Articles by Ben Forta

Building an IM Bot Using ColdFusion

Wed, 07 May 2008 13:45:00 EDT

I recently brought a Google Talk bot that I put online at cfdocs@gmail.com. Google Talk users can add this user to their buddy list and then submit CFML tag and function lookups to it. (I've also brought Yahoo IM and AIM versions online as nickname cflivedocs, but more on those shortly). In this column I'll explain exactly what the IM bot is and what it does, and show you how to easily create a bot of your own.

ColdFusion AJAX Tutorial 6: Editable Data Grids

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 06:45:00 EDT

Like the previous incarnations of, the new AJAX enabled HTML grid allows data to be updated right within the grid. When it is used in edit mode, column values may be edited as needed, and rows may be deleted. Unfortunately, the current implementation of the HTML does not support inserting new rows. This is a pretty serious limitation, and one that we'll hopefully address in the future - for now you'll need to use another form to add new rows.

Adobe ColdFusion 8 Tips

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 18:00:00 EDT

Everyone is excited about ColdFusion 8; the blogs have been buzzing, feedback has been superb, lots of attendees expressed relief and gratitude at seeing such a compelling ColdFusion built in this new Adobe era - no complaints, no negative feedback, just real enthusiasm and excitement. The only frequently heard complaint was from users who want it now!

ColdFusion Helps "finalsite" Power Hundreds Of Educational Sites

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:15:00 EDT

Since 1998, finalsite has been bringing cutting-edge web design and web software to leading independent schools and organizations around the world. finalsite currently serves nearly 200 independent schools and a total of nearly 500 schools and educational organizations of all types. finalsite offers portals and modules as add-ons to the CMS, including modules for admissions, alumni, board, trustee & friends, faculty & Staff, parents, students, major donor, alerts, athletic, blogs, calendar, commerce, forms, intranet, multimedia, news, and registration. finalsite runs on ColdFusion MX7, and also utilizes Flash.

What's New In Adobe Flex 3?

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 10:30:00 EDT

Here is some more information about the first public beta release of Flex 3 (now available on Adobe labs), the first major deliverable for the open source Flex project (including a public bug base, and the beginning of public nightly builds). Some of the new features in Flex Builder 3 are ...

Get Your Fresh Adobe AIR

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 10:30:00 EDT

Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), formerly known as Apollo, is a cross-operating system runtime that allows developers to use their existing web development skills to build and deploy rich Internet applications to the desktop. And you can get it right now on Labs.

ColdFusion AJAX Tutorial 1: Auto-Suggest

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 22:45:00 EDT

I plan to post a series of examples demonstrating how to use the new Ajax functionality in ColdFusion 8 (many based on examples used during our recent usergroup tour). The first one I'll start with is the auto-suggest control. Auto-suggest is a modified text input box, one that displays suggestions as the user types. The auto-suggest control in ColdFusion 8 can be used in two ways, with local client-side data, and with asynchronous calls back to ColdFusion.

ColdFusion AJAX Tutorial 2: Related Selects

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 22:45:00 EDT

Many of us have built related select controls, forms with two (or more) drop down controls, where making a change in one control causes the available selections in the related control to change. For example, selecting a category in one control displays category products in a related control, or selecting a state in one control updates a related control with the cities in that state.

Working With JSON In ColdFusion 8

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 22:45:00 EDT

There have been some comments on other entries here regarding JSON. JSON is a data interchange format, and is primarily used as a way to package data for use with AJAX development. ColdFusion 8 (aka Scorpio) adds support for JSON in several ways.

Multi-Threaded Application Development In ColdFusion 8

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 18:00:00 EDT

ColdFusion MX7 introduced the ability to asynchronously spawn ColdFusion requests using an event gateway. While many take advantage of this capability, it has some significant limitations, the biggest of which is that threads can only be spawned, there is no way to monitor spawned threads or wait for them to finish. (The other limitation is that the functionality is only available in ColdFusion Enterprise).

Getting Started With The ColdFusion 8 Debugger

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 16:45:00 EDT

After a 7 year hiatus, ColdFusion once again has an interactive debugger, and this time it is built on top of Eclipse (and uses the same debugging interface as Flex Builder, and other Eclipse plug-ins). If you are interested in taking the debugger for a spin, here's what you need to know to get started: First of all, you need ColdFusion 8. If you don't have it yet, get it!

ColdFusion 8 - GetDriveInfo() UDF Powered By .NET

Thu, 31 May 2007 08:30:00 EDT

This is an example that I used when demonstrating ColdFusion 8 .NET integration on the recent usergroup tour, and as requested, I am posting it publicly. GetDriveInfo() returns a query containing specifics about the hard drives on your server, it returns all drives unless an optional drive letter is passed to it. GetDriveInfo() uses the .NET System.IO.DriveInfo class (which was introduced in .NET 2, and thus this example requires .NET 2 or 3).

Installing ColdFusion 8 Eclipse Extensions

Wed, 30 May 2007 12:45:00 EDT

The ColdFusion extensions for Eclipse include RDS panels, a Services Browser panel, a CF Log Viewer, RDS support, help, wizards, and of course the interactive debugger. These extensions are available for download along with ColdFusion 8 and will be distributed with the product when it ships. To install the Eclipse extensions, do the following

ColdFusion Blog - Scorpio and Apache Derby

Tue, 29 May 2007 11:15:00 EDT

So what does this have to do with ColdFusion? Well, Jason Delmore mentioned this in passing at cf:Objective (and few picked up on it), but we plan to include Apache Derby in ColdFusion Scorpio. The practical implication of this is that if you have to distribute an app that needs a database, you'll now have one that will work consistently on all platforms (no more having to tinker with different databases on different platforms).

Scorpio Makes Obtaining Database And Table Info Easy

Wed, 16 May 2007 13:45:00 EDT

This is a feature first demonstrated in CT yesterday, a new tag in Scorpio named which does just that, it returns information about databases (and data sources, and tables, and columns, and stored procedures, and more). This first code snippet shows how to obtain a list of tables in a specified data source (using the default database):

Ben Forta's Blog - Scorpio Presentation in New York City

Tue, 15 May 2007 17:00:00 EDT

One of the Scorpio features that we've been demoing to wide acclaim, is the increased control and flexibility in managing ColdFusion Administrator Access and RDS access. In ColdFusion today, there is a single password for each of these features, and a user with the Administrator password has full access to CF Administrator, and no access without it. The same is true of RDS.

Ben Forta's Blog - Scorpio File I/O Enhancements

Sun, 13 May 2007 18:30:00 EDT

At one of the usergroup sessions this week someone asked if there was a way to get file information (size, date time, etc.) easily using a function. I said they should use, but afterwards remembered that we did indeed add a new function to Scorpio called GetFileInfo() which returns a structure containing:

The FLEXifier Is Live

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 06:30:00 EST

Amidst the hustle and bustle leading up to MAX, I managed to steal some time to work on a skunkworks project. The idea was to let people experience the fun and instant gratification of Flex, without needing to download and install anything at all. And thus The FLEXifier.

MAX 2006: Day 1 Roundup

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:45:00 EDT

The opening keynote was superb, definitely one of our more exciting keynotes, and without a doubt the loudest. After several 'let's tease Ben' segments courtesy of Kevin and Shantanu, I got to present two segments. The first concentrated on ColdFusion. I talked about the CF/Flex integration in CFMX 7.0.2, showed the ColdFusion Flex Application Wizard, and then discussed 'Scorpio'.

A Couple Of New Adobe Bloggers You Should Know About

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 16:00:00 EDT

Marcel Boucher is the Product Manager in the Technical Marketing Team for the Adobe Enterprise and Developer Business Unit (whatever that means!). In practice, he's a hardcore techie who has been with Adobe for a decade or so, has been involved with LiveCycle for years, is a Java-head ...

Top 10 Reasons to Attend MAX 2006

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 19:15:00 EDT

It's been more than half a year now since Macromedia and Adobe combined, and during this time we've been hard at work leveraging the strengths of each of these companies to forge the new Adobe. One of Macromedia's greatest strengths was its user community and the resultant relationship between company and customer. Each and every year, since 1999, this relationship culminated in the event we affectionately call MAX.

Favorite Flex Builder Shortcuts

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 13:30:00 EDT

I've been spending quite a bit of time in FlexBuilder lately, and have started to rely extensively on some shortcuts. Some of these are actually Eclipse shortcuts, but regardless, these are some of my favorite:

WHIR: OHL Online Draft Powered By AJAX, ColdFusion And Oracle

Wed, 31 May 2006 15:45:00 EDT

Web Host Industry Review is running a story about how 'minor league hockey organization the Ontario Hockey League has begun conducting its draft online through an interface resembling those used in many online fantasy sports pools.' As per the story, the application saves time and money, and 'is built using AJAX, ColdFusion and Oracle'.

Spry AJAX Library Available On Labs

Thu, 11 May 2006 13:45:00 EDT

Spry is a JavaScript framework for creating AAJX applications, a library that makes it easy to incorporate XML data into HTML pages using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Want to learn more? Paul Gubbay has written an introduction to Spry. Spry examples are posted on Labs. And you can download Spry from Labs.

Flex Beta 3 And ColdFusion 7.0.2 Beta Released

Wed, 10 May 2006 10:15:00 EDT

Flex beta 3 is now available for download from Adobe Labs. Download new versions of Flex Builder, Flex Data Services, Charting, Flash Player, the ColdFusion/Flex connectivity bits, and the sample applications. The ColdFusion updater updated ColdFusion to 7.0.2. In addition to the Flex connectivity features, the updater also includes other goodies, including an updated reporting engine, a fix for ColdFusion generated Flash to address the IE EOLAS update, and more. Damon Cooper has posted details.

Free Flex, Get Your Hot Fresh FREE Flex!

Wed, 10 May 2006 10:00:00 EDT

In Flex 2 this all changes. A server is no longer needed to actually serve Flex requests. You may in fact want a server (Flex Data Services), but it is not actually needed. In Flex 2 you can write your code (MXML and AS) and then compile it, generating a complete SWF (in much the same way as Flash generates standalone SWFs from FLA files) which can be deployed on your HTTP server just like any other assets (HTML files, GIFs, CSS files, etc.). And the generated and deployed SWF can talk back to the server via HTTP call, AMF (Flash Remoting), and SOAP (Web Services) - and no, once again, this can be accomplished without needing Flex installed on the server.

Public Deployment Of Flex 2 Apps Requires Beta Flash 8.5 Player

Wed, 10 May 2006 09:45:00 EDT

We're being really open with the Flex 2 beta. Anyone can download the bits from the Labs site, and you are free to share the MXML/AS code you write and even deploy the Flex 2 apps that you create. Just keep in mind that in order to execute your apps, users will need to be running the Flash 8.5 player which is also currently in beta. As this player is a beta, it will not be automatically installed the way player updates usually are.

Flex Developer Derby Deadline Extended

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 11:00:00 EDT

The Flex Developer Derby is your chance to write cool Flex code and win sweet prizes (six chances to win a Xbox 360 and a 42' plasma TV to use it with). The deadline for the contest has been extended to May 31st - more time for you to create one of the winning entries!

Ben Forta's ColdFusion Blog: RSS Filtering Via Feed Rinse

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:00:00 EST

This one is intriguing, Feed Rinse allows you to define your RSS feeds, define filters, and then access a single filtered RSS feed.

Ben Forta's ColdFusion Blog: ColdFusion Flash Remoting Configuration in Flex 2 Beta 2

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 11:00:00 EST

Several of you have contacted me with problems using Flex beta 2 to connect to ColdFusion via Flash Remoting. A couple of the issues turned out to be configuration problems in flex-enterprise-services.xml (installed under WEB-INF\flex, and needed by the Flex compiler). Here is the file as it works for me:

Ben Forta's ColdFusion Blog: ColdFusion Flex Enterprise Services Based Session Tracker Online

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 10:45:00 EST

One of the examples that I have been using in my user group presentations is a ColdFusion Session Tracker. This application uses Flex Enterprise Services to push real time session details to a connected Flex client.

Ben Forta's ColdFusion Blog: ColdFusion Flex 2 Sample Application

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 11:45:00 EST

I have posted a sample ColdFusion powered Flex 2 application to Adobe Labs. The Phone Selector application is a very simple example of a ColdFusion powered Flex application. This sample application is deliberately small and highly focused so as to demonstrate ColdFusion Flex integration options. These include: Accessing ColdFusion Components via Flash Remoting The automatic conversion between ColdFusion Components and equivalent ActionScript objects

Event Gateways

Sat, 28 Jan 2006 17:00:00 EST

ColdFusion MX 7 has some exciting new functionality but the most important and revolutionary of these new features, hands down, is the event gateway. Event gateways are to application server environments what the CFQUERY tag was to database interaction.

Ben Forta's ColdFusion Blog: User Group Presentations In February And March

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 17:00:00 EST

It looks like I am going to get the opportunity to present to user groups all over the U.S. in February and March. The subject will be Flex 2, with an in depth look at what this means for us ColdFusion developers, and will include coverage of Flex Builder 2 as well as new ColdFusion Flex integration technologies.

Ben Forta's ColdFusion Blog: ColdFusion And SQL Server 2005

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 19:45:00 EST

Several users have wanted to know if ColdFusion supports SQL Server 2005. And the answer appears to be yes. I am using ColdFusion MX 7.01 with the default SQL Server driver, and am connected to SQL Server 2005, and so far so good. Microsoft does have a new SQL Server 2005 JDBC driver in beta, but thus far I have not installed it, and not needed to. All testing thus far has worked flawlessly, using basic statements as well as browsing tables and schemas via RDS.

Ben Forta's ColdFusion Blog: CNet News.com Sensationalism And Fearmongering, Part II

Fri, 06 Jan 2006 13:45:00 EST

Apparently CNet's News.com staff writers Declan McCullough and Anne Broache just can't resist the lure of sensationalism and fearmongering. After yesterday's blatantly inaccurate and highly inflammatory Government Web sites are keeping an eye on you (which undoubtedly generated lots of page views and thus advertising revenue for CNet), they followed up today with Part 2 entitled Congress' hands caught in the cookie jar.

Ben Forta's ColdFusion Blog: CNet News.com Writers Demonstrate Desire For Sensationalism and Poor Technical Understanding

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 21:00:00 EST

The text reads: 'agencies are prohibited from using persistent cookies or any other means (e.g., web beacons) to track visitors' activity on the Internet'. It does not prohibit all persistent cookies, only those used to 'track visitors' activity on the Internet'. The text does not explain what 'track' actually means, but the context is clear, cookies are prohibited when used for the tracking of user activity. Indeed, the text goes on to say that persistent cookies may be used (subject to approval and authorization) so long as the agency posts 'clear notice in the agency's privacy policy of the nature of the information collected, the purpose and use for the information, whether and to whom the information will be disclosed; and the privacy safeguards applied to the information collected.'. This clarifies things quite a bit, and explains what the concern is; the collection of information (and possible subsequent disclosure).

Ben Forta's ColdFusion Blog: Check Out FusionReactor

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 18:00:00 EST

FusionReactor is a really powerful add-on for monitoring, debugging and performance tuning your ColdFusion applications and servers throughout the development, testing and production cycle. It lets you look inside ColdFusion and take action when there are problems. Key features include: see running requests, stack trace and kill requests, system metrics and memory graphs, on the fly search and replace content fixing, page compression and the ability to capture requests/responses in XML! It even has an automatic Crash Protection feature that will notify you when something is wrong and act on it if you want. You can check it out under http://www.fusion-reactor.com

Ben Forta's ColdFusion Blog: SQL Injection Attacks, Easy To Prevent, But Apparently Still Ignored

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 18:15:00 EST

I was just on a web site (no, not a ColdFusion powered site, and no I will not name names) browsing for specific content. The URLs used typical name=value query string conventions, and so I changed the value to jump to the page I wanted. And I made a typo and added a character to the numeric value. The result? An invalid SQL error message.

CIO Magazine Misses The Point On ColdFusion Based Web Services

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 08:15:00 EST

CIO Magazine ran a story on Web Services last month. The story is presented as a quiz entitled 'Are You Ready For Web Services?' with 12 multiple choice questions, each with answers worth from 0 to 5 points. I have issues with a few of the supposed right answers, but question 8 really irks me: 8.I plan to develop Web services in: