Sorcerer's Tower

QueryParam Scanner 0.7.5 Release Candidate

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 20:59:44 GMT

I have just pushed an update of QueryParam Scanner to GitHub, containing various improvements.

This update is on the rc0.7.5 branch, 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 zip download for anyone without git.)

The visible changes which you might notice are:

Added JSON output format, giving an alternative to XML for anyone using qpscanner in a scripted process.
Added variable for number of potential risk files, and improved related wording in HTML output.
Fixed bug where identical queries were causing incorrect line numbers.
Fixed bug where query names were not being detected.
Fixed bug where blank lines were incorrectly removed.

However, there are also significant under-the-hood changes. I removed my obsolete "Java Regex Utils" library (replacing it with the object part of cfRegex), and made a number of little code clean-ups.

A result of these changes is that qpscanner rc0.7.5 appears to be almost twice as fast as previous versions.

If you have any feedback, please feel free to contact me via GitHub, and similarly if you find any bugs then please raise them on the issue tracker.

Why Railo 3.3?

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 23:54:08 GMT

It's been over two and a half years since my last "why railo" post, and - despite Railo "only" being 0.3 versions on - there's been a lot of improvements!

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 previous article), but are still great features that deserve mentioning!

So, what are my ten favourite new features? Read on to find out.

CFML on Wikipedia

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 22:08:01 GMT

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.

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!

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 read on to find out how you can help fix it.

Introducing the cfRegex Project!

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:20:48 GMT

The cfRegex project 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.

Read the rest of this article to find out more.

A New Era - A Colossal Adventure

Sat, 05 Feb 2011 00:03:26 GMT

Tonight, prepare yourself for the beginning of a new era, as one man - and his keyboard - begins his journey in an epic quest to save the world.

Continued...

International Regular Expressions Day

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:20:26 GMT

It's 1st June 2010 today, and that means we're celebrating for the third time the annual International Regular Expressions Day.

Ben Nadel kicked off this event two years ago, in order to promote the use of Regex, especially amongst those who might consider them something scary and obscure.

As before, Ben is running a contest, this year's prizes being some O'Reily Regex books and IIS Mod-Rewrite Pro licenses.

Entry to the competition requires writing some code, and the deadline is today, so if you're interested then hurry up and read the blog entry to find out more.

Happy Regex Day!

Railo: Still Awesome!

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:42:41 GMT

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!

So to start with, a quick summary of what Railo is:

Railo, pronounced /ˈraɪ.ləʊ/, is super fast Enterprise-level sofware for RAD webapp and website creation.
Railo is LGPL-licensed Free Software, so anyone can use it how they like.
Railo runs on any Java EE server, (but doesn't require Java knowledge), and is a Jboss.org project.
Railo uses the CFML language, like Adobe ColdFusion (the primary CFML engine), OpenBlueDragon, and others.
Railo is really awesome.

Find out why Railo is the perfect choice for your next development project.

The Magnificent Art of ElDavo

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 23:53:36 GMT

I've recently been working on a gallery website for my brother, a brilliant artist and illustrator. The site is still under construction, but he's already got some great examples of his drawings and sculptures on there, and it is definitely worth checking out.

Head over to eldavo.co.uk to take a look, and if you like the work take a look at his blog where he has more of his art.

On the technical side, the main site is pretty simple, so far, with extra complexity coming later on. It runs on Railo and uses jQuery. The (private) admin part of the site was my first opportunity to use cfimage functionality, allowing thumbnails to be generated from uploaded images. I used jCrop for the client-side crop selection.

Beehive Forum 0.9 has been released!

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:50:21 GMT

Version 0.9 of Beehive Forum, probably the greatest forum software there is, has recently been officially released.

Since the previous v0.8.4 there have been a variety of fixes and improvements, particularly to client-side caching and UTF-8. There is also now support for Google Analytics and for displaying optional Google Adsense adverts. For full information on what has changed, you can check the release notes.

Download Beehive Forum 0.9 from SourceForge

Also, Beehive is currently a Finalist in the SourceForge Community Choice Awards!

If you're a fan of Beehive and haven't yet voted, please vote for Beehive now:

There is a lot of competition, with many thousands of votes already having been cast, so please help spread the word to as many other Beehive users as you can, to help vote for Beehive to win, and gain the recognition it deserves!

Welcome to the Isle

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:50:47 GMT

This is my new and improved weblog, where I will be posting on a large assortment of topics which I hope you will find interesting. All of the old blog messages have been ported across, and re-catalogued into more useful groupings.

For anyone wishing to read posts only on particular areas, there are three sub-blogs available, which filter the messages from this main blog according to their respective focus. Combined with the ability to subscribe to feeds for individual or multiple tags, it should be easy to get at only the content you wish to read. And to follow all the messages, you can simply read just the main blog.

Currently, everything is still rather basic, but over the next few months I will be adding to, extending and improving the various features that are available, and I welcome any feedback you might have.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy your stay, and please feel free to ask if you have any questions.