Wulfshayde

Moving from Coldfusion to PHP

2007-03-29T10:48:00.000+09:30

I've been a Coldfusion Developer for as long as I've been developing web-based applications. I've always dabbled in other languages (Ruby on Rails, PHP, ASP.NET) but in the end I've always moved back to Coldfusion because no other language could help me develop applications as quickly as Coldfusion did. Coldfusion is the best at doing what it does: allowing a single developer to create web-based applications with advanced functionality quickly, but not necessarily effeciently. Coldfusion has always had a problem churning out spaghetti code developers.

I've always kept a close eye on PHP, with its continous improvements, cross-platform capabilities, and ease of installation it has always been something that I've been interested in learning, but as of the Blackstone release (Coldfusion MX 7), Coldfusion again offered more in terms of built in functionality.

Another gripe I've always had about Coldfusion is the need to define your settings and Database Connections in the Coldfusion Administrator. This makes it hard to develop apps to the general market as it requires knowledge by the end user on how to configure the Coldfusion Datasources, as well as any other mappings that may be required. Not really the ease-of-use that you want for your customer.

And again, another downside is the cost outlay. If you want to develop in Coldfusion for your organization, be expected to use a free alternative like BlueDragon (which doesn't fully support all the bonus stuff in CFMX7), or fork out a good wad of cash to get the Standard Server edition. This is where PHP intrigues me. It's both free, and has a ton of resources available for free online.

Recently I've also created an application using PHP's QCodo framework which was created by a genius named Mike Ho. This framework does what I've been trying to do with Coldfusion for ages, simplify the MVC layout by making access to things your controllers and databases pretty transparent. I was able to create a full Ajax style application for recording and managing my bands instrument and backline settings in a day and a half. Quite complex and yet, so easy to develop, one page, less than 1000 lines of code (which I could probably trim down if I went through and removed duplicate and created generic functions) and I didn't even have to worry about the database or how to get child tables, counts, controls, etc. QCodo already did it for me.

This now begs the question, can PHP with QCodo replace my current Coldfusion with Model-Glue/Reactor/Coldspring framework, I think the answer is yes, which only begs a few other nagging problems. What about my current LDAP integration, no problem, PHP has LDAP integration, and if you're using WAMP as your server, it's only 2 mouse clicks away from activated, plus, PHP allowed me to run on encrypted Port 636 where in Coldfusion, too many factors played into getting ecrypted data to work.

What about PDF generation on the fly? No worries, PHP also offers many free alternatives for creating PDF from HTML on the fly, and many work without a hitch and minimal configuration.

Okay, so that's two major benefits of Coldfusion that PHP can handle. But here's a good one for ya, scheduled tasks. Since PHP doesn't have an Administrator like Coldfusion, how exactly are you going to run scheduled tasks on PHP scripts? Easy! WGet is the answer. And the bonus is, WGet is a cross-platform command line utility which means that any system administrator can set up WGet to run as a Windows/Linux/Unix Scheduled Task to run at specified intervals. So where does that leave my opinion of Coldfusion vs. PHP, pretty much tied, except that PHP is free, widely used in the community, has a ton of documentation and forums, tools, user-scripts, and overall, is closer to real programming languages like C, rather than tag based as Coldfusion is to HTML.

I don't know where I'm going to go from here, but I do know that PHP is a serious competitor, and I going to be spending the next week taking a serious look at converting my current web-app from Coldfusion to PHP... for the benefit of all! ;)

Compiz, Beryl, and XGL

2006-12-12T15:17:00.000+09:30

Well, last night I finally dug into all the eye-candy that is compiz and XGL. After quite an easy install process following a process listed under ubuntuguide.org I had Compiz/XGL up and running in under 20 minutes. Originally it was just Compiz/XGL, which is cool on it's own, but doesn't give a lot in the way of customization. Thats why you need to install the beryl-manager, emerald, and emerald-themes. Once I did this, I was off in eye-candy heaven.

Lucky for me my laptop has a 512MB Geforce 7600 Go in it, so it can take full advantage of this in all it's glory. Once you get used to the different types of navigation, ways to play with your desktop, shortcut keys, and other cool features, it makes playing with your desktop fun again.

As far as practicle, I could see it being very practicle. It allows you a new kind of control over your desktop, and not one desktop, but four. You again are in complete control, no more cluttered, unorganized, Click a bunch of times to get where you need to desktops. It'll have a steep learning curve for the majority of average users out there, but if it's promoted, and pushed, I could see Compiz/XGL leaping into the forefront of next-gen desktops.

I'd post some screenshots, but really, you need video to see this in all it's glory, the best place to see this is

Have fun, and I can't wait until Compiz/XGL is a standard!

Coldfusion with Active Directory

2006-12-08T12:04:00.000+09:30

After much hesistation I started making the switch 5 days ago to convert my existing security system on the corporate portal from internal databases to Active Directory through LDAP. My hesistation was mostly due to the fact of limited info on this subject. After 5 days, we've organized or AD structure much better and I am successfully using AD for authentication and corporate structure info, and security authorization.

Coldfusion makes connection to AD through LDAP a snap (no pun intended). Let me just say, if I had of realized that it was this easy 2 years ago, I could have saved myself a lot of headaches in the multi-level security area. Now I have the fun task of trying to re-code my components to look at AD rather than internal databases. The good news is that I use frameworks such as Model-Glue, Reactor, and Coldspring, so the overall work required to make it function is minimal, it's more the small things like references and table links that are going to take the time.

To anyone building security-required in a Windows environment, even if in a Linux Environment with an LDAP server, I seriously recommend looking into integration, it could save you bundles of time, especially if someone else in the IT department manages the AD or LDAP server. You'll just have to come to a few basic understandings. ;)

Linux, Reactor Framework and Case Sensitivity

2006-12-01T09:14:00.000+09:30

I finally got my linux box up and running with all my server software as it is required. Copied everything from my windows partition to my linux partition and then made an attempt (though futile) to run my development version of our corporate portal. Now comes a major problem that isn't present for Windows, but is present for Linux, case sensitivity.

The reactor framework has saved me bucketloads of time. Most applications these days I use the MG2 framework, and that requires Coldspring and Reactor, both excellent frameworks which save heaps of time in development. However, Reactor on this specific occasion is causing me grief. It generate all the data-dictionary objects correctly so far except for one table I have called Personnel.

I use MSSQL Server 2000 for my databases, and I can connect and query all my tables and views properly. For some reason though, when Reactor generates the data-objects for my Personnel table, it generates them with a lowercase 'p' instead of the required uppercase 'P'. This shouldn't be a problem except when it checks for the existence of the file, it looks for the uppercase version instead of the lowercase version that it created.

I'm now going through the reactor files to try and find the problem spot, this day could get long...

Edit: Found the problem to be with my Reactor.xml configuration file. In windows I could use personnel in my object relation models and windows wouldn't care. But the Reactor.xml config file creates the objects exactly how they are mentioned in this file. So when it went to access the actual file using the table name, it gave a case sensitivity error in Linux. Once I corrected my Reactor.xml file and re-initialized the project, it worked fine.

Lesson learned: don't let a linux newbie near your development environment. ;)

Ubuntu 6.10(Edgy Eft) Apache2, PHP5, MySQL & Coldfusion Install Howto

2006-11-30T09:45:00.000+09:30

Well, it's been ages since I posted anything, but after spending 3 days trying to get Apache, PHP, MySQL, and Coldfusion all installed on my linux box and finally reaching success, I figured I should document what I did in the hopes to save others out there three days of frustation and sore skulls.

I will have to give a few thanks to a few individuals throughout this as their parts helped me get it all together. I'll start at the beggining. From a fresh Edgy Eft install. Enter the following lines into a console:

Code:

sudo aptitude purge apache2 apache2-common php5 php5-common libapache2-mod-php5 mysql
sudo aptitude install apache2 apache2-common php5 php5-common libapache2-mod-php5 mysql

This purges all old installs and config files and then re-installs a fresh copy. Thanks goes to harisund on the ubuntuforums for this one. Saved me a lot of headaches throughout my days. You can see the original post here.

Once you've finished your apache, php, and mysql install I then did the following:

Code:

sudo aptitude install phpmyadmin

This installs the phpmyadmin package for mysql.

At this point you're probably wondering, "Why is he using aptitude and not apt-get?" Well, the main reason is that I found when using aptitude to install the basics when I tried to apt-get the rest I'd get varying results from success to complete failure. Aptitude generally always worked as long as I started the basics with aptitude.

At this point go to http://localhost and make sure that you're setup is working this far, you may even want to go to http://localhost/phpmyadmin and make sure that php is parsing pages properly.

If all is good (which is should be) you're now going to need two files to install Coldfusion. At the time of this post the most current linux installer for Coldfusion was coldfusion-702-lin.bin. You can get the current file from here. You will need an adobe.com account (free) and have to log in to get the download, which is rather large. Once you've selected your preferred download and got it on the way you'll have to go get the latest wsconfig.zip file from here.

Now because Edgy Eft uses a new Linux Kernel compared to Breezy you'll have to make a modification to the installer before you can install it. cd to your download directory and type the following into a console:

Code:

cp coldfusion-<version>-lin.bin coldfusion.bak
cat coldfusion.bak | sed "s/export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL/#xport LD_ASSUME_KERNEL/" > coldfusion-<version>-lin.bin

This will comment out any instances of the term "export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL" as this seems to be incompatible with Edgy's version of libc6. Thanks to Kasp3r for this one, you can see the original post here. Now you can run the installer with the following command:

Code:

sudo sh coldfusion-<version>-lin.bin

Follow the steps to for install, you want to choose the following:

Server Configuration
Add A Sever Configuration (connector) - choose Apache

Apache Configuration is: /etc/apache2
Apache Binary is: /usr/sbin/apache2
Apache Script is: /usr/sbin/apache2ctl

Continue with the installation until completion.

Now you want to cd into your download directory where you downloaded the wsconfig.zip file to. Run the following command in a console:

Code:

sudo mv /opt/coldfusionmx7/runtime/lib/wsconfig.jar /opt/coldfusionmx7/runtime/lib/wsconfig.bak
sudo unzip wsconfig.zip -d /opt/coldfusionmx7/runtime/lib

You have now inflated the new wsconfig.jar to replace the old one. Now you want to do the following:

Code:

cd /opt/coldfusionmx7/bin
sudo ./coldfusion start

You will get some starting up text, and a connector error warning, we will fix that now. After the coldfusion server is started enter the following into the console:

Code:

sudo /opt/coldfusionmx7/runtime/bin/wsconfig

Choose Add
Select Apache and put /etc/apache2 into the configuration path
Check configure connectors select box
Click Advanced
put /usr/sbin/apache2 into the binary path field
put /usr/sbin/apache2ctl into the control script path field
Click Ok
Accept the option to restart the server.

Now you'll want to enter the following into a console:

Code:

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Look for DirectoryIndex and at the end of the line add the following seperated by spaces:

index.cfm default.cfm

Now you need to restart the Apache server:

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now try accessing http://localhost/CFIDE/administrator. If all goes well, you should have the coldfusion Administrator pop up in your browser. You now have PHP, MySQL, and Coldfusion configured on Apache2.

These methods worked for me, after days and days of trying. If you have any problems feel free to post and I'll try to help you sort it out, but I'm about the biggest linux newbie ever. Good luck!