2024-11-05 Weekly News — Episode 222

Watch the video version on YouTube at

Hosts: 

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

Patreon Support ()

We have 59 patreons:
https://www.patreon.com/ortussolutions.


News and Announcements

Github Universe

This year marks our tenth GitHub Universe—and one theme has remained constant: our focus on developers and the developer experience. Over 10 years, that developer experience has evolved from inventing the pull request to building the world’s most widely adopted AI coding tool, GitHub Copilot.

Today, our platform serves more than 100 million developers, and through the power of this interconnected community combined with generative AI, we are enabling every developer to build, release, scale, and secure software rapidly.

Recap: https://github.blog/news-insights/product-news/universe-2024-previews-releases/

Videos: https://githubuniverse.com/?utm_source=github&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=24bannerheader16li-newsroom-press-releases-github-universe-2024

New Releases and Updates

BoxLang Betas — Beta 20-21

10/25/24 - BoxLang 1.0.0 Beta 20 Launched
6 New Features
11 Improvements
15 Bugs Fixed
https://www.ortussolutions.com/blog/boxlang-100-beta-20-launched


11/1/24 - BoxLang 1.0.0 Beta 21 Launched
4 New Features
5 Improvements
14 Bugs Fixed
https://www.ortussolutions.com/blog/boxlang-100-beta-21-launched

Webinars, Meetups and Workshops

Boost Your Confidence & Silence the Inner Critic: Overcome Imposter Phenomenon!
Sac Interactive Tech Meetup • Sacramento, CA
Wed, Nov 20 · 6:00 PM PST
https://www.meetup.com/sacinteractive/events/303708476/?eventOrigin=home_page_upcoming_events$all


CFCasts Content Updates

https://www.cfcasts.com

Introducing SocketBox

This innovative library simplifies WebSocket integration, making real-time features and message handling a breeze. Build engaging applications with SocketBox – get started today! #CFML #BoxLang #WebSockets #RealTime

https://www.cfcasts.com/series/ortus-bytes/videos/introducing-socketbox

Conferences and Training

CF Summit India 2024
Join us for the Adobe ColdFusion India Summit, a premier, completely free event where developers, industry experts, and thought leaders come together to explore the latest in ColdFusion and web development. Network with peers, meet the ColdFusion engineering team, get your questions answered, discover strategies to boost your career and grow your business—all at no cost.
Price: Free
December 7, 2024
2 Cities: Bengaluru and Noida
Register: https://cf-indiasummit-2024.attendease.com
 
ITB 2025

CFCamp 2025
May 22, 23rd - 2025
Atomis Hotel Munich Airport
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/


Blogs, Posts, and Videos of the Week

11/4/24 - Blog - Ortus Solutions - Thanksgiving Day deals: Access Exclusive Discounts Until November 30th!
Prepare for the Ortus Thanksgiving Day Deals! This is your chance to enhance your development journey with amazing deals catered to everyone—from experienced developers to tech aficionados. Our unique offers are crafted to assist you in reaching your objectives while conserving your budget!

Don't Let These Incredible Offers Slip Away!
Utilize the code THKSGIVING24 at checkout to take advantage of these fantastic discounts before they end
https://www.ortussolutions.com/blog/thanksgiving-day-deals-access-exclusive-discounts-until-november-30th

Applies to:
ColdFusion Consulting
CFCasts
Couchbase/Redis Lucee Extensions
BoxLang Visionary License


11/1/24 - Blog - Ortus Solutions - Ortus October Newsletter 2024
Welcome to the October Ortus Newsletter! This month is packed with exciting content designed to boost your web development productivity, deepen your technical knowledge, and empower your development projects. We’ve packed this edition with cutting-edge news, insightful updates, and a lineup of valuable resources across our platforms.
https://www.ortussolutions.com/blog/ortus-october-newsletter-2024

10/31/24 - Blog - Ben Nadel - Safe-Navigation Operator Swallows Method Errors In Adobe ColdFusion 2023
This morning, I was running into a strange null-reference error in my ColdFusion dependency injector (DI). A CFProperty-based component wasn't being injected; but, no error was being thrown or logged. After commenting-out a bunch of code, I finally narrowed it down to a bug in ColdFusion. If you use the safe-navigation operator to invoke a component method, any error thrown in that method will be swallowed up and the method will be short-circuited. I confirmed this behavior in both Adobe ColdFusion (ACF) 2021 and 2023.
https://www.bennadel.com/blog/4721-safe-navigation-operator-swallows-method-errors-in-adobe-coldfusion-2023.htm

10/31/24 - Blog - Pete Freitag - Fixinator's New Compatibility Scanner
Upgrading to the latest version of ColdFusion can be stressful. What will break? What might start to act differently? While Adobe generally prioritizes backward compatibility, there are always nuances to consider. For instance did you know that the meaning of the D date mask character changed in ColdFusion 2021?
https://www.petefreitag.com/blog/coldfusion-compatibility-scan/

10/30/24 - Blog - Ortus Solutions - Future-Proof Your ColdFusion Apps!
In today’s fast-evolving tech landscape, businesses managing ColdFusion applications (whether Lucee or Adobe) face multiple challenges, from outdated systems and performance bottlenecks to increasing security vulnerabilities. Ensuring that your ColdFusion applications remain efficient, secure, and scalable is critical for staying competitive. At Ortus Solutions, we specialize in helping organizations tackle these challenges with a comprehensive approach to ColdFusion consulting, performance optimization, and modernization.
https://www.ortussolutions.com/blog/future-proof-your-coldfusion-apps

10/30/24 - Blog - James Moberg - ColdFusion Wrapper for Zint Barcode Generator
I referenced Zint Barcode Generator in a post from 2020 and included a very basic command line syntax for a QR code. Zint is able to generate 50 different barcode formats and I haven't found a java library that is capable of supporting the same formats or outputting files as BMP, EPS, GIF, PCX, TIF, EMF, PNG or SVG. (NOTE: I prefer to save as SVG and then use the static file when generating PDFs using WKHTMLTOPDF.)
https://dev.to/gamesover/coldfusion-wrapper-for-zint-barcode-generator-15mc


10/29/24 - Blog - Ortus Solutions - VS Code BoxLang Extension: The BoxLang Debugger
While we built our debugger with BoxLang in mind it has been part of our vision from the start that CFML would run seamlessly on the BoxLang runtime as well. That means you get the benefit of our debugger as long as you run your code on BoxLang!
https://www.ortussolutions.com/blog/vs-code-boxlang-extension-the-boxlang-debugger

10/28/24 - Blog - James Moberg - structToTable - Generate HTML/Text Output for Display/Email
When working on new logic and I want to dump a variable, I often use an internal CF_DumpLite CFC/CFTag that we developed that minimizes HTML output, honors original form & query column order & case, redacts CC values and is nonce aware. If I need to view the data types, I switch it up to use the cf_dump CFTag by Alexander Kwaschny.
https://dev.to/gamesover/structtotable-generate-htmltext-output-for-displayemail-1mk4

Allows sorting of columns

10/28/24 - Blog - Ben Nadel - Feature Flags Book Playground, Videos, And Code
As a companion piece to my Feature Flags Book, I've created a feature flags playground to provide my readers with some lightweight hands-on experience. It's great to read about a concept in a book. But, some concepts don't become tangible until you can roll your sleeves up and get little bit dirty. This feature flags playground gives people an opportunity to define feature flags, add rules, target cohorts, and incrementally release new features to a demo user-base. The primary goal of this playground is to add dimension to the content of the book; but, if you want to see the underlying code, I've made it all available on GitHub—it's built in ColdFusion, Parcel.js, Alpine.js, and Less CSS and runs on Docker.
https://www.bennadel.com/blog/4719-feature-flags-book-playground-videos-and-code.htm

10/26/24 - Blog - Ben Nadel - Playing With Window Functions In MySQL 8
Earlier this week, I went through the High Performance SQLite course by Aaron Francis. Among the many SQL topics that he covered, he included something that I've never tried before: Window Functions. These functions allow you to calculate data based on the current row. These functions behave somewhat like a subquery that is locked-down to the existing result-set. And, which can be further subdivided using a partition column.
https://www.bennadel.com/blog/4718-playing-with-window-functions-in-mysql-8.htm

10/23/24 - Blog - Adobe Portal - Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2024: Speaker Presentations & Session Decks
A heartfelt thank you to all our speakers, sponsors, and attendees for making the Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2024 a fantastic success! Your energy, insights, and support made this event truly special.
Whether you joined us live or couldn’t catch every session, we’ve got you covered. Below is the list of all the speaker presentations and session decks. Dive in, explore, and keep the learning going!
We’ll continue to update this blog as more content becomes available, so be sure to bookmark it and stay tuned
https://coldfusion.adobe.com/2024/10/adobe-coldfusion-summit-2024-speaker-presentations-session-decks/

10/22/24 - Blog - Ortus Solutions - ColdBox Free Tip 4 - Using a Struct for Query Strings
ColdBox gives you powerful ways to build cleaner, more maintainable code, especially when dealing with query strings. In this tip, we’ll explore how to pass a struct into the buildLink() method, making your code easier to read and manage.
https://www.ortussolutions.com/blog/using-a-struct-for-query-strings

BoxLang Corner

11/4/24 - Blog - Ortus Solutions - BoxLang Newsletter: October 2024
Welcome to the October edition of the BoxLang Newsletter! **This month has been packed with exciting updates, new features, and enhancements that continue to shape BoxLang into a robust and versatile programming language. In this edition, we highlight the latest beta releases, new integrations, and key features that have been introduced.
https://www.ortussolutions.com/blog/boxlang-newsletter-october-2024

11/1/24 - Blog - Ortus Solutions - BoxLang 1.0.0 Beta 21 Launched
This release brings another round of powerful tools and refinements to the BoxLang community, making development more dynamic and robust than ever. We’ve added new capabilities for debugging and tracing, expanded context-sensitive controls for thread management, and introduced new methods for fluent attachment handling.

For deeper flexibility, our improvements enhance configurability, streamline session control, and add deeper levels of JSON serialization management. Plus, we’ve squashed a wide range of bugs, enhancing stability across database connections, date handling, and runtime compatibility with CFML.

In addition, CSRF Token functionality is now provided via the bx-csrf module.
https://www.ortussolutions.com/blog/boxlang-100-beta-21-launched


10/25/24 - Blog - Ortus Solutions - BoxLang 1.0.0 Beta 20 Launched
This release brings another round of powerful tools and refinements to the BoxLang community, making development more dynamic and robust than ever. We’ve added new capabilities for debugging and tracing, expanded context-sensitive controls for thread management, and introduced new methods for fluent attachment handling.
For deeper flexibility, our improvements enhance configurability, streamline session control, and add deeper levels of JSON serialization management. Plus, we’ve squashed a wide range of bugs, enhancing stability across database connections, date handling, and runtime compatibility with CFML.
https://www.ortussolutions.com/blog/boxlang-100-beta-20-launched

CFML Jobs

Several positions available on https://www.getcfmljobs.com/

Listing over 20 ColdFusion positions from 20 companies across 14 locations in 5 Countries.

2 new jobs listed in the last two weeks

Full-Time - Senior Developer at Remote - United States
Posted Nov 03
https://www.getcfmljobs.com/viewjob.cfm?jobid=11648

Contract - ColdFusion Developer (Mid/Senior) at McLean, VA - United States
Posted Nov 02
https://www.getcfmljobs.com/jobs/index.cfm/united-states/CFDevMidSenior-at-McLean-VA/11647


ForgeBox Module of the Week

Commandbox-BoxLangFeatureAudit

The Boxlang Feature Audit module puts a CommandBox module around the built in Boxlang Feature Audit in the core Boxlang Jar
https://www.forgebox.io/view/commandbox-BoxLangFeatureAudit

VS Code Hint, Tip, and Trick of the Week

GitHub Copilot - Your AI pair programmer

GitHub Copilot is an AI pair programmer tool that helps you write code faster and smarter.
When you install Copilot in Visual Studio Code, you get two extensions:
GitHub Copilot (this extension) - Provides inline coding suggestions as you type.
GitHub Copilot Chat - A companion extension that provides conversational AI assistance.

https://github.com/newsroom/press-releases/github-universe-2024

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.copilot

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, 

Their Contributions fund the cloud infrastructure at our community relies on like 

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 everyone.

And many more Patreons - up to 59 now!!!!!
You can see an up to date list of all sponsors on Ortus Solutions' Website
https://ortussolutions.com/about-us/sponsors

Thanks everyone!!!