Google Contacts Wrapper
Earlier today a user asked if I knew anything about reading Google contact information. I wasn't aware of an API for this, but turns out, one did exist (Contacts Data API). I think I'm finally getting used to the Google way of thinking when it comes to APIs (although see my PS at the bottom), so this one was rather easy to set up.
I just released the GoogleContacts project at RIAForge. This is a simple CFC that can retrieve both contacts and groups from your account. It doesn't support writing back to the system yet. Nor does it support dynamic data. (Google lets you put arbitrary name/value pairs into a contact, which is kind of nice.)
p.s. For folks who use my YouTube wrapper, the engineers on the YT team changed something on the back end that broke many people's implementation of the Upload API. A user reported the bug to me this week and I've been working on fixing it, but it's rather low level so it may be a few more days before it is fixed.
From what I know - this change wasn't announced. When I looked on the forums I saw a bunch of messages from folks wondering why various libraries stopped working all of a sudden. If you manage an API, I really think you have to go out of your way to manage changes, even simple changes, to ensure you don't leave your customers hanging. From what I know, their change was to essentially get a bit more strict, so in theory the change should not have broken any client. Still though, perhaps a bit more warning would have been nice!
Ask a Jedi: Embedding ColdFusion-based code on another server
Wayne asks:
I want to give users of one of my sites code (HTML? JS?) that they can embed on their HTML pages to call a ColdFusion form on my server. The object is to begin a registration process on there web pages that will then take the end user to my CF site after they have entered some starting information (name, birthdate, email address).
I created a CFC that outputs the form to do this and I can invoke it from a ColdFusion page and it works fine. However I cannot figure out how to embed this on another servers HTML page. I also need to pass a variable along with the form information (right now I'm just passing the URL of the client's server to figure out which client is using the form).
Subclipse and Unable to load default SVN client
I recently had to reinstall Eclipse (for the 10th time) and I ran into a problem when trying to open a repository with Subclipse. Every time I went to open a repo, I got:
Unable to load default SVN client
This didn't make sense to me. I knew I had SVN installed (I used it at the command line a few minutes before). A quick Google search turned up this this thread where I found the issue was simply that Subclipse was now wanting SVN 1.5, not SVN 1.4 (the default in OSX). For a quick way to grab SVN for 1.5, go here. I'm not sure what I did wrong in my Subclipse install for it to require 1.5, maybe it was the mix of Eclipse 3.4 as well, but either way, this is the solution if you run into the same problem.
p.s. I've twitted, ranted, etc, a lot lately about Eclipse. I don't know why, but for a month or so now Eclipse has been so flakey I've almost been tempted to switch to Dreamweaver. Shoot, I've almost been tempted to run my Windows VM just to get HomeSite+. I'd like to blame my troubles on the new plugins I've added for Groovy/JBoss development, but things were flakey before that as well. My new plan of attack though is to have one Eclipse 3.4 install just for work, and just with the Groovy/Java/Flex plugins, and a 100% separate Eclipse 3.3 install with CFEclipse/Adobe CFML Plugins.
ColdFusion Ajax leading zeros issue
A user posted a question to my forums that I thought would make for interesting blog matter. It concerns ColdFusion, binding, and results with leading zeros. I touched on this before (Interesting ColdFusion 8, AutoSuggest issue to watch for) so this may be something folks are aware of already. Here is some background. Imagine a CFC with this simple method:
By the power of LUS...
Pretend I was He-Man for a second there while I said it - and if that doesn't make sense, then just ignore me. After a bit over 2 days, we finally got power back last night around 7:45. We were in the "lucky" 10 percent of Lafayette that didn't have power Wednesday. (This is now down to 2% according to our utility provider.)
All in all, this hurricane was a heck of a lot less scarier than Rita was, but that may be that this one took place during the day, when I could still see what was going on. There was still plenty of nervous moments. While we have cut down all the big trees in front of our house, our neighbors still have some very tall, very old trees all around us.
We did indeed have a tree fall, but it was a small one of ours on the side of the house. I'm guessing there must have been a tunnel type effect with the wind as I would have thought the tree would have been protected by the two hours. It fell right on our fence, and scraped the side of our roof. The fence is quite old, and we honestly want to get rid of it. I'm shocked that it is even holding up the tree still since in some parts it is rotting away. But my wife who is very much on the ball was actually on the phone with the insurance company during the hurricane and we were told to have it fixed and just send them the bill.
The only other loss was our food and perishable medicines, which was quite a bit. We have a family of 5 so the food loss was huge, but, surprisingly, our insurance covers that as well. So my wife simply made a list and took pictures while emptying the fridge.
The only thing not quite right yet is the pool. It was a green swamp immediately after the storm. Here is an iPhone pic:
We cleaned it out a bit but it will take more work before we can actually swim in it again. (And in Louisiana, our kids can swim till November sometimes.)
So I took some videos using the Flip recorder. Let me save you some time now and say they aren't too terribly exciting, but you do get to see the wind and rain gradually pick up over time. You also get to see the neighbor's tree split in half and resting on another tree next to it, which is pretty freaky.
Anyway, I want to thank everyone who sent well wishes/prayers etc. It was appreciated. Me - I want to send a big thank you to Willis Carrier.
Lastly - I got some good questions the last few days (what, you guys don't read about the weather?? ;) but I ask that folks give me a few days to respond.
No hurricane will stop my blog - Details on Free ColdFusion for Education
Ever since it was announced at CFUNITED, folks have been hungry for more details concerning the free edition of ColdFusion for educators. Today Kristen Schofield blogged the details about this offer:
ColdFusion 8 Now Available to Students and Educators for Free
You can also find additional information at the FAQ.
I think this is a pretty good deal and I hope institutions take advantage of it. Are any of my readers going to use this?
p.s. Yes, we all survived, with some minor damage to the home. I'm at a friends house "borrowing" their electricity and net connection. When I get power back home I've got a bunch pictures, videos, and details to share.
Gustav Update
For those who are sitting around bored wondering if I'm dead or cutting my way out of my roof yet, here is the latest projection. The pink dot is Lafayette, but I did it by hand and so it may not be 100% precise.
We have some thunder now, and mild winds, but in general it has been pretty nice all day. I went with a friend to get sand bangs. Not that there is any real flooding concern, but we have a pool in the back yard that is a bit raised, and it tends to flood by the back doors when we get rain. So with that in mind, we placed sand bags by them all.
I'll blog again tomorrow to let folks know what's going on. If I lose power, I'll probably switch to Twitter (assuming the cell towers don't fall again like they did for Rita).
CFFEED - You have failed me for the last time.
Ugh. I give up. Today a customer of ours at Broadchoice ran into a bug with an RSS feed. The feed was being generated by cffeed of course. What was interesting is that this was a whole new bug for me. Yes, another one. I swear I love ColdFusion. Really, I do. I just don't know why this one darn tag seems to trouble me so much. I swear this tag has a personal vendetta against me. So what went wrong this time?
Ask a Jedi: Problem with CFGRID and Edit Action
Patrice asks:
This ajax cfgrid lets you enter a percentage, then updates the database. I have to pass two parameters to my update query, WORKORDER and DIVISION_NO. I need to pass the DIVISION_NO that is on the same row as the percentage entered. My problem is that after entering the percent, the update fires off, but with the DIVISION_NO from what ever row your cursor ends up on. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Spry, Detail Regions, and hiding content until a click
That's not a great title up there, but I worked with a reader this week on an interesting problem with Spry. The issue seemed simple enough. How do you hide a detail region until the user actually selects a row in a data set? Turns out though that this is more difficult then it seems.