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!

Happy Holidays!

Whether you've been naughty or nice, you can read all about the new Railo 3.2 release with many community contributions and new core features!

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!

By now, many of you will have read Adam Lehman's blog post that Adobe is no longer part of the CFML Advisory Committee. Adam has disabled comments on that post and folks have been asking me all morning for my take on this so, as chair of the committee, I'm going to post my thoughts - and leave comments open so the community can provide feedback.

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Railo has long supported for-in script loops over structures and arrays but with the appearance of ColdFusion 9.0.1, Railo has changed for-in over arrays to be compatible with Adobe's new feature.

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In order to support the vocal and enthusiastic community of CFML developers "down under", Railo has added a dedicated Community Manager volunteer for that region.

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I just updated this site with the latest FW/1 build and the latest public BER Railo build. Mango powers this blog but FW/1 powers the rest of this site.

Next week, some of the Railo team will be at CeBIT in Hannover, the world's foremost tradeshow for the digital industry. This is a great opportunity for us to expose more people to CFML! Gert and Mark will be there, on the CONTENS CMS booth, along with Intergral. You can read more about Railo at CeBIT on the Railo site. That news release explains how you can get a free ticket to visit the booth and learn about Railo, Intergral and CONTENS can do for you!

One of the new features in Adobe's ColdFusion 9 release that has excited a lot of developers is the broad range of enhancements to CFML's "other" language: CFSCRIPT. In the past, I've been very disparaging about CFSCRIPT and I've gone so far as to say in several public - and private - forums that I felt CFSCRIPT should be deprecated and no further effort spent on it. It was always a bit half-baked with weird restrictions and lots of important features missing. It was annoying to use, because you often had to switch back to CFML's tags to get things done. With increased use of CFCs, the restrictions in CFSCRIPT made it even more painful to use because you could not specify function arguments easily in CFSCRIPT - no types, no defaults - and you couldn't express a function's access or return type.

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