An Architect's View

I just declared the official "2.0 Alpha" of Framework One. Although there are a number of minor issues still open against this release, all the major new features are in place and ready for extensive public testing.

The main new features (in no particular order) are:

• custom URL routes with parameter substitution are supported, along with HTTP method restrictions and wildcard routes
• setLayout() to override layout conventions
• view() can be called from a controller, as a way to render email or documents for PDF delivery etc
• controller/service execution can be short-circuited, providing more control over the request lifecycle
• populate() and autowiring now support property-based injection as well as setter-based injection
• additional lifecycle hooks for global before() / after() and pre-rendering setupView()
• complete rewrite of the code to use cfscript - for Adobe ColdFusion 9.0.1 and Railo 3.2.2 or later

In particular, note the last bullet - if you are on earlier CFML engines, you will have to stick with FW/1 1.2 (there will be a 1.3 maintenance release). The mix of tags and script was driving me crazy and I didn't want to add all this new functionality with the code as it is!

Back in early May I talked about presenting FW/1 at D2WC, the upcoming Designer/Developer Workflow Conference in Kansas City, MO. I was really looking forward to visiting a new city and trying out a new approach to presenting. Unfortunately, personal issues have conspired to rob me of that opportunity and I'm no longer able to make the trip. Fortunately, my esteemed colleague at Railo, Mark Drew, has agreed to take over my talk at very short notice so you can still look forward to:

• An introductory talk about FW/1 by a stout, bald bloke with a funny account - you'll hardly know the difference!
• Sponsorship by Railo Technologies, with a key staff member on site to answer all of you Railo questions and, hopefully, encourage you to let the Railo consulting team help solve your CFML problems!

What's new is the opportunity to take advantage of the comprehensive Railo Server Administration training course that Mark is running after the conference!

If you haven't registered for D2WC, there's still time. The conference offers an unparalleled blend of designer/developer topics focused on workflow and a host of expert speakers. I'm dead jealous of those of you attending!

Work continues on FW/1 2.0 with the addition of a setLayout() method, addressing issue #47, and an important change to the project home on RIAForge: the Download link now delivers Bleeding Edge builds rather than the stable 1.x builds. If you are on earlier CFML engines, this will affect you because the 2.0 build stream requires Adobe ColdFusion 9.0.1, Railo 3.2.2 or later and has not yet been tested on Open BlueDragon - in the 2.0 build stream, the CFCs are all-script and will not run on earlier CFML engines.

If you want the 1.2 stable build - or more recent bug fixes on the 1.x stream - you need to go to the github site, select the master branch (which is the default) and download the build you want from there.

I've made this change to accelerate adoption of 2.0 and get more thorough testing feedback from the community.

Documentation for the recently added custom routes feature will appear shortly. My work on FW/1 has been somewhat disrupted of late by a hoard of other things (including preparation for cf.Objective() and my day job!) but now that we're using FW/1 at work, progress will pick up.

I've also added a roadmap page to the wiki so check that out!

This year's cf.Objective() was the biggest, most successful ever: more attendees, more speakers, more tracks, more content, more sponsors, lightning talks, BOFs, ad hoc sessions - more, more, more! Yet it still managed to maintain the great ratio of attendees to speakers that gives people a small conference feel with great networking opportunities.

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Next week is cf.Objective() 2011 and it's pretty typical of conferences that I've spoken at over the years: heavily focused on developers (and heavily focused on CFML). In July, however, I'm doing something very different and I'm really looking forward to it: D2WC - Designer Developer Workflow Conference!

Accordingly, instead of a technical presentation - often on an advanced subject - I'm going to attempt a truly introductory talk that focuses on how to move from design to a fully functional dynamic web site. I'll be drawing on presentations from AJ Mercer - at last year's cf.Objective(ANZ) - and Daria Norris - at next week's cf.Objective(). I want to thank them for their support of FW/1 and I want to thank Dee Sadler for giving me the opportunity to do something different by letting me speak in Kansas City in mid-July!

Last year I'd talked about getting at least an alpha of FW/1 2.0 out the door by year end. It didn't happen. I was reminded of this on the FW/1 mailing list the other day and I provided a fairly detailed response on the plans for FW/1. I figured, since I haven't blogged about FW/1 in a while, I should post that roadmap response on my blog as well.

Is the 1.x version outdated?

No, the 1.x stream will continue to be supported. It will get bug fixes but it will not get new feature - except where I want to provide a migration path for people moving to 2.0 (for example, if I remove certain things marked deprecated in the docs, I'll provide the new API in a 1.x build to make it easier for folks to transition to 2.0). Expect at least a 1.3 version, possibly more. These versions will continue to support CFMX7+ as well as the older versions of Railo and OpenBD that 1.2 currently runs on.

Wasn't 2.0 imminent late last year?

Yes, FW/1 2.0 was very imminent at that point but work and then conference preparations overwhelmed me and it got put on the back burner for a while, along with DI/1.

Since a respite is coming in my day job (World Singles) - we're launching the second phase of our new platform soon - and I have a couple of months before the next conference, I expect to get back on top of FW/1 2.0 soon and once an alpha of that is available, I'll work on DI/1 to get an alpha of that out as well. And then I'll probably focus on cfmljure for a while, as we start to add Clojure to our production code base at work. And then it'll be beta versions of FW/1 2.0 and DI/1 and cfmljure, round and round, until they're all three "baked" and ready for official releases.

So DI/1 is coming?

Yes, DI/1 is still on my radar - I have plans for it at work so it will definitely happen! It's just been delayed (ironically, by the pressures of work). Since FW/1 2.0, DI/1 1.0 and cfmljure 1.0 will all be used in my production code at work, you can expect them to receive regular updates once I actually get to the alpha releases!

It's now official: I'm speaking at the OpenCF Summit in Garland, TX in February! This will be a unique event in the CF world, with its focus on open source, and it has a lot of interesting types of sessions on the schedule: Pecha Kucha, Open Spaces, Hackfests - as well as regular sessions - and several BOFs and panels!

In addition, many of the OpenCF Summit partners are listed, including Railo Consulting, O'Reilly Media, Packt Publishing, hosting companies and consulting groups.

I think it's one of the most exciting new conferences on the schedule - I hope lots of people will agree and take advantage of this event with it's low price of $199!

The official 1.2 release of Framework One - FW/1 - has just been tagged and published on github. You can download it from RIAForge.

Release Candidate 2 had been out for about a month with no issues reported. A few small enhancements were made since RC2. You can see the list of commits here, on github.

FW/1 1.2 Release Candidate 2 is now available on RIAForge! It contains a number of fixes committed over the last three weeks that address a serious bug found in RC1 and provide some enhancements that improve consistency. If this RC passes everyone's tests, it will be the Gold release of 1.2!

I've updated cfmljure to version 0.3 and made a small API change to clean things up and better support access to Clojure variables from CFML - see the last section of the README on the github site.

The API change will break code that tries to use the old public data member .defn. Sorry (but that was an ugly way to implement it, wasn't it?).

In the next week or so, I plan to work up an example application that uses FW/1 and cfmljure together to implement the Model entirely in Clojure and the View-Controller portion in CFML - probably a little contact list manager that uses a database (so the SQL access will be done via Clojure).