This year's cf.Objective() is offering SIX pre-conference classes! You can choose from Building Secure CFML Applications, ColdBox: 100 Training, Developing Applications with ColdFusion 9 ORM, Getting Started with Flex / AIR Development, Mach-II / OOP from the Ground Up, Rapid Development with Model-Glue 3! Wow!

Some of these are one-day courses (Wednesday April 21st) and some are two-day courses (Tuesday April 20th and Wednesday April 21st).

Since I spent quite a bit of time wrestling with this over the last week, I figured this blog post may help others. First off, a caveat: I'm running the latest version of ColdBox 3.0.0 from SVN which is "almost" Beta 4 and the details of error handling have changed a little over the last few Betas (for the better).

ColdBox provides a number of ways to handle different types of errors. I'll cover the following options:

• onMissingAction
• onInvalidEvent
• ExceptionHandler
• onException
• MissingTemplateHandler

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Today I needed to update a custom tag we use to display form fields in a ColdBox app to treat the labels as i18n resource keys. Normally in a view you can just call getResource(key) and get back the translated value based on the current locale. Simple. Part of what makes ColdBox great for international apps!

However, you can't call getResource() inside a custom tag called from a view. You might think you can just do caller.getResource(key) but that fails with an exception that the variable controller is not defined. That's because your views run in the context of a CFC and the custom tag has its own context.

I initially came up with a slightly complicated way to pass things to the custom tag but I ended up having to make getResource() public in ColdBox's FrameworkSuperType.cfc. Not ideal. It worked but it was clearly a hack.

I complained to Luis about how hard this seemed to be and he sent me the following code snippet to use in a custom tag:

Remember that you're in the context of a CFC in your view? Well, getResource() is in the variables scope and it, in turn, references controller - which is in the variables scope of the view... or rather the context that the view is executed in. So by setting variables.controller in the custom tag, the call to caller.getResource() finds it and runs properly.

It's still a bit of a hack in my opinion but it's slightly more elegant than what I was trying to do so thank you Luis.

I'm posting it here so a) I can find it again in future and b) others may benefit from this.

I'm working on a ColdBox project right now for a client and, as some may have gathered from my occasional tweets, I've set up Hudson as a Continuous Integration server that pulls the latest code from git, restarts the test server instance, reloads the test database and automatically runs the MXUnit-based test suite, whenever someone commits files to the main git repository.

We have unit tests for individual components and we have integration tests for the ColdBox event handlers. Luis has provided pretty good documentation for writing such tests but one of the challenges I faced in getting some of the integration tests working was that they redirected to a new event!

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Luis Majano just announced ColdBox training the day before CFUnited. If you're going to CFUnited this year and you're interested in learning more about ColdBox from the creator of the framework, I can highly recommend this intense, one-day pre-conference training class!

I was privileged to sit in on parts of this course before cf.Objective() this year and was very impressed at the amount of material covered, the quality (and thickness!) of the handouts and the hands-on approach that Luis takes.

I've almost recovered from this year's cf.Objective() so I wanted to get my thoughts on paper before the memory blurs too much. As usual, it was an excellent conference with top-quality sessions from top-quality speakers. It's the only conference that I would pay to attend - and would pay out of my own pocket if I had to. I learn plenty of new things at cf.Objective() every year and the networking is phenomenal because it's a relatively small, friendly conference (around 200 attendees this year).

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In the absence of a printable schedule - sorry, Joe Rinehart says it's a problem with the Media3 hosting and he's been trying to get them to fix it for months! - here is my schedule for cf.Objective() 2009:

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Adobe has provided four of their five topic descriptions. You can see them on the cf.Objective() sessions page. They're covering Advanced ColdFusion 9 Server Administration, Advanced ORM in ColdFusion 9, Extending Adobe Bolt with CFML and ColdFusion 9 as a Service.

These topics have been added to the schedule - and the online scheduler (yes, we know the Printable Summary doesn't work - Joe is having an issue with his hosting company and hopes to get this fixed soon).

Another Adobe topic - covering Flex - is on the schedule but we do not yet have the title or description.

cf.Objective() 2009 is offering last year's price of just $629 for three days of all-new material - no repeats this year! - so it represents incredible value. Also, don't forget that there is a one-day ColdBox training course on the Wednesday before the conference!

Since Mark Drew was also covering cloud computing in London, we've decided to offer a version of my framework comparison talk instead.

I'm looking forward to that first week of June despite the crazy travel schedule (I arrive Sunday afternoon and fly back the following Saturday, hopping from Edinburgh to Heathrow on a horribly early flight).

One of the neat features of the Railo Administrator console is that you can easily install pre-packaged applications with just a few clicks. As part of my recent presentation comparing application frameworks, I installed ColdBox, ColdSpring, Mach-II and Model-Glue via the Web Administrator. There are a couple of "gotchas" about the current default settings for those installations that I wanted to cover in a blog post.

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Last night I presented to BACFUG on ColdBox, Mach-II and Model-Glue. I just posted the recording of the presentation to Charlie Arehart's UGTV. I've edited the recording to remove some of the chatter at the beginning and end which is why it will seem to jump in without my usual biographic introduction and cuts off at the start of Q&A.

BACFUG meets tonight in Alameda, hosted by Planitax (thank you!), and the featured speaker will be me!

I'll be looking at ColdBox, Mach-II and Model-Glue - talking about their similarities and their differences - and showing demos of each framework.

Please see the event listing on Adobe Groups for more details and to RSVP (you must login with your Adobe ID to RSVP!).

It's been a couple of weeks since I blogged about cf.Objective() 2009 so I figured it was a good time to remind people again. This year's conference is just five weeks away!

The early bird rate is over but the full price has been held at last year's $629 so it's excellent value!

If you've ever wanted to learn ColdBox, this is also a good opportunity with a full one-day pre-conference training class by Luis Majano himself for just $449.

This year's schedule features three full days of new sessions - last year, day three was mostly repeats of popular sessions but we had so many great submissions this year that we wanted to showcase as many as possible. We will repeat two of the most popular sessions in the last slot of day three, however, if people fill out the online Session Scheduler (linked from the schedule page) so we know what's popular!

The Adobe sessions covering Centaur / Bolt promise to be smokin' hot - Adobe are keeping them secret right now but we hope to be able to post details next week!

Finally, the hotel rate is guaranteed thru Monday. It may go up after that (we don't know - that's up to the hotel) so hurry up and book your rooms!

I said I'd look at Railo on Tomcat next but I figured I'd just sneak in a quick Express for Windows post before that so folks don't think I'm forgetting all those PC users.

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I think a lot of people are looking beyond Adobe's licensing model for ColdFusion and evaluating other options. Last year, when Broadchoice decided to use Amazon EC2 as our production deployment platform, we picked Railo to drive our CFML-based iPhone web application because of licensing issues. Whilst that has since been addressed (on a case-by-base basis by Adobe) enough to allow us to move our CF8-based CMS up to the cloud, we haven't had any problems with Railo and we're still using it in production. In fact, our WAR-based build and deployment process lends itself much better to Railo's smaller footprint than the huge-by-comparison WAR files from CF8.

Recently I've been getting a lot of questions from people about installing and configuring Railo on a number of systems. The general complaint I hear is that the documentation is somewhat lacking in this area. Of course, this is something that a large corporation with massive resources - such as Adobe - can be expected to score highly on (even though people complain about Adobe's installation and configuration documentation too).

Personally, I find Railo easy to install and configure but I'm fairly used to Java-based systems. That's not true for a lot of CFers so I figured I'd start a series of step-by-step posts going through a variety of installation and configuration scenarios for Railo. The two systems I have to experiment with are Mac OS X (Leopard) and Windows 7 Beta. I'm going to start with the very simplest development scenario and build up to a variety of production options.

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Back in Summer 2005, Peter J. Farrell asked is Mach-II dead? There had been very little action on the framework for ages and Model-Glue was the "new kid on the block" and was surging in popularity. A few days later, he proclaimed Mach-II is dead as a call to arms. The result was that Matt Woodward took over the Mach-II project and Peter became lead developer. Since then Mach-II has gone from strength to strength with 1.8 in development now and 2.0 in the planning stage.

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Luis Majano is offering a one day ColdBox training course on May 13th in the Hyatt (the cf.Objective() hotel). Cost $449. If you've already registered for cf.Objective() and want to add this training day, contact Cathy at Best Meetings (cathy at bestmeetings dot com).

You can read all about the training course on the ColdBox website and the cf.Objective() pre-conference page. You can now register for the training when you register for cf.Objective(). You can even attend the training without attending the conference (but why would you want to miss such an excellent conference?).

I know some folks were holding off registration until the pre-conference training was announced - now you have no excuse! :)

Remember that the early bird ends on March 31st. If you register at least one person from your company before then, other people from your company will be able to register at the same price even after that date (and if you send five or more people, you'll get an additional discount!). After March 31st, the regular price goes up to $629 - which is the same price as last year.

Kay Smoljak is running a series of interviews with framework developers and has a summary article on SitePoint that includes a survey of people's framework usage. It's going to be a great series of articles and makes interesting reading (FarCry and COOP have been covered so far with Fusebox, Mach-II, Transfer and ColdBox coming soon - and Model-Glue and ColdSpring et al to follow). The survey will only be open for a few more days so rush over and make your voice heard!

That's a question that crops up over and over again. I've blogged about it in the past. My answer - as I'm sure most folks would expect - is "it depends". The question came up on a mailing list again the other day and someone jumped in full of praise for ColdBox and then someone else said "Sean would say it depends" and went on to plug cf.Objective() as the "perfect place" to answer the question, wishing they could be there.

Here's what I said in response:

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This year's cf.Objective() has a lot of firsts. If you're not attending, you're going to miss out on a lot of world premier events!

We've worked hard to make cf.Objective() 2008 a "must see" event. We have a number of firsts this year that we're very proud of:

• The public release of Open BlueDragon on May 3rd!
• The public unveiling - and Alpha - of Model-Glue 3: Gesture!
• The public unveiling of Mate, the new Flex framework from AsFusion!
• The first conference to feature the latest rising star in the frameworks world: ColdBox - with an introductory session and a two hour, hands-on advanced workshop!
• The first public information about Swiz, the new Flex framework from Chris Scott of ColdSpring fame!
• Speaking of Chris Scott, we're the first conference to feature a two-hour, hands-on workshop for ColdSpring!
• We're also the first conference to feature a two-hour, hands-on workshop on agile development for ColdFusion developers by the leading light in automated process & testing, John Paul Ashenfelter!

How can you pass this up? $629 for three full days of brain-cramming, enterprise-level information in a hotel that's only $120 a night! Register Now! The room rate is only guaranteed for a few more days!

If you're a Mach-II user - or thinking of using Mach-II - you might also be interested in the pre-conference classes.

Want to help with the development of ColdBox? Fill out this survey about features. It covers plugins, interceptors and your general impressions of ColdBox. Completing the survey will help Luis create a better framework for everyone.

No fair! No fair! Brian Rinaldi leaks the upcoming Transfer 1.0 release along with the ColdBox-powered documentation wiki.

Transfer continues to evolve at a rapid pace. The SVN repository is light years ahead of the last "official" release (0.6.3) and 1.0 is "coming soon". Mark Mandel deserves huge kudos for his work on this project - and his intent to turn this into "Professional Open Source". In other words, making Transfer something we can rely on like we rely on JBoss or MySQL today.

Come to cf.Objective() 2008 to hear Mark talk in person about Transfer in two great sessions!

When I posted the session details yesterday, I forgot to post the four extended sessions. The website has been updated. Our four two hour tracks are:

• Flex 3 For ColdFusion Developers - Jeff Tapper
• Advanced Techniques With The ColdBox Framework - Luis Majano - hands on
• ColdSpring 1337 - Chris Scott - hands on
• Agile Bootcamp: What ColdFusion Developers Need To Know - John Paul Ashenfelter - hands on

We're very excited about these longer sessions as we often hear attendees complain that a really interesting talk just wasn't able to go into enough detail in a one hour session.

We will be the first conference to provide extensive coverage of the increasingly popular ColdBox framework, offering both an introductory one hour session and the above two hour hands on advanced session!