Coldfusion 10 (CFX) Live Wishlist
Here’s a start on what I’d like to see in ColdFusion 10 and beyond…
Updated 2 May 2011…
valueList() function:
- add startrow and maxrows OR startrow and endrow params so you can filter it without having to loop
- add another attribute to cfloop and cfoutput (name=bla?) so that you could reference a particular tag for getting your valuelist
- add nullValue AND emptyValue parameters to allow a value to be set if the value is null
- to set each row’s parameter to a default (like isNull(x,0) in sql) eg: (10,,,3,4 becomes 10,0,0,3,4 with nullValue set to 0)
- Add another parameter to set value if nothing is in the output (aka = “”) so when you’re using it in a query like bob IN (<cfqueryparam value=#valuelist(qPages.status)#”>) you can utilize it like someid IN <cfqueryparam value=#valuelist(qPages.status,0)#”>
- formatting parameter (ie: format=”date” mask=”dd/mm/yy” or format=”number” mask=”(00) 0000 0000″)
Ajax Libraries:
- Ability to set the ajax libraries in application settingsĀ in app.cfc so you can choose ONE engine for scripts to be generated/used.
- Abiltity to have a ajaxsource like a datasource and you can add them into the administrator ( and point them to cdn’s/google
- CFAJAX lib=”ext,jquery,spry,etc” validate=”ext” source=”googlecode”
- CFAJAXLIB lib=”ext” -> this points to ajaxmapping
ColdFusion Administrator:
- Admin API needs to be more thourough
- ExtJS based admin panel
- Inline updater for updates (as well as visual alerts when one is available)
- Multiple site admin with better usability – make more like other similar managers like vmware or alike
- Mailserver to be added as mailsources like databases so you can add mailsource=”gmail.com” to your cfmail tag
- also need a flag that can be set to ‘developer’ so that it just queues those emails in a folder called ‘dev’ on same level as spool and undelivr and expose the directory through the admin api so that it can be read programically (as well as a basic ajax reader in the cfadmin that can read html and text versions of the messagesApplication-Based Settings
Application-Specific Settings:
- Ability to specifiy default component to be extended per application
- Ability to place an item in onServerStart from a setting
Generally:
- Use GlassFish instead of Tomcat
- Fix the ExtJS stuff and remove the jQuery and other javascript stuff
- CFANT tag/cfscript also incorporating subversion repository management
- Global proxy settings for getting out of firewalls easily
- get application.cfc to work like other cfcs including interaction
- onServerStart server-warming feature that applications can add via cfadmin api – and managed through list interface
- Support cloud support for mappings, etc
- Support install to the cloud
- Minimise install by having a core install and option selected functionalitites, or modules that you can choose to add or remove
- Add ability to add plugin modules to add core functionality ie: add CFSILLY tag to tags available to every page and administrate this on a per site basis (sandboxable)
- Bundle jBuddy IM with CF
- 2d and other barcodes and Microsoft Tag
- Reduce the footprint of jrun or replace it with something leaner
- Free limited tag/feature version of CF
- GroupCurrentRow variable like currentRow variable when group= is used for cfoutput and cfloop
- tweak to treat an empty string as a null value on function argument collections
There is already onServerStart() in ColdFusion 9
I like the and have mentioned to the team, having the ability to turn off functions you don’t use so lower the footprint and in turn I guess could increase performance and security.
Update cfdocument for easier rendering of PDF’s (css & html).
Really like some of your ideas here. About the only one that stands out not to do is using GlassFish over Tomcat. Not that GlassFish is a bad product, but being made by Sun (and owned by Oracle) I don’t hold much stock in it as remaining Open Source, so the move to Apache Tomcat makes more sense from that perspective. A developer can always rewire CF to GlassFish themselves, if that is their preference, but using Tomcat for the base install makes sense to me.
This post means nothing to Adobe unless you file it through :
http://cfbugs.adobe.com/cfbugreport/flexbugui/cfbugtracker/main.html
I like your idea about setting an ajax datasource. Interesting. +1 for bundling jBuddy IM. A very limited part of it has been bundled since CF7 for XMPP/Jabber support but it really needs the whole works – Windows Messaging, Yahoo, AIM, etc. I couldn’t get the downloadable trial working so it would be excellent value to have everything bundled and pre-configured.
A FREE tag-limited version is still desperately needed. The current free version for educational establishments neglects a huge potential audience of people who want to learn how to create database driven websites on their own outside of college/uni. The pool of fresh developers is still shrinking so Adobe need to open up CF to a bigger audience. I would recomment a tag limited version like CF Express (remember that?) and a half-way CF Standard version for $500 with some restrictions lifted. Tap in to the PHP market. The free for education version doesn’t do that as it ignores the financially restricted commercial and hobbyist developers and tinkerers out there. Give them a tool like CF so they can make their website dreams a reality and when their sites start to get popular and/or profitable they will upgrade to the higher end CF products.