Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Coldbox CFMX Framework

I have been playing with Coldbox of late, i really like it. It differs from other CFMX frameworks like Model-glue in that it doesn't use XML for configuration, nor does it use RoR like conventions.

It uses, wait for this, the ground breaking approach, of using CFML for configuration!

I like Model Glue, it was the first framework ( outside my own developed over the years ) which i used. I did and do get really frustrated by the need to repeat my controller methods in the modelglue.xml file... why repeat yourself?????

What's more, XML is not a programming language! XML has it's place, it's just heavily abused and misused in way to many wierd and strange ways.

Fusebox has a whole vocabulary in XML which just makes things more complex. Oft heard is the argument that you can manipulate the XML with other tools....

hmmmf, not so interesting IMHO ...why?.. because you what you lose in flexibility using XML to configure the framework is not worth the trade off.

Frameworks should be like a good relationship, it should be a spring board which makes your life better and richer, not dragging you backwards. By backwards, i mean the limits of an XML vocab when compared to CFML.

Then again, I think working under the limitations approach is better for learning as a lot of CFMX developers aren't used to working in a more structed approach.

I have been swapping emails with Luis, the creator of Coldbox about extending the debugging with a diff of the requestcontent between events in a request call and adding a request trace monitor.... we will see what happens :)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Zac sure you will see things coming along as you think. Luis has history of acknowledging any improvement/enhancement. would you like to provide more input on your request then you will see in next release.

Unknown said...

Zac sure you will see things coming along as you think. Luis has history of acknowledging any improvement/enhancement. would you like to provide more input on your request then you will see in next release.

Unknown said...

Hi Zac,
The request context snapshot is now integrated in the debugger and will be due for 2.0.1 due probably next week. So your wish is my command!! JEJE. actually it turned out to be an awesome little feature. I believe you will like it. You actually see the state of the request context as its manipulated and traversed throught events. Very very useful. As for a monitor. Well, we will just have to wait for that one.

Zac Spitzer said...

I look forward to seeing it :)

Adding a requestContextTrace("description") command would be good enable more fine grained detail inside of a event

Anonymous said...

Aloha Zac!

Thanks for the blog. It's exactly what I've been searching for. My work staff just recently adopted the model-glue framework after having been framwork-less before. I gotta say we are much more efficient as a team now and are pumping out code faster. But, I recently got discovered Coldbox and can't decide which way we should go. I'm worried about future support for the frameworks, community support, compatibility with CF in the future, etc.
I see this blog thread started in 5/07; do you have any more thoughts on this or any recommendations for us?

Thanks so much!

BTW, great pics on Picasa! I love travelling too.

victor