ORM - or why did I spend so much time with writing SQL by hand?

Some months ago I started playing around with ORM tools for ColdFusion - the two well known solutions in this area are Reactor and Transfer.
Until now most SQL code in our CFMX applications is written by hand or by a small component called "autoSQL", which is more or less a very stripped down version of an ORM tool. But as time goes by, it become more and more necessary to bring some standards in here and I am glad that I have found now a very good solution with Transfer.

If you need some arguments for using ORM, try these:

• Reduce time to write SQL
• Ability to switch to a new RDMS without touching the code
• More readable DB code
• Focus on the real important issues in your application (workflow, security)
  

How does the whole thing work?
First of all, you have to create some XML files which document your database and table structures. Transfer follows an package/object approach so that all the tables can be managed in an even more readable way.

The second step already happens in CFML - you play around with your data! Depending on the task you want to fullfill, several methods are available (Update, Save, Delete).

An example:

cfset var a_transfer = application.beanFactory.getBean( 'ContentTransfer' ).getTransfer()
cfset a_new_item = a_transfer.new( 'contacts.contact' )
cfset a_new_item.setentrykey( CreateUUID() )
cfset a_new_item.setname( arguments.name)
cfset a_new_item.setdescription( arguments.description )
cfset a_new_item.setdt_created( Now() )
cfset a_transfer.save(a_new_item)

The best way is to start with the included Blog demo application - there the whole concept is shown in a very good way. Take a look at the available presentations as well to gain a better understanding of the basic concepts.

Protect XML configuration files using .htaccess

In most of my projects, I create a mapping called /configurationxy to point to the configuration files (e.g. transfer XML files, mach-ii configuration and so on). This directory is not located under the webroot so no direct access is possible at all.
If this is not possible (e.g. due to shared hosting), never forget to protect your .XML files from being viewed and downloaded using e.g. the .htaccess feature of apache. In this case the file will be readable by the system itself but no user will be able to download the file. See an example configuration here.

Mach-II Framework 1.5 has been released

A new version (1.5) of the great open source MVC framework Mach-II has been released for production use. The most important change for me in this release is the introduction of XML includes, so that the main configuration - XML will stay clean.
To be honest, the learing curve of this framework was quite high for me in the beginning but now I don't want to miss the system any more.
One important note: Never put the business logic in the model components. I made this mistake in the beginning because it looked so damn easy but now I have created a sub directory named "cfc" and in this directory all the business logic is done.
So the perfect combination for me at the moment for a new project is:

• Mach-II framework
• ColdSpring for wiring CFC together
• TransferORM for DB access
• jQuery for interface operations

The perfect team for the next cool Web 2.0 application ;-)

escape vs encodeURIComponent

As long as you pass on only A-Z, 0-9 and so on to javaScript functions, encoding with escape is the proper method. As an Austrian company we have to deal with umlaute (special characters) a lot, however. Therefore in this situation encodeURIComponent is the best choice. Here you can find a good explanation and some examples concerning the differences.