Mike Nimer's Blog - CFForm

CFForm xml forms

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 12:04:00 -0400

Sure it's a slow adoption feature in ColdFusion, but it hasn't been forgotten. And those that know how to use it - love it. Wim Dewijngaert @ http://cfform.dewijngaert.be has created a number of great DHTML components that work with CFForm (format="xml"). So if you've already discovered the hidden power in xml forms or have been meaning to use them - go take a look and try some of them out. I knew that people would eventually start posting components/xsl skins for cfform. Does anyone else have any that they would like to post (they aren't hard to make).

CFForm.com is moving

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 18:23:00 -0400

Time to simplify some blogs/sites, Why do I have two, well that's another story. But for now, I've decided that there is no reason to try and maintain 2 different sites. One specific to cfform and one to everything else ColdFusion. So I've decided to merge cfform.com into mikenimer.com. This is not the end of cfform , it's just moving. The domain will still point to cfform.com articles. However this does mean you need to update your RSS feeds. The new CFForm RSS feed is going to be: http://www.mikenimer.com/rss.cfm?mode=short&mode2=cat&catid=66C5B7CE-CC7C-166B-B62E58948BAE104B

CFForm/Flex Visio Stencil

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 12:03:32 -0400

I just posted this on my personal site (mikenimer.com) but for those of you just read this site I thought a double post was a good idea.

Darren Houle has put together a Visio Stencil for laying out ColdFusion flash forms, and Flex applications - if you?re so inclined ;) It has 43 different Halo components (Charts, Tabs, Accordions, Calendars, etc..).

You can get it here. Trust me I've been using this for the last week and a little wireframing before you start coding makes you finish a lot quicker, and it's a better application for it.

http://63.135.103.199/ecomm

New Flash Form Feature #2

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 08:21:00 -0400

Another new feature in Flash Forms in ColdFusion 7.0.1 (Merrimack) is support for onLoad in your flash forms. What does this mean? This means you can define a function to call when the form is loaded to help initialize different parts of your form.

But first, if you haven't yet - you can download it here:
downloads updates

And you might want to read this post first, about creating functions in flash forms (another new feature)
read

I'm hoping to update the different examples on CFFORM.com soon to use these new techniques but for now here is an example:

Also don't forget to read the release notes to learn about all the new goodnees in 7.0.1
read



	
		function initApp()
		{
		status.text = "this form is now loaded and ready!";
		}

New Flash Form Feature #1

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 08:08:18 -0400

With the recent release ColdFusion 7.0.1 (Merrimack) I can finally tell you about some of the new Features. But first, if you haven't downloaded yet - do so!

You can download it here:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/coldfusion/downloads_updates.html#mx7

The first feature to tell you about is support for actionscript functions proper. Now you can create real Actionscript functions inside of your flash forms, no more <cfsavecontent> hacks. This should help to keep you flash forms a lot more manageable, it might even help that 32k limit (since you aren't copy/pasting as much code)..

Previously you might of done this:
<cfsavecontent var="as1">
alert('hi');
</cfsavecontent>

<cfinput type="Button" onClick="#as1#">

Now you can do this:
<cfform format="flash">
<cfformitem type="script">
    function alertMsg(msg)
    {
         alert(msg);
    }
</cfformitem>

<cfinput type="button" onClick="alertMsg(' this is a button click ')">
<cfinput type="button" onClick="alertMsg(' you clicked the wrong button'">
</cfform>

Ray Camden - Up Down Select List in Flash Forms

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 11:41:01 -0400

Ray Camden recently posted an example of adding Up/Down controls to a cfselect list in a Flash Form. This is a good example of how you can extend flash forms with actionscript.

http://ray.camdenfamily.com/index.cfm/2005/9/9/Ask-a-Jedi-Moving-items-up-and-down

Centering buttons in a Flash Forms

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 11:37:00 -0400

Recently I answered a question about how to center some Form Buttons in a flash form. The secret to doing this is the spacer form item. The reason this works is that the spacers will take up the extra space, by default, leaving the button in the middle.

Paul Robertsons on Flash Forms

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 12:42:21 -0400

Paul Robertson has recently jumped in feet first to Flash Forms and along the way has posted his experiece as well as a great series of posts about how the flash forms work and how to use them better.

Uploading a file with Flash Forms

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 14:31:45 -0400

It's official the #1 most requested feature in CF Flash Forms - File Uploads - is now possible.

Originally this wasn't in the CF Flash Forms because of a limitation of with the Flash Player itself, however, with Flash 8 this is not longer a limitation. In Flash 8 macromedia have added support for file uploading which means it's now possible to support this in CF Forms.

Nahuel and Laura at ASFusion have stepped up and got this working against the latest beta of Flash 8, even before I could add this to the product. They even wrapped it all up in a nice custom tag so you can easily add it to your forms - Gotta love the ColdFusion Community.

Check out the posting here

Before you ask, no this won't be in the CF7 "Merrimack" release. Due to Release schedules of CF and the Flash Player adding support for <cfinput type="file"> will have to wait until the next major version of CF.

CFForm and Flash Remoting

Wed, 10 Aug 2005 14:05:05 -0400

It's been awhile since my last posting and I have to say wow! people have been busy with flash forms. Especially the folks at ASFusion.com. In the last week or so they have uploaded 2 good examples.

The first example(s) are using Flash Remoting in Flash forms. The initial posting was this post "Remoting for ColdFusion Flash Forms". The interesting part to this is that they aren't using any Flex features, instead they are using old school Flash 6 (I think that's when we introduced Flash Remoting) Actionscript.

Related Articles:
Populating a cfgrid with Flash Remoting
How to populate a cfselect with Flash Remoting
CFTree populated with Flash Remoting and XML

And the granddaddy of all Flash Remoting examples A full blown RSS Feed Reader built with CFForm and Flash Remoting. I want to point something out here, this is a good example of what CFForm can do - but to be fair, and give the proper warnings, it's not what it was designed for. It was designed to make rich forms on the web not build RIA Applications. Nahuel even points out that in his next version he wants to move this application to Flex

"Why? Because I want to add more features to it and I already reached the limit in the cfform. Flex will give us the freedom and ability to create classes, custom components and make everything more OO. I have been working in flex lately, and the tags are very similar to cfform. In that way, I think the migration won't be that hard."

XForms: The 'Other' New Forms in CFMX 7

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 16:39:23 -0400

Matt Woodward has posted a great new article to Fusion Authority about the new XML forms feature in ColdFusion.

Full Article

Date format gotcha

Fri, 22 Apr 2005 00:34:00 -0400

Here is a gotcha to watch out for. I just noticed this while I was looking into a bug about why dates in the grid were offset from the dates in the database.

In the java and ColdFusion date formatters you use the letter H to represent the hour in 0-23 hour format. However in the flex date formatter (which we use for flash forms) H represents the hour in 1-24 format not the 0-23 format that I was used to. In flash you need to use the letter J for the 0-23 format in a date mask.

So if you run into the problem where your dates are displayed 1 hour off, remember to use J instead of H in the mask attribute.

Here are all the flex dateFormatter mask characters. Valid pattern letters include: Y - Year. M - Month. D - Day in month. E - Day in week. A - AM/PM indicator. J - Hour in day (0 to 23). H - Hour in day (1 to 24). K - Hour in AM/PM (0-11). L - Hour in AM/PM (1-12). N - Minute in hour. S - Second in minute. Date Formatter doc

Binding cfgrid to cftree

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 03:11:54 -0400

Todd Sharp sent me this example of binding a flash grid to the flash tree, in a flash form, and using the tree to filter the items in the grid. I'll let Todd explain this example in his own words.

The basic code for filtering was tweaked from the previous examples on your site. I've also added two select boxes which can be used as additional filters for the grid - either independently or in conjunction with the filtered results from the tree. This application seems to be best suited for presenting a "main menu" of options (which is how I've used it in my real life application for my companies intranet site that I'm working on). In other words, the grid is populated initial with all data from the highest level entity (for example, company or region) and the filters applied to find a specific data row that the user is looking for. I then bind a hidden text box to the record number (primary key) for the selected row. When the form is submit, my next page presents the actual data entry flash form for that particular item by querying the database with the record number passed in from the previous form.

CFCalendar next and previous buttons example

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 02:51:00 -0400

This example was sent to me by Oliver Merk from Toronto. Oliver created this example to add next and previous years buttons that are linked to a calendar.

theCal.displayedYear = theCal.displayedYear - 1; YearMinus.label = "< " + String(theCal.displayedYear - 1); YearPlus.label = String(theCal.displayedYear + 1) + " >"; theCal.displayedYear = theCal.displayedYear + 1; YearPlus.label = String(theCal.displayedYear + 1) + " >"; YearMinus.label = "< " + String(theCal.displayedYear - 1); YearPlus.label = String(theCal.displayedYear + 1) + " >"; YearMinus.label = "< " + String(theCal.displayedYear - 1);

One way to check password fields

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 02:48:00 -0400

A common form element is the password and password confirm field. Here is one way to check that these match in a flash form. This example will compare the two fields if they don't match it will show an alert popup, and then return "false" so the form won't continue to submit.