volatile execution pathway. I'm not sure I've seen this tag before. And, I don't actually "retry" much code in my ColdFusion applications. But, every now and then, I'll have some "exponential" back-off logic around a remote system call. As such, I wanted to see how my traditional approach to this would compare and contrast with the retry semantics in Lucee CFML 5.3.7.47.
https://www.bennadel.com/blog/4025-experimenting-with-try-catch-retry-semantics-in-lucee-cfml-5-3-7-47.htm


Blog - Ben Nadel - Using Array-Like Structs As Arrays In Lucee CFML 5.3.7.47
The other day, when I was working on unifying type casting errors in Lucee CFML, I spent some time digging around in the Lucee source code on GitHub looking for examples of casting error messages. As I was doing this, I came across a Java class called StructAsArray. This wrapper class appears to allow array-like Structs to be treated as Arrays in some scenarios. I don't recall ever seeing this discussed; so, I wanted to perform a quick experiment in Lucee CFML 5.3.7.47.
https://www.bennadel.com/blog/4026-using-array-like-structs-as-arrays-in-lucee-cfml-5-3-7-47.htm


Blog - Ben Nadel - Unifying Type Casting Exceptions For Cleaner Log Aggregation In Lucee CFML 5.3.7.47
At InVision, we use Loggly as our centralized log aggregation service. And, when I go to consume said logs, I am generally breaking them down by "Error Message". Most of the time, this is great. However, when a script kiddie starts barfing malicious data into my pages, it creates a lot of noise in Loggly since Lucee CFML 5.3.7.47 creates unique error messages for each type casting exception. In order to cut down on this noise, and to help the security team fine-tune the WAF (Web Application Firewall) rules, I wanted to unify all type casting errors under a single error message.
https://www.bennadel.com/blog/4024-unifying-type-casting-exceptions-for-cleaner-log-aggregation-in-lucee-cfml-5-3-7-47.htm


Blog - Matthew Clemente - Use the PostgreSQL JDBC Driver Directly with ColdFusion
For reasons irrelevant to this post, I wanted to run a query directly via the PostgreSQL JDBC Driver, bypassing cfquery. To be clear, up front, I do not recommend doing this and I don’t know of any practical use case for it. But, because I couldn’t find much online, I thought it worth documenting.
https://blog.mattclemente.com/2021/04/07/postgresql-jdbc-driver-coldfusion.html


Blog - Terra Tech - Funny ColdFusion Custom Tag Competition (CFML Programmer’s Jokes)
Recently I decided to run a little competition.
The goal was to write your best ColdFusion custom tag joke, and post it. No big reason for that, I just wanted to shake everyone up and see how creative CF'ers can be. Although, I already know they are very funny and creative.
You can check out all the answers and jokes directly
https://teratech.com/funny-coldfusion-custom-tag-cfml-programmer/


Blog - Ben Nadel - Task Switching, Sensory Specific Satiety, And Staying Productive At Work
As a software engineer, one thing that I've never connected with is the idea that engineers only have "N" number of hours per day in which they can be productive. I believe this concept stems from a lack of strategy, not a lack of capacity. I am not going to argue that every hour of every day has equal potential; but, I do think that we can employ strategies to maximize every hour if we learn to lean into the constraints of our day instead of fighting them.
https://www.bennadel.com/blog/4023-task-switching-sensory-specific-satiety-and-staying-productive-at-work.htm


Blog - Luis Majano - Ortus Solutions - ColdBox Debugger Mini-APM v3 Launched!
We are so excited to bring about a major release for the ColdBox Debugger project: v3.0.0. However, what in the world is the ColdBox Debugger module? I am glad you asked:
https://www.ortussolutions.com/blog/coldbox-debugger-mini-apm-v3-launched


Blog - Toomba - Adding CacheBox to your CFML Application
CacheBox is a tool that adds caching to your application to speed things up. It is not dependent on a single cache which makes it very powerful when your application needs frequent change.
https://toomba.com/en/blogs/adding-cachebox-to-your-cfml-application/




CFML Jobs

Several positions available on https://www.getcfmljobs.com/
Listing over 70 ColdFusion positions from 44 companies across 47 locations in 5 Countries since Dec 1st.

1 new job this week

Full-Time - Software Developer at Houston - United States
Posted Apr 12
https://www.getcfmljobs.com/viewjob.cfm?jobid=11217



ForgeBox Module of the Week

CFMigrations

Database migrations are a way of providing version control for your application's database. Changes to database schema are kept in timestamped files that are ran in order up and down.In the up function, you describe the changes to apply your migration. In the down function, you describe the changes to undo your migration.
https://www.forgebox.io/view/cfmigrations

Story Links:
pgjdbc PR - https://github.com/pgjdbc/pgjdbc/pull/2119
Lucee Ticket - https://luceeserver.atlassian.net/browse/LDEV-3426



VS Code Hint Tips and Tricks of the Week

Quokka.js

By Wallaby.js - 1 million+ installs
JavaScript and TypeScript playground in your editor.
Quokka.js is a developer productivity tool for rapid JavaScript / TypeScript prototyping. Runtime values are updated and displayed in your IDE next to your code, as you type.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=WallabyJs.quokka-vscode



Thank you to all of our Patreon Supporters

These individuals are personally supporting our open source initiatives to ensure the great toolings like CommandBox, ForgeBox, ColdBox,  ContentBox, TestBox and all the other boxes keep getting the continuous development they need, and funds the cloud infrastructure at our community relies on like ForgeBox for our Package Management with CommandBox.

You can support us on Patreon here https://www.patreon.com/ortussolutions

- Bronze Packages and up, now get a ForgeBox Pro and CFCasts subscriptions as a perk for their Patreon Subscription.
- All Patreon supporters have a Profile badge on the Community Website
- All Patreon supporters have their own Private Forum access on the Community Website

Don Bellamy
Eric Hoffman
David Belanger
Gary Knight
Giancarlo Gomez
Jonathan Perret
Mario Rodrigues
Jeffry McGee - Sunstar Media
John Wilson - Synaptrix
Yogesh Mathur
Joseph Lamoree
Ben Nadel
Brett DeLine
Carl Von Stetten
Charlie Arehart
Dan Card
Daniel Garcia
Didier Lesnicki
Edgardo Cabezas
Jan Jannek
Jason Daiger
Jeff McClain
Jeremy Adams
Jonas Eriksson
Jordan Clark
Kai Koenig
Laksma Tirtohadi
Leon Seremelis
Matthew Darby
Matthew Clemente
Mingo Hagen
Patrick Flynn
Ross Phillips
Scott Steinbeck
Stephany Monge
Steven Klotz

You can see an up to date list of all sponsors on Ortus Solutions' Website
https://ortussolutions.com/about-us/sponsors