Since upgrading to ColdFusion 8 last week on my staging server at work, I've come across a few gotchas that I wanted to put down on record for future reference...

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Another issue I came across with trying to run BlogCFC on a virtual host was the use of cfcontent. I guess this tag is a potential security risk due to the possibility of accessing/serving files from outside the webroot. Anyway, I found 2 different templates which utilized cfcontent: /blog/rss.cfm and /blog/admin/spryproxy.cfm In both cases, it was used only to clear the page buffer so there is no whitespace returned while setting the page-encoding for XML content. Simply removing the cfcontent tag will result in invalid XML. Instead, I replaced with the following:

This use of getPageContext() will reset the page buffer, preventing any whitespace or linebreaks from being sent to the user's browser and invalidating the XML content.

I recently moved my site to a new host and immediately encountered errors trying to get BlogCFC up and running. My new host has blocked access to getProfileString/setProfileString and createObject(java) which are relied on for specific features of BlogCFC. I wanted to cover the workarounds I've implemented to get my site back up and running.

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I was working with some legacy code on a Unix server recently and kept running into a permissions error... The cleanup process of this particular task would fail with the message: "Delete" cannot be performed. The problem was with a cffile tag:

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There's nothing more aggravating than the ambiguous java.lang.NullPointerException when debugging CF (and Java) apps.

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Ok, so it's a little over a week now since I've been using my MacBook and so far, so good. I have been able to use it exclusively for work. I've come across only a couple minor issues that have been no problem to overcome, but most importantly, I haven't had to the need to use my PC.

Regardless of this, I bought VMWare Fusion and just completed the installation of Windows XP Pro on a virtual machine. I thought this would be good to use for setting up a development environment as well as having Windows handy in case I do need it for anything.

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Creating modular display logic has always been somewhat of a challenge... there are many different approaches to take, and it's hard to determine which will be the most flexible and maintainable in the long run. I've always been accustomed to coding all my display templates so that all variables are within the attributes scope. This allows any template to be called using <cfmodule>, allowing it to either run on its own, or allowing required parameters to be passed in.
In addition, (following the FuseBox practice of copying all URL and Form variables to the attributes scope so that you have a universal variable scope. For me, this makes sense because it ensures consistency; no matter how my front-end templates are called, the proper variables can be available.

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Ok, so I've just overcome one of the big annoyances that I had with my new Mac: Configuring Time Machine to work with a shared drive. I have a 250GB Buffalo Linkstation for the specific purpose of backing up my harddrive, and I was a little annoyed to learn I couldn't use it with my new setup.

Anyway, thanks to a few minutes searching, I found a solution

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I did it. I took the step over to the other side and I don't see myself going back.
Although I had long been curious about the obsession from die-hard Apple fans, I never thought I would become one. I had many reasons, but primarily I've been very comfortable in my environment... Windows just suited me, and my work, rather well.

Every now and then, I used to drop into an Apple store and play around with one of the MacBooks or an iMac and think "this would make a neat toy, but it's not practical for everyday..."
Well, after a lot of deliberation, I went to my local store and challenged the salesperson to talk me out of buying a 15" 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 duo MacBook Pro... he failed miserably.

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The last several months have been extremely busy. My wife and I had a baby, built a new house, and moved from New York City to Raleigh, NC... during all this I had to stay focused on completing the development and architecture for the most challenging project I have ever been involved with.

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