2020-10-20 Weekly News - Episode 75

Watch the video version on YouTube at https://youtu.be/BouaFVQ75Yo



Hosts:

Gavin Pickin - Software Consultant for Ortus Solutions
Brad Wood - Software Consultant for Ortus Solutions


Thanks to our Sponsor - Ortus Solutions

Get live training from the makers of your favorite Box Product.
2 ColdBox Virtual Workshops coming in October and November
CFCasts is releasing new Free and Paid content every week


Patreon Support

We are at the 57% mark for fully funding all of 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


Lucee 5.3.7.43 STABLE has been released

Official release notes will be posted soon at dev.lucee.org #lucee #cfml



CommandBox 5.2.0-RC.1 Release Candidate ready for testing

It's been 4 months since we've had a CommandBox release, but we've actually been quite busy on a number of large improvements that took a while to settle down. Today we are pleased to announce a Release Candidate 5.2.0-RC.1 for you to help test. There's not usually a release candidate for "minor" CommandBox releases, but we've updated a lot of libraries and introduced some pretty big new features so we wanted to have a round of testing and feedback before we cut the final release.  There are 46 completed tickets for the 5.2.0 release.
https://www.ortussolutions.com/blog/commandbox-520-release-candidate-ready-for-testing



What to expect from CF Summit 2020 - CFAlive with Kishore

Kishore Balakrishnan talks about “Adobe CF Summit 2020 (What to Expect)” in this episode of the CF Alive Podcast, with host Michaela Light.
“...this situation is not right for having physical events this year. So we are going to make it online. And we are very excited to that this is going to be one of the biggest conferences for CF this year…”
https://teratech.com/podcast/adobe-cf-summit-2020-what-to-expect-with-kishore-balakrishnan/



Last chance to Sign up for the ColdBox 6 Hero to SuperHero API Edition with BDD testing Workshop

Luis has completely updated this talk to work with ColdBox 6, and has a few spots left for this Thursday and Friday.
Find out more and register today https://www.ortussolutions.com/events
Use Podcast10 to save 10% off the cost of the workshop.



Ortus October Webinar Announced - From Mura to ContentBox - Staying on the Open Source Upgrade Track

Friday, October 30th - 11:00 AM CDT (GMT -5:00)
In this session, we will walk you through some of the differences between Mura CMS and Contentbox - from administration to design and development. During the session we will demonstrate a full conversion of a Mura CMS site to Contentbox.
Hosted by Jon Clausen
Register today: https://www.ortussolutions.com/events/webinars



Conference Announcement - Deploy - by Digital Ocean

DigitalOcean’s first virtual global 24‑hour community conference.
Starts November 10 at 10am EST
What to expect:
 - Over 80 tech-focused sessions
 - New product announcements
 - Developer-focused breakout rooms
 - Special keynotes
 - Hourly goody giveaways
 - Fun virtual rooms
 - Free and easy to RSVP
https://www.digitalocean.com/deploy/



Online CF Meetup - "CF AMA: Ask Me Anything", with Charlie Arehart and Dan Wilson

Thursday, October 22, 2020
11:00 AM to 12:00 PM CDT
Join us for our first “Ask Me Anything” session, with your host Charlie Arehart and recent co-organizer Dan Wilson. We'll open the floor to any sort of CF-related questions you may have, whether about coding challenges or using CF features, configuration or tuning, deployment, security, the upcoming new CF version, recent CF versions, the future and state of CF, whatever.
https://www.meetup.com/coldfusionmeetup/events/274044740/



ICYMI - Online CF Meetup - "Building APIs with ColdFusion, Part 1: Start coding APIs today" w/ Gavin Pickin

Thursday Oct 15th at 12pm US Eastern Time, UTC-4.
As in recent weeks, this session will be held via a Youtube livestream (and streamed to it via Streamyard
ColdFusion, the powerful language we love, is still relevant in the world of single page apps and mobile apps, because we can power them with ColdFusion APIs.
In this session ( Part 1 ) we'll look at how you can easily add some API goodness into your existing app, even if it is legacy. We'll look at different approaches, and give you a way to start building your API today.
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdgRt8HIKD0
Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/coldfusionmeetup/events/273813364/



ICYMI - Mid-Michigan CFUG is going virtual - Nick Kwiatkowski will be speaking on Code Workflow

Tuesday, Oct 13th at 7 pm eastern
Learn about building dev, test and production environments.  He will show using this workflow to deploy an app to AWS container services.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/CFprogrammers/permalink/10157815289600036/
Recording: Waiting to see if they will post the recordings



ICYMI - Seattle CFUG - Leon O'Daniel on Integrating Your ColdFusion App with the Thinkific Platform.

Wednesday, October 14, 2020 - 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM PDT
Online via Zoom
Thinkific is one of the top platforms for online course delivery. Learn how to integrate your ColdFusion application with Thinkific's API.
https://www.meetup.com/Seattle-ColdFusion-User-Group/events/273472016/
Recording: https://www.seattlecfug.org/presentations/



Seattle CFUG - Hands-on deep-dive into interacting with the Thinkific API.

Wednesday, November 11, 2020
6:00 PM to 7:30 PM PST
Hosted by - William Frankhouser and Leon O'Daniel
This meeting features an hands-on deep-dive into interacting with the Thinkific API.
Thinkific is one of the top platforms for online course delivery. This meetup builds upon the concepts shared at the October 2020 Seattle ColdFusion User Group Meeting to provide a hands-on experience interacting with the Thinkific API.
https://www.meetup.com/Seattle-ColdFusion-User-Group/events/274050264/



HacktoberFest 2020

Support open source and pick a limited edition T-shirt or plant a tree.
Hacktoberfest® is open to everyone in our global community. Whether you’re a developer, student learning to code, event host, or company of any size, you can help drive growth of open source and make positive contributions to an ever-growing community. All backgrounds and skill levels are encouraged to complete the challenge.
Hacktoberfest is a celebration open to everyone in our global community.
Pull requests can be made in participating GitHub-hosted repositories/projects, classified with the Hacktoberfest topic.
You can sign up anytime between October 1 and October 31.
https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/
https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/hacktoberfest-update



CFCasts Content Updates

Configure your CFML Servers with CFConfig
- Managing Datasources
- Transfer Command

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



Conferences and Training



Percona Live Conference

October 20-21
Free Online Conference
https://www.percona.com/live/conferences



Ortus Workshops - Virtual Live training

October
- 2 day Workshop - October 22 - 23, 2020 - ColdBox 6 - Hero to Superhero - lead by Luis Majano
November
- 2 day Workshop - November 5-6, 2020 - Quick Workshop lead by Eric Peterson
https://www.ortussolutions.com/events

Podcast Code: PODCAST10 - 10% off



Deploy - by Digital Ocean

DigitalOcean’s first virtual global 24‑hour community conference.
Starts November 10 at 10am EST
What to expect:
 - Over 80 tech-focused sessions
 - New product announcements
 - Developer-focused breakout rooms
 - Special keynotes
 - Hourly goody giveaways
 - Fun virtual rooms
 - Free and easy to RSVP
https://www.digitalocean.com/deploy/



Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2020 - Replaces CF Summit West

Date: November 17-19
Location: Online
https://cfsummit.adobeevents.com/
Admission: Free
Some Speakers now listed: https://cfsummit.adobeevents.com/speakers/



Adobe ColdFusion Certification now available Online

Adobe Certified Professional: Adobe ColdFusion is an industry-leading certification program from Adobe, for ColdFusion developers. The course consists of 50+ online videos and is designed for professionals who have basic to advanced level proficiency in any computer language and basic understanding of how web pages work. Successfully passing an assessment test at the end of the program will reward participants with a badge and certificate from Adobe.
Introductory Offer: $499
Blog: https://coldfusion.adobe.com/2020/07/coldfusion-certification-online-now/
Register: https://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion-family/certificate.html



ITB Latam
December 3-4th
Live Virtual Conference in Spanish and English!!!
Price: $7.00
https://latam.intothebox.org/
https://www.ortussolutions.com/events


More conferences: https://confs.tech/



Blogs, Tweets and Videos of the Week



Podcast - CF Alive - What to expect from CF Summit 2020 - CFAlive with Kishore
Kishore Balakrishnan talks about “Adobe CF Summit 2020 (What to Expect)” in this episode of the CF Alive Podcast, with host Michaela Light.
“...this situation is not right for having physical events this year. So we are going to make it online. And we are very excited to that this is going to be one of the biggest conferences for CF this year…”
https://teratech.com/podcast/adobe-cf-summit-2020-what-to-expect-with-kishore-balakrishnan/


Blog - Ben Nadel - Checking To See If A Struct Is Of Type Ordered / Linked In Lucee CFML 5.3.6.61
One of the really excited features of ColdFusion is that it can create linked / ordered Structs. These are Structs (objects, hashes, maps) in which the key-iteration order matches the order in which the keys were originally defined. As I discussed last year, ordered Structs are perfect for MongoDB interactions, where the order of the key-iteration determines the underlying database interaction behaviors. The other day, I was building a Gateway wrapper to a MongoDB database; and, due to the importance of the Struct implementation, I wanted to see if I could, perhaps, require the MongoDB query documents to be Ordered / Linked Structs. ColdFusion doesn't provide decision functions around Struct type; so, I wanted to see how I might determine if a Struct is of type Ordered / Linked in Lucee CFML 5.3.6.61.
https://www.bennadel.com/blog/3909-checking-to-see-if-a-struct-is-of-type-ordered-linked-in-lucee-cfml-5-3-6-61.htm


Blog - Wil De Bruin - CbSecurity and JWT: when are you authenticated
Some days ago I was polishing my login procedure for my shiny new JWT cbsecurity. When my users are providing a valid username and password I wanted to update their lastLoginDate property, so I can see from my user list when they used the system for the last time.
https://shiftinsert.nl/cbsecurity-and-jwt-when-are-you-authenticated/


Live Stream - Matthew Clemente - Adding a CFML Language Definition to Prism.js (Learning by Trial and Error) [Part 2]
I'm picking up right where I left off last week, working on  a CFML language definition for Prism.js. Hopefully I make a bit more progress than I did last week!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5twVsKna6ak&feature=youtu.be


Blog - Ben Brumm - Hierarchical Data in SQL: The Ultimate Guide
Storing hierarchical data in a database is something we need to do occasionally.
While databases are very good at storing data about different types of records, hierarchical data is not something that is immediately obvious.
But there are several ways it can be done.
In this guide, you’ll learn what hierarchical data is, see several different methods for designing your tables along with queries for each method, pros and cons of each design, and recommendations for Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL.
Let’s get into the guide!
https://www.databasestar.com/hierarchical-data-sql/


Blog - Ben Nadel - Exploring Postmark Tags For Grouping Related Transactional Emails In Lucee CFML 5.3.6.61
At InVision, we use Postmark to send both our outbound transactional emails and handle inbound reply emails. We've been using them for over 8-years and it's been just a seamless, outstanding experience. In those 8-years, however, Postmark has added a number of features that we have yet to take advantage of. The other day, I looked at injecting debugging meta-data using SMTP headers. Today, I wanted to look at using Tags to group our transaction emails using the CFMail and CFMailParam tags in Lucee CFML 5.3.6.61.
https://www.bennadel.com/blog/3908-exploring-postmark-tags-for-grouping-related-transactional-emails-in-lucee-cfml-5-3-6-61.htm


Blog - Zac Spitzer - New Memory Scope Report - Lucee Performance Analyzer 1.0.0.12
I’ve added a new scope report which lists the size of the Server, Application and Session scopes
Available under Applications, in the Lucee Administrator
Note: this uses the experimental sizeOf() function, it isn’t 100% reliable, but still useful
https://dev.lucee.org/t/new-memory-scope-report-lucee-performance-analyzer-1-0-0-12/7517


Blog - Julian Halliwell - Forcing Lucee to re-check the physical paths of application defined mappings without a restart
This post is a follow up to one of Ben Nadel's from almost a year ago in which he described Confusion Over this.mappings And expandPath() Not Working In Lucee.
https://blog.simplicityweb.co.uk/123/forcing-lucee-to-re-check-the-physical-paths-of-application-defined-mappings-without-a-restart


Tweet - Brad Wood - CFML has some nice line by line readers
For CF apps reading in large text files & processing line by line, don't forget CFML has some very hand functions:
fileOpen()
fileIsOEF()
fileReadLine()
fileClose()
that allow you to only stream in one line of the file into memory at a time. It's faster and takes less RAM #CFML
https://twitter.com/bdw429s/status/1316783807505346561
https://twitter.com/bdw429s


Tweets - Seattle CFUG - Live tweets from their presentation
https://twitter.com/seattlecfug/status/1316543030074109957
https://twitter.com/seattlecfug


Blog - Steve Bryant - Safer and More Dynamic ColdFusion Page Caching with cf_MrECache
I looked at quite a while back and I liked the idea, but it lacked a little bit of flexibility that I wanted in pursuit of my caching strategy.
I recently covered MRECache and now I'd like to briefly cover a custom tag that is built around it.
At its heart, cf_MrECache just wraps up a block of text (HTML or whatever) that you want to cache and caches it just like cfcache, except that is uses MRECache under the hood. Of course, if that were all that it did then it would hardly be worth making in the first place.
http://www.bryantwebconsulting.com/blog/index.cfm/2020/10/14/cf_MrECache


Blog - Brad Wood - CommandBox 5.2.0-RC.1 Release Candidate ready for testing
It's been 4 months since we've had a CommandBox release, but we've actually been quite busy on a number of large improvements that took a while to settle down. Today we are pleased to announce a Release Candidate 5.2.0-RC.1 for you to help test. There's not usually a release candidate for "minor" CommandBox releases, but we've updated a lot of libraries and introduced some pretty big new features so we wanted to have a round of testing and feedback before we cut the final release.  There are 46 completed tickets for the 5.2.0 release.
https://www.ortussolutions.com/blog/commandbox-520-release-candidate-ready-for-testing



CFML Jobs

Several positions available on https://www.getcfmljobs.com/
Listing over 32 ColdFusion positions from 20 companies across 16 locations in 5 Countries since July 1st

0 new jobs this week. But we had 8 last week, yes 8!!!!

Brian Ghidinelli is also hiring a CF dev for a full-time remote position - more details to come

Ortus is hiring:Senior ColdFusion CFML Developer

At Ortus you will be:
- Modernizing web applications and helping companies move out of legacy hell
- Teaming up with ColdFusion Experts in order to solve complex web development problems.
- Testing and integrating new web technologies in order to create custom business implementations
- Pushed to innovate constantly and create new solutions to web development problems
- Leading project teams that deliver software that matters

US Timezone availability is a must
US Citizen or Resident or Work Visa is a must
https://www.ortussolutions.com/about-us/careers



ForgeBox Module of the Week

CommandBox Git protect

By Seb Duggan

As of CommandBox 5.1.0, `box install` in a project will overwrite any package (e.g. a Preside extension) where the current version does not match the installed version number - including downgrades.

This means that if your project has an extension which is a Git repo, which may likely have a placeholder such as VERSION_NUMBER which gets populated by a build script, it will always get overwritten, which is not ideal.

This module adds protection against this: if the existing package is a Git repo, it will never be overwritten.

box install commandbox-git-protect

https://www.forgebox.io/view/commandbox-git-protect



VS Code Hint Tips and Tricks of the Week

Vscode-coldbox by Ortus Solutions

ColdBox Platform Support for Visual Studio Code
This bundle includes functionality not only for ColdBox MVC, but also for WireBox, CacheBox and LogBox.
Code Insight, Code Skeleton Snippets, Handler Code Snippets, ORM Code Snippets, WireBox Code Snippets.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ortus-solutions.vscode-coldbox



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

Ben Nadel
Brett DeLine
Carl Von Stetten
Charlie Arehart
Da Li
Dan Card
Daniel Garcia
David Belanger
Didier Lesnicki
Don Bellamy
Edgardo Cabezas
Erick Hoffman
Gary Knight
Giancarlo Gomez
Jan Jannek
Jason Daiger
Jeff McClain
Jeremy Adams
Jonas Erickson
Jordan Clark
Joseph Lamoree
Kai Koenig
Laksma Tirtohadi
Mario Rodrigues
Matthew Darby
Matthew Clemente
Mingo Hagen
Ross Phillips
Ryan Hughes
Scott Steinbeck
Shawn Oden
Steven Klotz
Synaptrix
Yogesh Mathur

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