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Best Practices Question In Regards to Instancing Multiple CFCs That Need to Talk to Each Other

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 17:36:54 GMT

Hello CF Fans,

I have a “best-practices” question in regards to how you recommend instancing CFCs that all need to talk to each other in a given project.

Let’s say for example you have a web application that has a bunch of different modules in it:

Online Calendar
Online Store
Blog
File Manager (uploading/downloading/processing files)
User Accounts

Each of these modules is nicely organized so that the functions that pertain to each module are contained within separate CFC files:

Calendar.cfc
Store.cfc
Blog.cfc
Files.cfc
Users.cfc

Each CFC contains functions appropriate for that particular module. For example, the Users.cfc contains functions pertaining to logging users on/off, updating account info etc…

Sometimes a CFC might need to reference a function in another CFC, for example, if the store (Store.cfc) needs to get information from a customer (Users.cfc). There are a couple ways that I’ve been playing with accomplishing this:

Within a CFC, instance the other CFC’s that you’re going to need:

<cfcomponent>

<cfset usersCFC = CreateObject(“component”,”users”) />
<cfset filesCFC = CreateObject(“component”,”files”) />

This approach seems to work for the most part unless some of the instanced CFC’s also instance the CFC’s that instance them. For example: If Users.cfc instances Files.cfc and Files.cfc also instances Users.cfc. I’ve run into problems with occasional dreaded NULL NULL errors with this probably because of some type of infinite recursion issue.

2. Another way I’ve tried to approach this is to instance any needed CFCs inside a CFC’s function scope (this seems to prevent the recursion issues):

<cfcomponent>

<cfset var local = structNew() />

<cfset local.usersCFC = CreateObject(“component”,”users”) />
           <cfset local.filesCFC = CreateObject(“component”,”files”) />

My concern with this approach is that it may not be as efficient because you wind up instancing the same CFC’s multiple times for each function that needs it but it does solve the problem of recursion by isolating the CFCs to their respective functions.

One thing I thought of, based on some things I’ve seen online and articles on object oriented programming, is taking advantage of a “Base.cfc” which uses the “extends” property to instance all of the CFC’s in the application. However, I’ve never tested this type of setup before and I’m not sure if this is the ideal way to allow all my CFC’s to talk to each other especially since I believe using extends overwrites functions if any of them share a common function name (e.g. “init()”).

How do you tackle this type of setup in your own applications? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

ColdFusion Builder 3 Code Coloring Bug

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 25 Sep 2014 17:00:42 GMT

Hello CFBuilders,

I encountered what I believe is a bug within CFBuilder 3 (standalone and Eclipse plugin) where code coloring breaks after you insert a comment in a function with named arguments. To replicate the issue copy/paste the following code in CF Builder:

<cfset myFunction(

argument1 = "strawberries",

argument2 = "bananas",

argument3 = "blueberries",

argument4 = "pineapples"

) />

You should see argument3,argument4, and the closing bracket are colored incorrectly. If you encounter the same issue and you'd like to see this fixed please feel free to vote for this bug here:
Bug#3831825 - Code Coloring Breaks When Comments Used Within Function with Named Arguments

It should be noted that Dreamweaver can handle this type of code coloring situation fine.

How to turn off automatic variable code suggest for a single page?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 17:40:32 GMT

Does anyone know how to turn off the code assist feature where CFBuilder tries to assist you by listing all the variables on the page? I have a CFC with over 3000 lines and it causes CFBuilder to hang/freeze like you wouldn't believe. I'd like to turn off this feature for large files (or at least see if I can tune the feature to be smarter about what variables it suggests).

Does anyone know how to disable this feature on a specific template or turn this feature off altogether? Note: I do want to keep the tag attribute suggestion if possible.

Dynamic Implicit Structure Creation Question

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 10 Jul 2014 20:00:56 GMT

Hello,

I was curious if it was possible to dynamically create an implicit structure where you might occasionally want to omit some keys from being added to the structure?

I played around with using ternary operators in the structure creation with no luck.

<cfset temp = {

name = "Dave",

(1 IS 1 ? "" : Job = "Superhero")

} />

The only way I can see doing this now would be to create the structure and then use StructKeyDelete on the keys I want to remove OR build structures the traditional way and cfif my way around the keys I don't want to add."

Ex: <cfset structKeyDelete(temp,"Job") />

</cfif>

Does anyone know how to create dynamic keys in a structure while defining it implicitly?

Thanks!

Database Design Question: What are the consequences of using a "One Table to Rule Them All" Approach?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 01:06:05 GMT

I have a MSSQL database schema question that I’d love to have the community's opinion on. I’m looking for the optimal way of storing one-to-many relationships for a variety of table combinations.

I’m familiar with the basic idea of relationship tables (the green table links Table1 to Table2):

Table1 Table2 Table1Table2

Table1ID Table2ID Table1Table2ID

Table1ID

Table2ID

What I’m trying to do though is to be able to link multiple tables together using a single relationship table. I’m using my server-side code to specify which tables are being linked (green table is relationship table and the red column indicates which table is being linked to Table1):

Table1 Table2 Table3 Table1TableX

Table1ID Table2ID Table3ID Table1TableXID

Table1ID

TableXID

TableX

In the above example, I’m using the column “TableX” to define which tables (Table2 or Table3) is being joined to Table1. This brings me to my first question: What are the consequences of doing things this way? Am I going to encounter a serious performance hit when records get into the 1000s+ ? I realize that I’ll have to enforce table integrity on the application layer and I’m okay with that aspect. I've been developing my application like this for quite a while now and so far it has worked out pretty well in keeping my database structure simplified.

Now I’m looking to simplify things even further and create a “one table to rule them all” approach. Basically, I’d like to create 1 relationship table that would control the relationships between all of my other tables. In this method I specify in the column values which tables are being connected. For example: (green table below is the relationship table and red tables point to the tables that are linked)

Table1 Table2 Table3 Table4 Relationships

Table1ID Table2ID Table3ID Table4ID RelationshipsID

ParentTable

ChildTable

ParentID

ChildID

Am I totally crazy here? Or would a setup like this be a viable solution for linking multiple tables together in a single place? So far the only consequences that I see are that my SELECT queries are a little more complex because I have to specify which tables are linked. For example, a simple joined query which looked like this:

SELECT *

FROM Table1 t1 INNER JOIN

Table1Table2 tt ON t1.Table1ID = tt.Table1ID INNER JOIN

Table2 t2 ON tt.Table2ID = t2.Table2ID

Now becomes:

SELECT *

FROM Table1 t1 INNER JOIN

(SELECT ParentID, ChildID

FROM Relationships

WHERE ParentTable = ‘Table1’

AND ChildTable = ‘Table2’

) tt ON t1.ParentID = t1.Table1ID INNER JOIN

Table2 t2 ON tt.ChildID = t2.Table2ID

So aside from having my queries be a little more complex, the database structure looks a lot cleaner when it’s all diagramed out. Do you think this is a bad idea to develop a database this way? If so, why?

Thanks for taking the time to check this out… I’d be curious to know your thoughts.

Getting Started with CFBuilder - A Question About Project Settings

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 03:29:14 GMT

Hello All,

I'm just getting my feet wet with CFBuilder and giving it a spin after over a decade's worth of experience with Dreamweaver and I have a question about setting up my work environment.

First of all, I have two computers that I mainly work from. My home desktop computer, and a laptop for when I'm on the road. I keep all of my web site project files syncronized between the two computers using Dropbox.

I've noticed that when I create a new project in CFBuilder it stores a few files in my project root like ".project" and "settings.xml". It looks like "settings.xml" stores information about which CFBuilder web server should be used for the project. Unfortunately this messes things up for me a bit because on my desktop a web site project url might be: http://desktop/myProject/ and on my laptop the project url could be http://laptop/myProject.

The reason this isn't a problem in Dreamweaver is because dreamwevaer stores its configuration/preferences outside of my project folders so I can essentially define any testing server I want for both the desktop and laptop.

Is there a way to configure CFBuilder to store project settings outside of the project folder? Or does anyone have a suggestion for someone like me who syncronizes their project files from their laptop to their desktop?

Thanks in advance for helping out a CFBuilder noob.

Strange Behavior When Working with Nested Query Objects

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 01:57:17 GMT

I just posted a comment over on Ben Nadel's site about this issue but I wanted to get some feedback from my fellow ColdFusion developers to see if anyone else has ever experienced this issue:

I have a function within a CFC that creates a query object and then nests another query object inside it (masterQuery > subQuery). The CFC returns the query object and to make things easier I loop through the query columns and bring everything into the local VARIABLES scope using the following format: "#a#" = masterQuery["#a#"] where "a" is the name of the query column.

After I had all of the query columns in the VARIABLES scope I tried to run a QofQ on the subQuery and low and behold I got an error message:

"coldfusion.sql.QueryColumn cannot be cast to coldfusion.sql.QueryTable"

However, when I tried a different method for bringing the masterQuery columns to the VARIABLES scope, I was able to get it to work: "#a#" = evaluate('masterQuery.#a#')

After doing some playing around using GetMetaData().getName() to determine what ColdFusion was seeing when a variable was set using masterQuery["#a#"] vs evaluate('masterQuery.#a#') I learned that ColdFusion continues to see the variable as a type: "QueryColumn" instead of its actual type (string, query, array, struct, etc...).

Currently the only way I can get CF to recognize the proper type is to use the evaluate() function. What's even more annoying is that you can't reference columns in the nested query so masterQuery.subQuery.TestColumn1[2] produces an error message.

I wonder if this a bug within ColdFusion 10. I haven't tested it in any earlier versions and after extensive searching I couldn't find anyone else with a similar problem. Regardless I thought it was pretty interesting and noteworthy.

If you want to see some sample code to generate this error for yourself, here it is:

http://pastebin.com/pBkjUtxc

Message was edited by: Henweigh99

Are there any negative consequences to instancing a CFC from within another CFC? (i.e. nested CFCs)

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 16:57:38 GMT

Hello CF Superheroes,

I'm playing around with CFCs and I've run into a situation where I would like to start calling methods from some CFCs from within another CFC (nesting). My first instinct was to simply instance the CFCs from within the parent level CFC but I'm not sure ColdFusion would like it if I nest CFCs like that. I've read about some people getting the dreaded "null null" error at times.

I'm aware of the "extends" property from within the <cfcomponent> tag but the problem is that you wind up having to instance all of the extended CFCs in the calling CFM template anyway. It seems like it would just be easier to call the CFCs from within the CFCs that need to be "extended".

For example, here's what I'm thinking of doing:

In my main template index.cfm:

Then within master.cfc:

<cffunction...>

</cfcomponent>

Otherwise (as I understand it) if you wanted to use the "extends" property you would have to do it like this:

In my main template index.cfm:

Then within sub.cfc:

<cffunction...>

</cfcomponent>

I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you nest CFCs or "extend" them efficiently.

Dave

Performance hit from loading many variables on each request

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:26:59 GMT

Hello fellow CFheads,

My web application is customized for each of my clients based on a preferences file that gets called at the beginning of each page via Application.cfm. The file is basically just a <cfscript> containing a list of variable names/values that sets various settings, values, and switches features on or off.

For example:

Sitename = “my web site”

ActivateCalendar = “yes”

ActivateOnlineStore = “no”

Etc…

Currently there are about 250 preferences variables that get loaded with each request and I’m wondering at what point I should be concerned with performance issues with loading so many variables (100? 500? 1000?). Do you think this is something I should be concerned about or do you think loading a list of variables would take such a small performance hit that I shouldn’t be concerned at all?

Curious to hear your thoughts and feedback.

Is it possible to call CF functions dymanically?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:49:25 GMT

Is it possible to call a ColdFusion function dynamically? For example you might have a date variable: myDate that you want to apply a ColdFusion date function to. However, the function itself needs to be dynamic because you might want to call "dateFormat", "timeFormat", "dateAdd", etc.

Is there a way to evaluate an expression like this?


<cfset functionToCall = "DateFormat([myVariable],'MM/DD/YYYY')">
<cfset myDate = CreateODBCDate('03/19/1977')>


<cfset fullString = ReplaceNoCase(functionToCall,'[myVariable]','#myDate#','ALL')>


<cfoutput>
#evaluate(fullString )#
</cfoutput>

What I get here is an error message because there are invalid characters in "fullString". When I simply cfoutput fullString the text it produces looks perfect, its just that I need to find a way to evaluate it.

Any ideas?

Thanks for taking the time to help.

Optimization and Best Practices: User Goup Permissions

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:42:47 GMT

Hello All,

Recently I have done some soul searching on the best way to allow for complex user permissions on a web site while keeping server resources in mind. I am hoping that some of you will have some ideas or suggestions on the best way to implement a system like this using CF. First a little background:

In my CF application I assign user accounts to a permission group so different users can access different pages. For example, I can assign user 'Joe Bob' to the 'Administrators' group which can access pretty much everything, whereas the user 'Jane Smith' has been assigned to the 'Contributors' group and can only access certain pages.

Initially I assigned the permissions based on the name of the permissions group, so when the user logged on I created a session variable called AccountType which would contain the value, "Administrator", "Contributor", etc. That way, my templates could run a simple cfif to check if the person could see a particular resource,link,etc.

However, now I am expanding the permissions scheme to allow site administrators to create their own user groups with their own unique names and permissions settings. The user account types are stored in a database and each separate permission is stored as a yes/no variable in a column. For example:

UserTypeID......Name ..............CanLogIn........CanAccessProducts......CanAccessBlog.......etc...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -----------------------------------------------
1 ...................Administrator.....yes................yes.............................. .yes
2 ...................Contributor .........yes...............no................................yes
3....................Store Manager.....yes...............yes..............................no

So the problem arises: How should these permission settings be applied for the logged in users? I want to be conscious of both server memory as well processing/requests to the DB and ease of coding. Here are some ideas that I had:

IDEA 1: When the user logs on, do just as I was doing and assign a session variable named UserType that stores the UserTypeID. Then, within application.cfm, check if the user is logged on, if yes, query the database (cached query) and get the permission values for that account type and store them in a structure which can be referenced as needed in that request.

Pros: In this method, the work appears to mostly be done by the processor, db server. Since queries can be cached, I can use the same cached query for multiple users that log into the site so more than one user can share the cached query.

Cons: I think that reading a cached query and then building a structure containing the values of the table on ever page load might be overkill and might demand unneeded processing.

IDEA 2. This method is similar to #1 in that a session variable named UserType will be created when the user logs on. However the main difference is that the database won't be queried for a permission column until it is actually needed. So if the user tries to access page xyz.cfm, coldfusion checks the appropriate column in the table based on the UserType variable and either allows the user to see it or not.

Pros: This could potentially save some server memory if there are a lot of users logged on at once and a lot of permission columns in the database.

Cons: This could be a coding nightmare and will add a lot more lines of code on many templates since pretty much every template will make at least one permissions check.

IDEA 3: Another method which might work would be when a user logs on, query the appropriate permissions records and store all of the yes/no columns as a structure in the session scope. On each page load (application.cfm), copy the structure stored in the session scope which contains all of the permissions to the local variable scope so it can be easily accessed by the page.

Pros: Using this method, I only have to query the permissions once, and then access all the variables I need because they will be stored in memory.

Cons: In the event that there are a LOT of permission variables (assuming 100 or so) this could cause each logged in user session to hold a lot of variables. I'm not sure how much server memory a structure containing 100 values is, but I want to keep that in mind so I don't hog too many resources unnecessarily.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you have any suggestions or ideas for handling this type of situation?

A Question about Site Security in IIS 6

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 15 May 2008 00:29:09 GMT

Hello All,

I am curious what type of web site permissions settings you use in IIS 6 with Coldfusion web sites. I would assume that most ColdFusion sites need the Read, Write, and Execute permissions enabled within IIS.

The language of these permissions changes from when you are first setting up the site in IIS and when you edit it later. When viewing the site, you can see the permissions by going to the home directory tab.

Right now I'm using Read, Write, Log Visits, and Index this resource (all checked)
Application Name: (I beleive this is used for application pooling - mine is set to default)
Execute Permissions: Scripts and Executables

Does anyone think this is overkill? I don't see any recommended settings on the Adobe web site.

How to Password Protect a Directory so all Files are Protected?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:07:24 GMT

Hello CFers and Happy Holidays,

I am moving a web site over from a Linux server over to a Windows 2000 server. The site was currently password protected via the oh so familiar .htaccess method on the Linux server. Now that the site is on IIS on Windows, the .htaccess files don't work.

I have created a MSSQL database with a users table that contains all of the username and passwords that are allowed to access the site.

Normally I would just log users in by querying the database, setting a session variable, and then using application.cfm to check to make sure the users is logged in. However, in this particualr site, most of the files are made up of .htm files which do not get processed by the ColdFusion application.cfm tag.

Several posts indicated that I would need to disable anonymous access within IIS and then create the individual user accounts within Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Users and Groups. However, in this case, I don't want to create thousands of new users within windows.

Is there a way for me to password protect all files within a directory while still using the accounts set up in my MSSQL database for authentication?

Thanks,
David Levin

Trouble with MSSQL query

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:08:18 GMT

Hello All,

I have an unusual situation where I am trying to query the database (MSSQL) using an IN statement and the PK list has approximately 10,000 records in it. SQL throws an error "The query processor ran out of stack space during query optimization" which relates to a limitation in MSSQL Server: ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/288095)

Microsoft's suggestion is to create a temporary table and then JOIN the two tables to get the results you are looking for. However, in my particular situation, I don't know how to create a temporary table from just list data.

Here is an example of the coldFusion template:

Step 1: Get a list of IDs that this user is allowed to see
Query a bunch of records and sub records and generate a list variable (#RecordsToGet#)
Note, this query loops several times because of parent/child relationships in the table. After each loop, the list is appended to.

Example:
<cfset currentparent = 0>

<CFLOOP condition="ContinueLoop IS 'yes'">

<cfset LoopCount = LoopCount + 1>

<cfquery datasource="#datasource#" name="getMyStuff">
Select ID, Parent
FROM myTable
WHERE Parent = #currentparent#
AND Criteria = '#bla#'
</cfquery>


<cfset CurrentParent = ValueList(getMyStuff.ID)>
<cfset RecordsToGet = ListAppend(RecordsToGet,CurrentParent)>
<cfset loopcount = loopcount + 1>

(continue loop until there are no more records (i.e. you have reached the bottom of the tree)

</cfloop>

Step 2: Get the record details for the matching records in the (#RecordsToGet#) list.

<cfquery datasource=#datasource# name="getTheRecords">
SELECT ID, Name, Description, Image, Etc...
FROM MyTable
WHERE ID IN (#RecordsToGet#) <-- the problem lies here
AND Name = '#MoreFilterCriteria1#'
AND IMAGE = '#MoreFilterCriteria2#'
</cfquery>

I have been able to fix the problem (temporarally) by checking if #RecordsToGet# is has more than 1000 list elements, and if so, get ALL of the records in the table and then use a QofQ to filter out the records.

So the 2nd query above would become:

<cfquery datasource=#datasource# name="getTheRecords">
SELECT ID, Name, Description, Image, Etc...
FROM MyTable
WHERE ID <cfif ListLen(RecordsToGet) GT 1000>IN (#RecordsToGet#) <cfelse>1=1</cfif>
AND Name = '#MoreFilterCriteria1#'
AND IMAGE = '#MoreFilterCriteria2#'
</cfquery>

<cfif ListLen(RecordsToGet) GT 1000>

<cfquery dbtype="query" name="getTheRecords">
SELECT * FROM getTheRecords
WHERE ID IN (#RecordsToGet#)
</cfquery>

</cfif>

Although this has temporarally fixed the problem, the performance of these queries is VERY slow.

Does anyone have any suggestions or tips?

Thanks so much.

Code view not in synch with Design view (Dreamweaver CS3)

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:43:43 GMT

Hello All,

On my main work PC, I am running Dreamweaver CS3. When I am working in split view (with both Design and Code view visible) when I click on an element (say, a button) in Design view, the code view automatically shows me the code for the element that I am working on. That way, if I need to manually edit the code, I can click on the Code view and make the appropriate changes.

On my laptop I am also running Dreamweaver CS3 However, when I am working in split view and I click on a element in Design view, my code view does NOT update itself and continues to show the last bit of code I was working on in Code view. While this could come in handy at times where i want design view and code view to show me two different things, I mostly would like code view to update automatically. Currently the only way I can get code view to update on my laptop is to hit the "refresh design view (F5)" button. Is there a way to do this automatically? Is this an option in Dreamweaver preferences because I don't see it anywhere.

Thanks so much for your help.

Query of Queries (QofQ) Escaped Character Problem

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 20:00:52 GMT

Hello All,

I'm trying to run a query or queires (QofQ) and I'm doing a LIKE comparison that looks for bracket characters ([ ]) within a string, however ColdFusion is ignoring the brackets. How can I escape the bracket character? So far I have only been able to escape the percent sign based on the ColdFusion Live Docs. The error message I get when I run the query below is:

Invalid Escape Sequence. Valid sequence pairs for this escape character are: "\%", or "\_".

Here is the query:
<cfquery dbtype="query" name="getLogs">
SELECT *
FROM GetLogs
WHERE Description LIKE '%\[User:#UserID#\]%' ESCAPE '\'
</cfquery>

Thanks for your help!

How would you debug this issue?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 11 May 2007 17:33:34 GMT

I have a CF application running on CFMX7 that has sessions enabled:

<cfapplication name="myApplication" applicationTimeout= "#createTimespan(2,0,0,0)#" sessionmanagement="yes" clientmanagement="yes" sessiontimeout="#CreateTimeSpan(0,1,0,0)#" setclientcookies="yes">

however, I noticed that the site periodicially purges the session periodically booting out any logged in users. I also beleive that the client variables are also dissapearing when this issue occurs.

How would you as a developer go about debugging this issue?

Thanks for your help.

cfchart MX7 doesn't scale results like MX6

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 01:00:26 GMT

There appears to be a bug in cfchart in ColdFusion MX7 where if you are trying to display a bar chart from a query with too many rows, the chart will display with no bars in it.

For example, if I have a query with 365 rows (one for each day of the year), and I try to display it in a CFCHART that is 600px wide, the chart data won't appear. If I specify a width of 850px, the chart data appears.

In ColdFusion 6, the chart would automatically scale the bars so you could squish as much data into a small space as you wanted. Does anyone know a way to re-create this in MX7?

CFCHART MX7 doesn't scale the X axis like 6.1

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:29:03 GMT

Regular Expression Trouble

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 07:51:34 GMT

Hello All, Happy Holidays.

I'm creating a component in an application that is similar to Facebook's "News Feed" feature. This feature lists rows from a database which may contain some 'special text' that needs to be converted to HTML. Note: I am storing the 'special text' in the database instead of the actual html code to save space in the database in case the name of the object is very long.

Here's what I'm trying to do:

In the database a record might look like this:
On 12/25/06 [user:253]John Smith[/a] Logged On.

When I display the table I want to convert it to the following:
On 12/25/06 <a href="user_info.cfm?userId=253">John Smith</a> Logged On.

I've been able to create the following regular expression which does a good job converting the text to a link, but I am unable to get the uniqueID (253) from the string. Note: Description is the name of the column that is being processed.

<CFSET temp = ReReplace(Description,'\[User:.\]','<a href="user_info.cfm?userID=253">','ALL')>
<CFSET temp = ReReplace(temp,'\[/a\]','</a>','ALL')>

Is there a way I can convert the string in one regular expression? Also, how can I get the number value after the colon (:) and insert it into the replacement string?

Also, to complicate things, the string may have multiple instances of 'special text'. For example:
On 12/25/06 [user:253]John Smith[/a] modified [user:262]Captain Picard's[/a] account

Thanks for your help!

Accessing CFMODULE variable scope

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 06:35:09 GMT

If you have a ColdFusion template which calls another template within a CFMODULE tag, can you later access variables set in the CFMODULE tag from the caller template? I am aware of the CALLER scope within CFMODULES however, I was wondering if there is a scope to go the other direction so templates can get the variables within the cfmodule?

For example:

---SecondPage.cfm---

<CFSET Apples="yes">

---End---

---FirstPage.cfm---

<CFMODULE template="secondpage.cfm">

The value for apples is: <CFOUTPUT>#[scope].Apples#</CFOUTPUT>

---End---

Tracking Hits Vs. Visits

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 04 May 2006 01:56:58 GMT

Hello All,

I would like to track how many site visitors are downloading specific files from my web application. I have set up a template that records the time/date the user requests the file into an ActivityTracking table in my db, and then dynamically sends them the file via CFCONTENT.

For example:
1. User clicks link
2. CF template stores the request in the database along with the date/time
3. CF sends the user the file via CFCONTENT

I want to be able to distinguish between someone repeatedly downloading the same file (hits), and someone downloading it for the first time within a given time frame (visits).

My first instinct was to put a cookie on a user's machine after they download the file, and look for that cookie, the next time they click on the link. However, if the user has cookies disabled or deletes their cookies, this method won't work. The site would see this as a new visitor.

My next instinct was to check the IP address of the user and look for a duplicate within my Activity Tracking table in the database. However, if the user is behind a proxy, firewall, etc. I may not get an accurate count of visitors downloading the file.

There must be a way to utlize both methods (or perhaps an even better method) for figuring out if the user has downloaded the file before (say, within a given timeframe like 1 hour).

I've seen this kind of logic before in online polls. For example, the polls on the howard stern web site www.howardstern.com do a very good job at ensuring no duplicate poll submissions from the same computer, but still allow different computers with the same IP to access the poll. I can fill out their poll, delete my cookies, block cookies, and not be allowed to re-submit the poll again. I can then go to my laptop which uses the same external IP address as my desktop and be able to fill out the poll as if I was a new user. If the system were blocking the IP, they would have blocked my laptop too. This is the type of logic I would like to use for my web application.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
David Levin