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Latest From the Wheels Dev Blog

New Chapter: Object Validation

Another quick announcement. We've released a chapter in the Documentation about object validation. Object validation allows you to enforce business logic related to your data easily. It also allows you to persist your objects so that your application can communicate error messages back to the user or handle the errors in some other way. It's a very clean way of handling logic that can be very repetitive if you choose to write it all out by hand instead.

December 26, 2009 by Chris Peters

New Tutorial: Wheels, AJAX, and You

Raúl Riera and I collaborated on a new tutorial in the reference guide called Wheels, AJAX, and You. The tutorial discusses 3 different ways to request and receive data from the controller using asynchronous JavaScript. While much of this may be standardized in future releases of Wheels, this tutorial gives you some fairly simple options for integrating AJAX functionality into your Wheels 1.0.x applications today.

December 20, 2010 by Chris Peters

CFWheels 1.4.2 maintenance release

Today sees another maintenance release for the 1.4.x series Download 1.4.2 today to fix the following:

Bug Fixes

  • Fix for selecting distinct with calculated property - [Edward Chanter, Per Djurner]
  • Fixed so default values are applied to non persistent properties - #519 [Andy Bellenie]
  • Fixed missing var scope causing error on Lucee - [Russ Michaels, Tom King]
  • Don't show debug info on AJAX requests - #496 [Leroy Mah, Per Djurner]
  • Fixed permissions issue with imageTag() when running on shared hosting - [Per Djurner]
  • Removed use of ExpandPath() in debug file since it was causing file permission issues - [Peter Hopman, Per Djurner]
  • Skip setting object property when NULL is passed in - #507 [Andy Bellenie, Per Djurner]
  • Fixed edge case issue with calling dynamic association methods - #501 [Dominik Hofer, Per Djurner]
  • Fixed lock name in onSessionEnd event - #499 [Per Djurner]
  • Ignore white space in the "where" argument to finders - #503 [Per Djurner]
  • Ignore spaces in the "keys" argument to hasManyCheckBox() and hasManyRadioButton() - [Song Lin, Per Djurner]
  • Skip running callbacks when validating uniqueness and similar situations - #492 [Andy Bellenie, Per Djurner]
  • Avoid plugin directory exception during first application load - #541 [Adam Chapman, Per Djurner]
  • Fix for using cfscript operators in "condition" and "unless" argument on ACF 8 - #531 [Per Djurner]
  • Fix for rolling back nested properties - #539 [James Gibson, Chris Peters, Per Djurner]
  • afterSave and afterCreate callbacks are not firing on nested objects - #525 [Adam Chapman, Chris Peters, Per Djurner]
  • Ability to pass in list to "includeBlank" argument on dateSelect() and similar functions - #502 [Thorsten Eilers, Per Djurner]
  • Ability to set attributes on the input element created by buttonTo() - [Per Djurner]
  • Added missing "onlyPath" argument to imageTag() - #508 [Per Djurner]
  • Corrected output of property labels in error messages - #494 [Andy Bellenie]
Also don't forget to check the upgrade notes.

August 31, 2015 by Tom King

How OO Almost Destroyed a Business

I stumbled across an honest account by Marc Funaro about how OO almost destroyed his business. He spares no detail in the post, but I still think it is worthwhile to read in its entirety as a reality check for yourself. Dynamic languages like PHP and CFML have been on a quest over the past few years to be more "Java-like," adding more object oriented capabilities. These features bring a lot of promise for your code to become self-documenting and organized. But there have been undercurrents by pragmatists who contest that these features add unnecessary complexity for languages that were "fine just the way they were." As I've progressed through my career with ColdFusion, I've started agreeing more with the pragmatists. While ColdFusion experts have been arguing about "XML versus no-XML" over the past year, I've strongly desired getting my work done so I could feel some accomplishment and have a fresh breath of air away from my computer from time to time. With my personal experience, this is where ColdFusion on Wheels has entered and really brought the fun back into ColdFusion development. One thing that Wheels has done for me is use CFCs to organize my code and make database queries easier. But at the same time, I don't feel like I'm wasting too much time worrying about the design of my objects. It all just flows and works organically, and it all works that way simply by following conventions that we've laid out for you. I will forever be amazed at what David Heinemeier Hansson has accomplished by implementing the concepts of Ruby on Rails and what these concepts accomplish for me in my life as a CFML developer through my use of ColdFusion on Wheels. If you at all have felt CFML lose its magic in a way that Marc Funaro described so well, give Wheels a try. The more you uncover about our framework, the more it just makes sense. Our framework considers what ColdFusion as a platform does well and sticks with that. ColdFusion returns recordsets lightning-fast, so Wheels's findAll() methods return recordsets instead of CF's notoriously slow objects. (It also uses objects to represent data when that makes sense.) Wheels also helps you easily understand where your URLs point to in your code with its controller conventions. And hell, I'll even offer up the fact that Wheels's default URL behavior doesn't even give regard to the underlying platform. Having URLs that end with .cfm, .aspx, .jsp, etc. do nothing to contribute to the overall user experience anyway. These sentiments bring me a lot of hope for Wheels's role in the CFML community. We're pushing forward and helping you develop beautiful code using the best platform for developing web applications, period.

December 24, 2009 by Chris Peters

CFWheels Announces a Bug Bounty

We are happy to launch a new program that we hope will lead to a more stable framework for all of us. Effective immediately we are launching our Bug Bounty program. When we first conceived of the bounty program we were looking at programs from IssueHunt and BountySource and the main goal was to widen the field of contributors to the CFWheels project as well as crush some of the long standing bugs in the framework.

Most of these bugs are edge cases that don’t effect the core functionality of the framework and for the most part users have found work arounds for. In the past it’s been difficult to dedicate our limited resources towards some of these bugs but now that we have a growing list of monthly sponsors we would like to launch out bounty program to compensate contributors who are willing to tackle some of these.

The easiest way to get started participating in this program is to visit the issues list and look for the $50 Bounty tag. Pick an issue that interests you, clone the repo, and start working on your solution. When you think you have a working solution create a PR and submit it for review. Please read the Contributing to CFWheels chapter in the guides or the contributing guidelines in the repository for details on how to contribute to the CFWheels project.

We look forward to see how the community responds to this bounty program. Depending on how things go, we can envision expanding this program to include enhancements as well as sponsorship of individual enhancements.

May 16, 2022 by Peter Amiri

ColdFusion on Wheels 1.0.1 Maintenance Release

Today, we release a minor maintenance version, ColdFusion on Wheels 1.0.1. Download it today. There are no new features, but everyone likes a more stable code base! For those of you upgrading from version 1.0, the path is very simple. Simply replace the wheels folder of your install with the new wheels folder from the zip file. With help from the community, we were able to identify and squash 25 bugs. All of them were minor edge cases, so most have not caused any pain whatsoever for Wheels developers. For a detailed list, refer to the CHANGELOG included with the download. For those of you looking to try out Wheels, check out our Wheels LitePost Contest for a chance to win some Amazon dollars. Also check out some head start screencasts for the contest too.

December 16, 2010 by Chris Peters

ColdFusion on Wheels 1.1.8 Released

Today, we're releasing version 1.1.8 of the ColdFusion on Wheels framework. The new version includes bug fixes and minor enhancements. Upgrade today for a more stable application. To upgrade from version 1.1.x, simply download the zip file and replace your application's wheels folder with the new one. For a list of fixes, see the CHANGELOG.

May 21, 2012 by Chris Peters

Released: ColdFusion on Wheels 1.0.4

Today we're releasing ColdFusion on Wheels version 1.0.4. This release fixes another round of bugs and adds more stability improvements. Download it now, replace the wheels folder with the new one, and reload your application. If you're upgrading from a version earlier than 1.0, follow these instructions. From the change log at wheels/CHANGELOG:
  • Added missing support for passing in array of model objects as options to select() - #411
  • Fixed so "afterFind" callback methods are only called once during pagination - #435
  • Added "prependOnAnchor" and "appendOnAnchor" arguments to paginationLinks() to get around an issue where the "appendToPage" string was added on anchor pages - #434
  • Fixed bug in paginationLinks() when using "appendToPage" with single page result
  • Fixed bug with count() when using composite primary keys
  • Fixed concurrency issue related to setting the model name on associations - #419
  • Fix for skipping duplicate columns returned from cfdbinfo when using Oracle - #437 & #439
  • Fix for race conditions when setting the join clause in an application scoped model object - #432
  • Fixed so URLFor() is not duplicating controller and action when URL rewriting is off - #433
  • Added support to imageTag() for all image types that the CFML engine supports

December 21, 2010 by Chris Peters

CFWheels 2.0.0-beta.1 Now Available

It's been about a year in the making, and well over 1000 commits, but the beta for 2.0 has now arrived! We're still catching up on the main documentation as there's so much to cover in this release, so bear with us a bit! In the meantime, please do check it out:
  • Direct Download: Download zip
  • Commandbox quick install : install cfwheels@be (Just downloads and unzips)
  • Commandbox install wizard via CFWheels CLI (with url rewriting included):  wheels new (make sure your version of the CLI is up to date with install cfwheels-cli)
Make sure to check the "Breaking Changes" section below, and please report any bugs.

Need a little help upgrading?

There will be some more posts coming up covering some of the big topics like routing & migrations, but in the meantime:
  • Check out Adam's upgrade advisor plugin (Commandbox: install upgradeadvisor)
  • Get in touch via the Mailing List, Slack channel etc.

Changelog

Model Enhancements

  • Support for passing in select=false to property() to not include a calculated property by default in SELECT clauses - #122 [Adam Chapman, Per Djurner]
  • Support for setting calculated properties to a specific data type - [Per Djurner]
  • Support for returnIncludedAs and returnIncluded arguments to properties() for returning nested properties - [Adam Chapman]
  • Support for calling updateProperty() with dynamic argument, e.g. updateProperty(firstName="Per") - [Per Djurner]
  • Support for using boolean transaction argument, e.g. update(transaction=false) - #654 [Adam Chapman]
  • Support for MariaDB - #563 [AlexeiCF, Adam Chapman]
  • Model instance isPersisted() and propertyIsBlank() methods - #559 [Chris Peters]
  • Database Migrations (dbmigrate) now available in the core - #664 [Adam Chapman, Tom King, Mike Grogan]
  • Databases can now be automatically migrated to the latest version on application start - #766 [Tom King]
  • New timeStampMode setting ("utc", "local" or "epoch") for the createdAt and updatedAtcolumns - [Andy Bellenie]
  • Allow nested transactions - #732 [Andy Bellenie]
  • The handle argument to finders now set the variable name for the query so it's easier to find in the debug output - [Per Djurner]
  • Support added for HAVING when using aggregate functions in the where argument - #483 [Per Djurner]
  • Added support for the JSON data type in the MySQL adapter - #759 [Joel Stobart]
  • Corrected mapping for text types in the MySQL adapter - #759 [Joel Stobart]
  • Added global setting, lowerCaseTableNames, to always lower case table names in SQL statements - [Per Djurner]

View Enhancements

  • flashMessages() are now in default layout.cfm - #650 [Tom King]
  • Added ability to override value in textField(), passwordField() and hiddenField() - #633 [Per Djurner, Chris Peters]
  • Support for the method argument in buttonTo() helper - #761 [Adam Chapman]

Controller Enhancements

  • Support for HTTP verbs, scopes, namespaces, and resources in routes (ColdRoute) [Don Humphreys, James Gibson, Tom King]
  • Support for passing in ram:// resources to sendFile() - #566 [Tom King]
  • Extended sendMail() so that it can return the text and/or html content of the email - #122 [Adam Chapman]
  • renderWith() can now set http status codes in header with the status argument - #549 [Tom King]
  • Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) protection - #613 [Chris Peters]
  • Parse JSON body and add to params struct - [Tom King, Per Djurner]

Bug Fixes

  • Fixes skipped model instantiation due to Linux file case sensitivity - #643 [Adam Chapman, Tom King]
  • Added spatial datatypes for MySQL - #660 [Normal Cesar]
  • Made humanize() keep spaces in input - #663 [Per Djurner, Chris Peters]
  • Avoid double redirect error when doing delayed redirects from a verification handler function - [Per Djurner]
  • Fixes attempts to insert nulls for blank strings - #654 [Andy Bellenie, Per Djurner]
  • Fix for using validatePresenceOf() with default on update - [Andy Bellenie]
  • Fixes so paginated finder calls with no records include column names - #722 [Per Djurner]
  • Fixes "invalid data" error when using unsigned integers in MySQL - #768 [Per Djurner]

Plugins

  • Plugins now distributed via forgebox.io [Tom King]
  • Update to the plugin system to allow overriding of the same framework method multiple times - #681 [James Gibson, Tom King]
  • Added ability to turn off incompatible plugin warnings from showing - [Danny Beard]
  • Plugins now have any java lib/class files automatically mapped onApplicationStart 731 [Andy Bellenie, Tom King]
  • Plugins now read version number off their box.json files and are displayed in debug area #68 [Tom King]
  • Plugin meta data as set in box.json now available in application.wheels.pluginMeta scope #68 [Tom King]

Miscellaneous

  • Redirect away after a reload request - [Chris Peters]
  • Support checking IP in http_x_forwarded_for when doing maintenance mode exclusions - [Per Djurner]
  • Support checking user agent string when doing maintenance mode exclusions - [Per Djurner]
  • Added JUnit and JSON format test results - [Adam Chapman]
  • Added empty application test directories - [Chris Peters, Adam Chapman]
  • Added default urlrewrite.xml to support Tuckey URL rewriting with Commandbox #649 - [Tom King]
  • Added beforeAll(), afterAll(), packageSetup(), packageTeardown() methods to test framework #651 - [Adam Chapman]
  • Added errorEmailFromAddress and errorEmailToAddress config settings - #95 [Andy Bellenie, Tony Petruzzi, Per Djurner]
  • Support for passing in any "truthy" value to assert() in tests - [Per Djurner]
  • Added /app/ mapping pointing to the root of the application - [Per Djurner]
  • Added a processRequest() function that simplifies testing controllers - [Per Djurner]
  • Added new embedded documentation viewer/generator for JavaDoc - #734 [Tom King]
  • Removes all references to Railo - #656 (Adam Chapman)
  • Made uncountable and irregular words configurable - #739 [Per Djurner]
  • Removed design mode - [Per Djurner]
  • Removed cacheRoutes setting - [Per Djurner]
  • The cacheFileChecking and cacheImages settings are now turned off in development mode - [Per Djurner]
  • Added includeErrorInEmailSubject setting - [Per Djurner]
  • Environment switching via URL can now be turned off via allowEnvironmentSwitchViaUrl - #766 [Tom King]

Breaking Changes

  • Minimum Lucee version is now 4.5.5.006.
  • Minimum ACF version is now 10.0.23 / 11.0.12.
  • Support for Railo has been dropped.
  • Rewrite and config files for IIS and Apache have been removed and has to be added manually instead.
  • The events/functions.cfm file has been moved to global/functions.cfm.
  • The models/Model.cfc file should extend wheels.Model instead of Wheels (models/Wheels.cfc can be deleted).
  • The controllers/Controller.cfc file should extend wheels.Controller instead of Wheels(controllers/Wheels.cfc can be deleted).
  • The init function of controllers and models should now be named config instead.
  • The global setting modelRequireInit has been renamed to modelRequireConfig.
  • The global setting cacheControllerInitialization has been renamed to cacheControllerConfig.
  • The global setting cacheModelInitialization has been renamed to cacheModelConfig.
  • The global setting clearServerCache has been renamed to clearTemplateCache.
  • The updateProperties() method has been removed, use update() instead.
  • Form labels automatically generated based on foreign key properties will drop the "Id" from the end (e.g., the label for the "userId" property will be "User", not "User Id").
  • Routes need to be updated to use the new routing system by calling mapper().
  • JavaScript arguments like confirm and disable have been removed from the link and form helper functions (use the JS Confirm and JS Disable plugins to reinstate the old behaviour).
  • Timestamping (createdAt, updatedAt) is now in UTC by default (set the global timeStampModesetting to local to reinstate the old behaviour).
  • Blank strings in SQL are now converted to null checks (e.g. where="x=''" becomes where="x IS NULL").
  • Tags are now closed in HTML5 style (e.g. <img src="x"> instead of <img src="x" />).
  • The encode argument to mailTo now encodes tag content and attributes instead of outputting JavaScript.
  • Class output is now dasherized (e.g. field-with-errors instead of fieldWithErrors).
  • The renderPage function has been renamed to renderView.

June 01, 2017 by Tom King

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