This is my presentation about CFWheels at CFObjective ANZ, November 2010, Melbourne, Australia. ColdFusion on Wheels (CFWheels), is an elegant framework inspired by Ruby on Rails.

1. CFWheels
Pragmatic, Beautiful code
Indy Nagpal
Straker Software
Melbourne, November 2010

2. A bit about me
• CTO, Straker Software, New Zealand
• Been doing CF (and Flex) for a while
• Cloud-based CF Using Railo
• In love with Ruby (the language) & Rails
– Was in love with Groovy (still am, I think)
• nagpals.com/blog

3. Rapid ≠ Agile

4. Agile
• Early, continuous delivery of software
• Welcome changing requirements
• Deliver working software frequently
• Working software = progress
• Technical excellence and good design
• Simplicity is essential – work not done

5. “There comes a time in the history of
every project when it becomes
necessary to shoot the engineers and
begin production.”

6. Need
• Quickly build and deploy database-driven
web apps
• Rapid iterations in a testable fashion
• Easy for multiple developers to understand
• Working app is more important than
configuring the app

7. Search…
• Tried lots of frameworks/methodologies
• Ruby on Rails addressed most issues
• Learn another language and framework
• Defeats the whole purpose
• Enter, CFWheels…

8. What is CFWheels
• Framework inspired by Ruby on Rails
• Simple organization system
• Suited for typical, database-driven web
applications
• A couple of years’ old – fairly mature

9. Convention over configuration
• Possibly the single most important thing
• Mostly convention, minor configuration
• Easy to
– turn on
– tune in
– drop out

10. Directory structure
• webroot
– models
– controllers
– views
– images
– javascripts
– stylesheets
– plugins
– tests
– events
– config

11. Intuitive Code Structure
• View
– Responsible for display and user interaction
– Receive data from controller
• Controller
– Process requests from view
– Get/process data from model
– Make data available to the view
• Model
– Interacts with the database layer
– Responsible for validation
– Other methods to process/message data

12. Convention - URLs
• URLs mapped to controllers/models/views
http://blog/posts/edit/1
Controller: Posts
Model: Post
Action: Edit
Key: 1

13. View – http://blog/posts/
/views/posts/index.cfm
<cfparam name="posts">
<ul>
<cfoutput query="posts">
<li>
#linkTo( text = "#posts.title#",
action = "edit",
key = post.id,
title = "Edit #posts.name#"
)#
</li>
</cfoutput>
</ul>

14. Controller – http://blog/posts/
/controllers/Posts.cfc
<cfcomponent extends="Controller">
<cfscript>
function index(){
posts = model("post").findAll(order="createdAt")
}
</cfscript>
</cfcomponent

15. Model – http://blog/posts/
/models/Post.cfc
<cfcomponent extends="Model">
<cfscript>
function init(){
belongsTo("author")
hasMany("comments")
validatesLengthOf( properties = "title",
minimum = 10,
maximum = 255)
}
</cfscript>
</cfcomponent>

16. Convention – Files & Database
• Place in appropriate folders – MVC
• Plural database names, singular model
names
– DB Table: posts
– Model: Post.cfc
• Database fields: id, createdat, updatedat

17. Built-in ORM
• Simple and elegant
• All major databases supported
• Almost no setup required – baked in
• CRUD instantly available via models/plugin
• Finding data using “finders”
– findOne(), findAll(), findByKey()…

18. Associations
models/Post.cfc
<cfcomponent extends="Model">
<cfscript>
function init(){
belongsTo("author")
}
</cfscript>
</cfcomponent>
models/Author.cfc
<cfcomponent extends="Model">
<cfscript>
function init(){
hasMany("posts")
}
</cfscript>
</cfcomponent>
<cfscript>
posts = model("post").findAll(include="author")
author = model("author").findOneByKey(key=params.key,include="posts")
</cfscript>

19. Dynamic Finders
• Dynamic finders are magical
model("user").findOne(where="username='bob' and password='pass'")
rewritten as
model("user").findOneByUsernameAndPassword("bob,pass”)

20. URLs and Routing
• Beautiful URLs
– http://blog/a-good-url
• Powerful routing mechanism
<cfset addRoute( name = "showPost",
pattern = "/[key]”,
controller = "Posts",
action = "show")>
• Can be turned REST-full

21. Multiple response formats
• http://blog/posts
• http://blog/posts.xml
• http://blog/posts.json
• http://blog/posts.csv
• http://blog/posts.pdf

22. Common tasks done
• Adding timestamps
• Flashing messages
• Pagination
• Sending multi-part emails
• Redirecting users

23. Lots of helper functions
• Views
selectBox()
linkTo()
timeAgoInWords()
paginationLinks()
titleize()
pluralize()
• Model
validatePresenceOf()
findAll()
findOneByKey()
afterSave()
• Controller
flash()
isGet()
sendMail()

24. Plugins
• Neat architecture to add/override
functionality
• Extremely useful
– Scaffold –generate CRUD application
– DBMigrate – Add/edit database structure
– Remote Form Helpers – Ajax with forms
– Localizer – Localizing an application

25. Baked in testing
• Ships with RocketUnit
<cfcomponent extends="tests.Test">
<cfscript>
function test_1_get_timezones(){
qTimezone = model("Timezone").getTimezones()
assert("isQuery(qTimezone) ")
assert("qTimezone.recordcount eq 56")
}
</cfscript>
</cfcomponent>

26. Environments
• Different setup for applications based on
stages of development
– Design, Development, Production, Testing,
Maintenance
• Differ in terms of caching, error-handling
• Switch environments via config/url

27. Docs/Support
• Very helpful docs at cfwheels.org
• Active and supportive mailing list
• Quite a few screencasts
• Direct knowledge transfer from Ruby on
Rails books/docs (e.g., Head First Rails)
• Bunch of blogs

28. IDE Support
• Eclipse, CFBuilder
– Syntax Dictionary
• Textmate
– Bundle
• Coda
– Lacking, but works by adding Clips

29. Beauty
• Simple code organization and flow
• Easy to understand code – eyeballing code
• Common tasks done with minimal code
• Pretty URLs
• Almost zero configuration, with power to
configure as much as needed

30. Pragmatic
• Focus on simple code that solves issues
• Trades pure OO for simplicity and structure
• Easy to not use the framework if needed
• Common web application problems already
solved – why reinvent the wheel(s)!

31. Wrap up
• Evaluate if you need a ‘framework’
• Learn URL rewrites (Apache, IIS)
• Dabble with Ruby on Rails
• cfscript = succinct code
• Worth trying out just to see how problems
can be solved in a different manner

32. Thank you
Questions?
indy@nagpals.com
nagpals.com/blog