2022-12-27 Weekly News - Episode 177

Watch the video version on YouTube at https://youtu.be/EtTWj20ThRY

Hosts: 

Thanks to our Sponsor - Ortus Solutions
The makers of ColdBox, CommandBox, ForgeBox, TestBox and all your favorite box-es out there. 
A few ways  to say thanks back to Ortus Solutions:

 
Patreon Support ( prodigious )
Goal 1 - We have 43 patreons providing 100% of the funding for our Modernize or Die Podcasts via our Patreon site: https://www.patreon.com/ortussolutions.
Goal 2 - We are 39% of the way to fully fund the hosting of ForgeBox.io

Patreon Sponsored Job Announcement - Tomorrows Guides

Tomorrows Guides is a fast paced leader in the UK care sector, catering for care seekers across three areas: Care Homes, Nurseries and Home Care. We are often called the Trip Advisor of the care sector.


Current Roles - More in the job section

Senior Cf Developer – UK Only | Remote | Permanent | Circa £60k -  https://app.occupop.com/shared/job/senior-coldfusion-developer-5925b/

Automation Test Engineer – UK Only | Remote | Permanent | Crica £40k - https://app.occupop.com/shared/job/automation-test-engineer-a6545/

 
News and Announcements

ICYMI - CFML Blog Aggregator - CFBlogs.org 2.0 Released

The new version of CFBlogs ColdFusion Blog Aggregator has been released.

This version displays all of the blog posts in an attractive three-column card layout and displays the open graph image or a site image at the top of the post. The card images should allow the user to quickly convey the author of the post. Users can sort the grids by author by clicking on the card image.

https://www.gregoryalexander.com/blog/2022/12/5/CFBlogsorg-20-Released

ICYMI - ColdBox Master Class - Completely Free until the end of the Year!
Want to learn about modern web apps in ColdFusion (CFML)? We have our ColdBox Master Class for FREE until the end of the year!  A gift to the community, so we can all build amazing apps together! Watch all the videos!  Binge Coding Anyone? Enjoy!
https://www.cfcasts.com/series/cb-master-class?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=PODCAST&utm_campaign=LM-PODCAST


Webinar / Meetups and Workshops

Ortus Event Calendar for Google
https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0?cid=Y181NjJhMWVmNjFjNGIxZTJlNmQ4OGVkNzg0NTcyOGQ1Njg5N2RkNGJiNjhjMTQwZjc3Mzc2ODk1MmIyOTQyMWVkQGdyb3VwLmNhbGVuZGFyLmdvb2dsZS5jb20
 
Ortus Fridays are back in Full Effect in 2023

 

Conferences and Training

CF Summit Online

All the webinars, all the speakers from Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2022 – brought right to your screen. All sessions will soon be streamed online, for your convenience. Stay tuned for more!

MODERNIZING THROUGH EVOLUTION NOT REVOLUTION
Guust Nieuwenhuis
January 10, 2023 | 15:00 - 16:00 EST (1 hour)
Our company has grown over a quarter of a century, and across those years we have matured as developers and IT companies, refining both our tools and practices to a degree that the past seems hardly recognizable. Counter to this are the inevitable compromises, products of constrained timeframes, limited client budgets or strained resources. Projects inevitably lean more towards growth and depth than general modernization, to the point that they become difficult to maintain. So, what happens when the bugs add up and the monster emerges? Refactor? Rewrite from scratch? We’ve been involved in many such projects, internally and inherited both, and have learned there is no simple answer to the question “how do we move forward?” Through case studies and anecdotes I will explain what to look out for, from both a technical and business perspective.

EASIER API DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING - USE POSTMAN, WEBHOOK.SITE, AND NGROK TO ENHANCE YOUR WORKFLOW
Daniel Garcia
January 12, 2023 | 12:00 - 13:00 EST (1 hour)
Postman, Webhook.site, and ngrok are great tools that can really enhance your API development and testing workflow. PostMan is a cross-platform API Testing Tool with lots of awesome features, Webhook.site allows you to easily inspect, test, and automate any incoming HTTP request or e-mails, and ngrok enables you to expose a web server running on your local machine to the internet. These are must-have tools for any API developer (either creating or consuming). In short, these tools solve problems and best of all, they all have free versions which allow you to be very productive. My goal is that after this conference, you will start using at least one, if not all three, tools when you get home. I'm not saying using these tools will be life-changing, but I am also not not saying that either


SPREADSHEET MAGIC
Kevin Wright
January 19 | 12:00 - 13:00pm EST (1 hour)
Microsoft Office is the 'de facto' standard in most business environments. In this session we will look at different ways of integrating with one of the most used applications of the MS office suite, Excel. Come learn how to create, access and manipulate spreadsheets programmatically with the CFSPREADSHEET tag in ColdFusion. We will go beyond basic read and write features, and will delve into more advanced techniques like working with formulas and formatting, and creating multiple sheets. We will also look at examples of more complex types of spreadsheets by using lookups and even creating and embedding dynamic charts. FORMAT: Presentation with slides / live code review

OPPORTUNITIES FOR BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY AND NFTS IN THE REAL WORLD
Masha Edelen and Nick Juntilla
January 24 | 14:00 - 15:00pm EST (1 hour)
Understanding the value and practical use cases of Non-Fungible Tokens in modern business applications. Learn how to get started using the blockchain and building your Web 3 strategy.



Website for CF Summit Online
https://cfsummit-online.meetus.adobeevents.com/


VUE.JS NATION CONFERENCE
January 25th & 26th 2023
https://vuejsnation.com/


VUEJS AMSTERDAM 2023
9-10 February 2023, Theater Amsterdam
World's Most Special and Largest Vue Conference
CALL FOR PAPERS AND BLIND TICKETS AVAILABLE NOW!
Call for Papers: https://forms.gle/GopxfjYHfpE8fKa57
Blind Tickets: https://eventix.shop/abzrx3b5
https://vuejs.amsterdam/


Dev Nexus
April 4-6th in Atlanta
Georgia World Congress Center
285 Andrew Young International Blvd NW
Atlanta, GA 30313
USA

April 4th – 6th, 2023
https://devnexus.com/


VueJS Live
MAY 12 & 15, 2023
ONLINE + LONDON, UK

CODE / CREATE / COMMUNICATE

35 SPEAKERS, 10 WORKSHOPS
10000+ JOINING ONLINE GLOBALLY
300 LUCKIES MEETING IN LONDON

Get Early Bird Tickets: https://ti.to/gitnation/vuejs-london-2022 
Watch 2021 Recordings: https://portal.gitnation.org/events/vuejs-london-2021
https://vuejslive.com/


Into the Box 2023 - 10th Edition
May 17-19, 2023
The conference will be held in The Woodlands (Houston), Texas
This year we will continue the tradition of training and offering a pre-conference hands-on training day on May 17th and our live Mariachi Band Party! However, we are back to our Spring schedule and beautiful weather in The Woodlands! Also, this 2023 will mark our 10 year anniversary. So we might have two live bands and much more!!!
We are pleased to announce the call for speakers for the Into The Box Conference for 2023 is now officially open.
CFP CLOSES IN 3 DAYS!
https://www.intothebox.org/blog/into-the-box-2023-call-for-speakers
https://itb2023.eventbrite.com/


CFCamp is back
June, 22-23rd 2023
Marriott Hotel Munich Airport, Freising
Call for Speakers coming in the New year
https://www.cfcamp.org/


More conferences

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

https://github.com/scraly/developers-conferences-agenda


Blogs, Tweets, and Videos of the Week

12/26/22 - Blog - Ben Nadel - Setting And Clearing Nullable Values In A Data Access Layer In ColdFusion
As much as possible, I try to avoid NULL values in my database schema design. But, sometimes, NULL is actually helpful in reducing schema complexity. Unfortunately, ColdFusion only has partial support for null values (by default); which makes it a bit tricky to pass a "required-but-null arguments" into a data access layer (DAL) method. To play nicely with both ColdFusion and SQL, I've been leaning on "magic values" when interacting with the my data gateways.
https://www.bennadel.com/blog/4375-setting-and-clearing-nullable-values-in-a-data-access-layer-in-coldfusion.htm

 
12/27/22 - Blog - Ben Nadel - Considering Nullable Date Columns As A Representation Of State In SQL
In my post yesterday on clearing NULLable database values in ColdFusion, I was using the concept of "Task Management" as my exploratory context. And, in the task database table that I created for the demo, I included both an isComplete column and a completedAt column. In theory, I could have written the demo using a single column, completedAt, since a non-NULL value within the completedAt column would indicate that the Task in question had been completed. But, I ended up using two columns because I believe they actually answer two different semantic questions.

https://www.bennadel.com/blog/4376-considering-nullable-date-columns-as-a-representation-of-state-in-sql.htm

 
12/22/22 - Blog - Fusion Reactor - How AI Impacts APM
AI is rapidly transforming how businesses operate; our article “3 Ways To Achieve Digital Transformation With AI” explains that the technology simulates human intelligence to execute capabilities like learning, problem-solving, optical recognition, speech recognition, and planning.
One key area that AI is transforming is application performance monitoring (APM) software. Websites, mobile apps, and business software use APMs to monitor performance metrics. It ensures that your networks, servers, and database execute their functions without error. Such is the demand that the global market for APM software is projected to be worth $13.3 Billion by 2027. With more businesses taking advantage of the performance capabilities of AI, many are using it to improve their APM software. Below are three ways AI is making APM more efficient
https://www.fusion-reactor.com/blog/how-ai-impacts-apm/

12/21/22 - Blog - Ben Nadel - Fixing GitHub Gist's Sudden Case Of Line Wrapping
Yesterday, when I was giving my post on pagination using LIMIT and OFFSET in MySQL a once-over, I noticed that my code samples - which are powered by GitHub Gists - were rendering super wonky. When I inspected the runtime styles of the page, it appears that GitHub made a recent breaking change to the white-space property used within their "line of code" CSS class. To "fix" this (ie, turn off "word wrap" for my code snippets), I had to upload a CSS override to my blog.

https://www.bennadel.com/blog/4373-fixing-github-gists-sudden-case-of-line-wrapping.htm

12/21/22 - Blog - Jim Priest - Visual Studio Code Extensions
Mainly posting this for my own reference. I used Sublime Text for years and blogged about it quite a bit. A few years ago I finally bit the bullet and started using Visual Studio Code. I still think the CFML plugin in Sublime is the best for editing ColdFusion code, but when editing anything else besides CFML VSCode wins and switching between them isn’t really realistic (I tried).

I’m setting up a new computer and thought I’d make a list of my favorite VSCode extensions, settings, etc.
https://www.thecrumb.com/posts/2022-12-21-my-vscode-extensions/

12/22/22 - Gist - James Moberg - mergeQbSqlBindings
CFML UDF to be used with QB parameterized SQL string & binding array to generate reusable SQL

https://gist.github.com/JamoCA/bb681afd2eb1a0d6d380f3b714ccc138

12/22/22 - Tweet - James Moberg - cf_dump custom tag
Regarding using cfdump/writedump with strings, I prefer Lucee's #cfml approach over #ColdFusion.
An even better solution IMHO is the cf_dump CFTag by @Kwaschny. It encapsulates, identifies type, hints at length & has leading/trailing space indicators.
https://twitter.com/gamesover/status/1605985349234094080
https://github.com/kwaschny/cf_dump

 
12/20/22 - Tweet - Brad Wood - cfdump eval attribute
#TIL @lucee_server's CFDump has an "eval" attribute you can use instead of "var" which also defaults the "label" attribute to show you what it is dumping.
<cfdump eval="cgi.http_host">
which is the same as:
<cfdump var="#cgi.http_host#" label="cgi.http_host">
https://twitter.com/bdw429s/status/1605289984319279114
 
CFML Jobs

Several positions available on https://www.getcfmljobs.com/
Listing over 37 ColdFusion positions from 25 companies across 22 locations in 5 Countries.

0 new jobs listed this week

Patreon Sponsored Job Announcement - Tomorrows Guides

Tomorrows Guides is a fast paced leader in the UK care sector, catering for care seekers across three areas: Care Homes, Nurseries and Home Care. We are often called the Trip Advisor of the care sector.

Our Product team consists of over 20 individuals across the UK working remotely to expand and improve our offering with regular expansion in teams year on year. We work with both Coldfuson 2021 and Node.js/React in the Azure cloud, while also using both MSSQL and MongoDB databases. Currently we are looking for Senior Coldfusion developers and Automation Testers with training paths to node.js available as well.

We offer a wide variety of perks from our company wide £4k bonus scheme, and quarterly nights out with the whole company and the Product team to a 6% company pension contribution.

Current Roles in detail

All roles: https://www.tomorrows.co.uk/jobs.cfm

Senior Cf Developer – UK Only | Remote | Permanent | Circa £60k -  https://app.occupop.com/shared/job/senior-coldfusion-developer-5925b/
-  Minimum three years’ experience with ColdFusion
-  Database design, normalisation and ability to write/understand complex queries using MSSQL Server 2019
-  Familiarity with Git
-  Flexible skillset covering a wide range of development

Automation Test Engineer – UK Only | Remote | Permanent | Circa £40k - https://app.occupop.com/shared/job/automation-test-engineer-a6545/
-  Minimum three years experience with automated testing
-  Experience with automated testing tools such as selenium
-  Experience with API test tools such as Postman/Fiddler etc


Benefits of both roles:
-  £4,000 per annum discretionary company bonus scheme
-  25 days annual leave + bank holidays
-  6% employer pension contribution
-  Access to free perks and discounts through Perkbox
-  Long Service Awards
-  Cycle to Work Scheme
-  Company and Team nights out

Other Job Links

ForgeBox Module of the Week

Passifier
By Michael Born

A password strength checker based on zxcvbn4j. Measures the strength of a password and can give feedback or show how long the password would take to crack.

https://forgebox.io/view/passifier

VS Code Hint Tips and Tricks of the Week
Code GPT
By Daniel San

Using the official OpenAI API inside the IDE with Code GPT you can improve your code.

Features:

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=DanielSanMedium.dscodegpt


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

Don’t forget, we have Annual Memberships, pay for the year and save 10% - great for businesses.

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

Thanks everyone!!!