Raymond Camden's ColdFusion Blog - CFEclipse

Quick CFEclipse/Frameworks Explorer Tip

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 15:11:00 -0400

I'm working on a rather large Model-Glue site. The main ModelGlue.xml file contains many includes to break out the functionality. While this makes the XML a lot easier to read, it confuses the framework explorer a bit. The framework explorer does correctly notice the include. But it doesn't let me explorer the XML and see the controllers and event handlers. Turns out there is a simple solution. I just needed to right click on my included XML file, select CF Frameworks, and then Set/Unset as Configuration file: In the drop down, select Model-Glue. Then in the frameworks explorer window, hit the Refresh button. Your XML file will now show up as a Model-Glue config file you can browse. I want to say I'm very disappointed in CFEclipse. The fact that it can't read my mind and understand what I mean by telepathy is truly a shortcoming of the product. I may have to switch to Visual Studio I suppose. (Hmm, may be a bit hard on the Mac.)

CFSnippets.org Launches

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:38:00 -0400

Todd Sharp just launched a new project, CFSnippets.org. Let me "innovate" some text from his blog entry:

I'm proud to announce the launch of my latest project, cfsnippets.org. The site is the first public SnipEx repository open to all snippet types for CFEclipse. If you're not familiar with Snippets in Eclipse, they're basically simple chunks of code - typically repetitive type tasks - that you can quickly and easily insert into your code by point/click or keyboard shortcut combinations. Jared Rypka-Hauer has already started a library on the site - check it out to get a feeling for how the site works. If you have snippets to add just register, verify your account and start adding snippets to the existing library or create your own. To use the SnipEx repository, click on 'SnipEx Server(s)' and copy the URL shown on that page and paste it into CFEclipse. For more on how to set that up see this post from Mark Drew.

I'm pretty happy to see this as I think SnipEx is one of the coolest IDE features I've ever seen.

Clearing your SnipEx Cache - and CFLib SnipEx Update

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 08:27:00 -0400

While working on some bugs in the CFLib SnipEx server, Mark Drew sent me a great tip on how to clear the cache in CFEclipse. Right now it is a manual process, but Mark will be adding a refresh option to the UI soon. So to clear your SnipEx cache, drop down to the command line and....

Change to your Eclipse workspace. Mine was at /Users/ray/Documents/workspace
Change to .metadata/.plugins/org.cfeclipse.cfml/snipex
Delete all XML files
Restart Eclipse

That's it. During development it makes sense to just keep a window open there so you can do this a bit more quicker. (By development I mean if you are working on your own SnipEx server.) So CFLib has had some issues with SnipEx, mainly with UDFs that don't work well in the XML feed. I've been removing the UDFs temporarily and this morning I just removed another another one. If you have trouble loading a library, please clear your cache first, then try again, and let me know. p.s. Now that I've got a nice XML version of CFLib, my next "for fun" project will be an AIR client for CFLib!

Snipex Code Released - CFLib Available in Eclipse

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 10:49:00 -0400

Mark Drew has released the code for SnipEx. This allows anyone to setup a Snippets server for Eclipse. How is this useful? You can now browse the entire CFLib library directly from Eclipse. No more need to ignore my annoying ads. Just add: http://www.cflib.org/snipex/snipex.cfc As a SnipEx server. I noticed that the node shows up blank, but when you expand it, you will see all the CFEclipse Libraries and UDFs. You can then click for a description or double click to insert a UDF. How freaking cool is that? I'm going to be doing a bit of work on the XML when I can. I noticed the libraries are not sorted so I'll try to fix that.

CFEclipse adds Eclipse 3.3 Support

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 20:54:00 -0400

Mark Drew has updated CFEclipse to support Eclipse 3.3. See his announcement. I'm using it right now and it seems to be working fine. I installed Aptana, and AIR, but have only tested basic HTML work.

ColdFusion 8 Dictionary for CFEclipse

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 10:33:00 -0400

Mark Drew just announced an earlier version of the ColdFusion 8 dictionary for CFEclipse. Grab it now. One thing that may not be obvious - or maybe you didn't know about CFEclipse, but Mark has set it up so you can set the version of ColdFusion you are running. That way if you are using ColdFusion 6, or Blue Dragon, or Railo, and use a function that only exists in ColdFusion 7, you will get immediate feedback of the problem. This is per project - so if you work in various versions of ColdFusion, you can set each project to the one being used.

Mark Drew announces SnipEx

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 15:38:00 -0400

Forgive the simple cross post - but I wanted to point out Mark Drew's latest blog post: Project X unveiled: Say a big hello to SnipEx This is an uber-cool new feature coming to CFEclipse - remote snippets. This even includes integration with CFLib. You will be able to insert a UDF right into your document all via CFEclipse. (Hey Mark, you going to reimburse my Adsense loss?? ;)

Tip for CFEclipse/CF Frameworks Explorer

Sun, 06 May 2007 09:07:00 -0400

As I mentioned earlier today, Mark Drew has released the CF Frameworks Explorer for CFEclipse. One feature I couldn't get working right was the "Open Include" option for my views in my ModelGlue XML. The problem was that the explorer couldn't translate my ColdSpring view mapping (/adobeopen/views) to a proper folder. All it took was right clicking on my project in Eclipse, selecting Set CF Mapping, and naming it adobeopen. I was then able to immediately open my views from the explorer. It's amazing how easy it is to get support when you can walk up to Mark and bug him. ;)

Framework explorer ready for CFEclipse

Sun, 06 May 2007 07:49:00 -0400

I blogged about the new frameworks support in CFEclipse two days ago, and now it is ready for download. It is still in development so use it with care, but if you want to play with it, grab it from the site. Check out the screen shot below: This is what the tool automatically picked up from my RIAForge project.

cfObjective - Mark Drew and CFEclipse

Fri, 04 May 2007 17:02:00 -0400

Mark Drew has announced frameworks support for CFEclipse and let me say - it looks incredibly sexy. He demonstrated support for Fusebox, Reactor, Model-Glue, and other frameworks. The plugin is even able to automatically determine your framework automatically, which is just incredible. Mark says the frameworks are configured by XML, and that Transfer support, for example, was added in about 5 minutes.

CFEclipse TV

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 15:28:00 -0400

Mark Drew launched a new series of screencasts to help you learn how to use Eclipse and CFEclipse. Check it out at CFEclipse TV.

Did you know CFEclipse had a File View?

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 12:50:00 -0400

I was reading Robert Blackburn's article on Aptana (I'd link to the site, but I'm going to boycott the Sys-Con site until they remove that insane autoplaying Flash video). Robert makes a good point about how the project-focused Eclipse is hard for people to get used to. I know it bugged the heck out of me. I mean - I get the concept of why projects are better, but is it truly that crazy for Eclipse to just let you work with files when you need to? Anyway - one of the points that Robert makes is that Aptana has a file-based view. I wanted to point out that CFEclipse has it as well. If you don't see it, go to Window/Show View/Other/CFML/File Explorer View. This view lets you browse your local drives. It also lets you connect to FTP servers. In this regard it acts a lot like RDS.

Nimer's Log Viewer

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 09:48:00 -0400

This is old news but as I used it recently I wanted to remind folks. Mike Nimer has created a cool Eclipse plugin called the CF Log Viewer. It lets you display a ColdFusion log directly in Eclipse. It isn't a straight text dump but a nicely formatted display. What is really nice about it is that it constantly monitors the file. This means you can use cflog commands and watch them show up in Eclipse as you hit your site. I used it to help me debug issues with XML-RPC support for BlogCFC. I'd like to see him allow for removing columns so that you could focus in on the text and not the other messages. (But to be fair - Nimer provides the source so I could do it myself. In my spare time. Um, right. :) As a side note - you should read Charlie Arehart's new series on FusionDebug as it can provide an even nicer way to debug.

Eclipse Tip: Go Into

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 16:55:00 -0400

I found this a few weeks ago, and I thought I'd share it with folks. In your Eclipse navigator, if you right click on a folder and select, "Go Into", the navigator will reload with only that folder being available. This is an excellent way to quickly hide the rest of the navigator. It's also useful for presentations. I tend to find myself searching for files (no matter how well I document ahead of time), and restricting Eclipse to a subset helps narrow the search.

Fusion-Reactor and FusionDebug

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:50:00 -0400

A few weeks ago I reviewed the beta of Fusion-Reactor 2. It is now released and more information may be found here. The guys over at Fusion-Reactor have been busy it seems. During CFUNITED, Michael presented on FusionDebug. I missed this - but caught the demo on their site and it looks really slick. It is for CFEclipse users and allows for some very impressive debugging capabilities. It isn't released yet, but I'd recommend checking out the demo movie. Also - if you are in NYC, Michael Dinowitz will be presentingon FusionDebug at the local user group.