Welcome to the Tower, my programming and web development blog. Here you will find articles relating to CFML, CSS, HTML, Java, JavaScript and Regular Expressions, plus discussions on the associated tools, technologies, techniques and ideas.</p> <p>For more general topics, please visit <a href="http://www.sorcerers-isle.net">Sorcerer's Isle</a>, where you will find articles on my other interests. CFML

<p>I have just pushed an update of QueryParam Scanner to <a href="https://github.com/boughtonp/qpscanner">GitHub</a>, containing various improvements.</p> <p>This update is on the <a href="https://github.com/boughtonp/qpscanner/tree/rc0.7.5">rc0.7.5 branch</a>, and it'd be nice if people could take it for a spin and make sure there are no issues with it. (There is a <a href="https://github.com/boughtonp/qpscanner/zipball/rc0.7.5">zip download</a> for anyone without git.)</p> <p>The visible changes which you might notice are: <ul><li>Added JSON output format, giving an alternative to XML for anyone using qpscanner in a scripted process. <li>Added variable for number of potential risk files, and improved related wording in HTML output. <li>Fixed bug where identical queries were causing incorrect line numbers. <li>Fixed bug where query names were not being detected. <li>Fixed bug where blank lines were incorrectly removed.</ul> <p>However, there are also significant under-the-hood changes. I removed my obsolete "Java Regex Utils" library (replacing it with the object part of <a href="http://cfregex.net">cfRegex</a>), and made a number of little code clean-ups.</p> <p>A result of these changes is that qpscanner rc0.7.5 appears to be almost twice as fast as previous versions.</p> <p>If you have any feedback, please feel free to <a href="https://github.com/inbox/new/boughtonp">contact me via GitHub</a>, and similarly if you find any bugs then please raise them on the <a href="https://github.com/boughtonp/qpscanner/issues">issue tracker</a>.</p>

2012-01-07T20:59:44Z

<p>It's been over two and a half years since my last "why railo" post, and - despite <a href="http://www.getrailo.org">Railo</a> "only" being 0.3 versions on - there's been a lot of improvements! <p>In fact, because it's been so long, a few of the things here are not new with v3.3 (though they are all new since the <a href="/article/why_railo_3.html">previous article</a>), but are still great features that deserve mentioning! <p>So, what are my ten favourite new features? <a href="/article/why_railo_3.3.html">Read on to find out</a>. </p>

2011-11-06T23:54:08Z

<p>If you've ever looked at the CFML related articles on Wikipedia, you can't fail to have noticed that, especially when compared to other programming articles, they're not very good. <p>When somebody puts "coldfusion" or "cfml" into Google, they will almost certainly see the respective Wikipedia pages amongst the top three results, but when they follow those links they're unlikely to get a very good impression! <p>If you agree that the CFML presence on Wikipedia can and should be improved, and it's up to the CFML community to do it, then <a href="/article/cfml-on-wikipedia.html">read on to find out how you can help fix it</a>.

2011-10-02T22:08:01Z

<p>The <a href="http://cfregex.net">cfRegex project</a> is two things. Firstly, it is a complete regex implementation for CFML, providing more functionality, flexibility, features and power than the existing CFML RE functions. Secondly, it is a drive to encourage people to properly learn and make use of regex. <p style="text-align:center;"><a href="/article/introducing-the-cfregex-project.html">Read the rest of this article to find out more.</a></p> <div style="text-align:center;margin:2em;"> <a href="http://cfregex.net" title="Visit cfregex.net"><img src="http://cfregex.net/resources/images/cfregex-logo.tagb.png" alt="cfRegeX :: First-class Regex for CFML :: http://cfregex.net"></a></div>

2011-07-22T22:20:48Z

<p>It's nearly a year on from my last Railo blog post so it is well overdue that I write another - just in case there is anyone still sitting on the fence, unsure if they should use Railo - or indeed, anyone who might be unaware of Railo's very existance!</p> <br/> <p>So to start with, a quick summary of what Railo is:</p> <ul> <li>Railo, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1QKOHThSiM#t=0m10s" title="(sounds like 'silo')">pronounced /&#712;ra&#618;.l&#601;&#650;/</a>, is super fast Enterprise-level sofware for RAD webapp and website creation.</li> <li>Railo is LGPL-licensed <a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html">Free Software</a>, so anyone can use it how they like.</li> <li>Railo runs on any <a href="http://java.sun.com/javaee/">Java EE</a> server, (but doesn't require Java knowledge), and is a <a href="http://www.jboss.org/">Jboss.org</a> project.</li> <li>Railo uses the <a href="http://www.opencfml.org">CFML language</a>, like <a href="http://www.adobe.com/coldfusion">Adobe ColdFusion</a> (the primary CFML engine), <a href="http://www.openbluedragon.org">OpenBlueDragon</a>, and others.</li> <li>Railo is really awesome.</li> </ul> <br/> <p><a href="http://www.sorcerers-isle.net/article/railo_still_awesome.html"><strong>Find out why Railo is the perfect choice for your next development project.</strong></a></p> <br/>

2010-01-26T21:42:41Z

<p>Earlier today, the eagely awaited Railo 3.1 public beta was announced!</p> <p>And the reason for much of this eagerness?</p> <p><strong>Railo is now <a href="http://www.opensource.org/">Open Source</a> and <a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html">Free Software</a></strong>, released under the LGPL v2.</p> <p>This license requires that any changes to Railo's sourcecode itself must also be released under LGPL v2 (or later version).</p> <p>However, unlike the full GPL, it does not require that you release any packaged applications under a compatible license - so you can still use whatever license you like for your own CFML code, Open Source or otherwise.</p> <br/> <p>Along with the announcement comes two new Railo websites: The commercial-oriented <a href="http://www.getrailo.com">getrailo.com</a> and the community-oriented <a href="http://www.getrailo.org">getrailo.org</a>, which also contains <a href="http://wiki.getrailo.org">wiki-based documentation</a>.</p> <p>Details on updating this documentation, as well as information about the new features in Railo 3.1, will come later this week - stay tuned to the <a href="http://www.railo.ch/blog/">Railo blog</a> for the latest details.</p> <p>The next four months are going to be a very exciting time for Railo and CFML!</p>

2009-03-31T21:03:00Z

<p>It's been nearly half a year since Railo 3 was released, and with 3.1 just around the corner it is a good time to write a post about some of the features that continue to make Railo such an excellent CFML engine!</p> <p>This blog entry gives ten reasons for using Railo 3...</p>

2009-03-01T02:53:53Z

<p>For anyone working with any other modern language, (such as CFML, C#, JavaScript, Ruby, and more), using a String within a switch-case statement is not an issue, and probably something you've done many times without thinking about.</p> <p>However, when working in Java you cannot use strings in a switch statement.</p> <p>Fortunately, despite what many sites suggest, <strong>there is a solution</strong>.</p>

2008-12-12T21:50:41Z

<p>I have released v0.7 of <a href="http://www.hybridchill.com/projects/qpscanner.html">QueryParam Scanner</a>, which introduces a variety of improvements over v0.6.1:</p> <ul> <li>Significantly faster processing</li> <li>Multiple output formats (HTML, XML, WDDX).</li> <li>Ability to override Request Timeout.</li> <li>Option to specify file/directory exclusions (regex).</li> <li>Option to include/exclude Query of Queries.</li> <li>Option to include/exclude built-in CFML functions.</li> <li>Eclipse Plugin for easier execution.</li> </ul> <br/> <p>For more details and download information, visit the <a href="http://www.hybridchill.com/projects/qpscanner.html">project page at Hybridchill</a>.</p> <br/> <h2>Future Improvements</h2> <p>The following release, v0.8 will have three key features:</p> <ul> <li>A Fix mode, allowing you to manually or automatically correct missing cfqueryparams.</li> <li>A flexible exclusion system, allowing you to ignore paths and variables you know are ok.</li> <li>Integration and examples of use for <a href="http://ant.apache.org">Apache Ant</a> and <a href="http://www.mxunit.org">MXUnit</a>.</li> </ul>

2008-09-23T20:09:31Z

<p>I recently* completed my very first Eclipse Plugin, and I found the whole experience to be very interesting.<br/> <small class="a">*(well about a month ago; took me longer to get writing this than intended)</small></p> <p>This blog entry will focus on two main areas - my experience with Eclipse (as opposed to CFEclipse and similar), and the issues I encountered from a development perspective</p>

2008-09-23T00:10:49Z