Feed: Raymond Camden's ColdFusion Blog - Java - AggScore: 67.2

Earlier this week a reader asked if there was a way to read FLV Metadata via ColdFusion. There isn't anything built in (that I know of!) so I did a quick search for a Java solution. I think people forget how easy it is to use Java via ColdFusion. Even if you have no intent, or care, to read FLV Metadata, please read on as the general technique is something I've done many times in ColdFusion, and could be helpful to anyone looking to do something not directly supported via CFML. [More]

I got an interesting question earlier this week. A reader was using cfpop to retrieve email information. They had built a paging system by using getHeadersOnly. This returns a 'slimmer' query where email bodies are not included in the result. He then paged through the query and fetched the bodies 10 at a time. (Do I need to demo that? Let me know and I'll do another blog entry.) This worked fine until the email account got overloaded. Eventually even the "quicker" getHeadersOnly operation was taking forever. He ask - is there some way to get just the total number of messages in a mailbox? [More]

OK, this is probably an over-the-top geeky question to ask, but Christopher Ryan suggested it to me earlier today and I thought it would be a great topic. While ColdFusion can do almost anything, there are times when we need to resort to Java in order to do something ColdFusion can't. This can be using another JAR for a feature not implement by ColdFusion, or perhaps just relying on createObject to make an instance of a built-in Java object. So let me ask - which Java class have you found to be the most useful? For me it is StringBuffer. I've only had to use it a few times, but it was incredibly helpful in cases where I was creating a large string on the fly. (Like my toXML CFC.)

A week or so ago I wrote a blog entry on converting ColdFusion logs to RSS feeds (ColdFusion Logs to RSS). In the article I converted lines of a log file into an RSS feed. I mentioned that it was a bit silly to convert the beginning of a log file into RSS since new data is added to the end of a file. How can we grab the end of a file? [More]

For days now (well, days in man hours, today is my first day back from vacation), I've been struggling with an issue concerning Flex and BlazeDS. Specifically an issue with the Flex front end receiving messages being sent by BlazeDS. I finally found the answer today, but before I go on, please note I'm a bit fuzzy on the details here - all I know is that it worked and I'm about as freaking relieved as a developer can get. [More]

I've seen a few others note this so I thought I'd pass the word on as well - Adobe has released an updater to JRun. Updater 7 was released on the 6th and may be downloaded here. Release notes (in PDF format) may be found here.

I'm working on a tutorial for a client involving file uploads (which I'll be sharing on the blog). In the tutorial I talk a bit about monitoring the number of uploads and how much space they are taking. I was curious what methods exist for finding out how much space is being used on a drive and how much space is available. [More]

Adobe asked if I could share the word:

The beta release of next version of JRun appserver, code named Cheetah, is available. Adobe JRun Team is inviting serious evaluators to give feedback on this beta release. Contact vrreddy@adobe.com to be included in the Beta program. We believe Beta of JRun Cheetah is reasonably stable and reliable. And we plan to reward those who prove otherwise. We intend to give away fully functional JRun licenses to the users who report highest quality issues during the Beta. We are throwing open a JRun Sample Apps Challenge. We invite the beta users to develop sample applications exploiting the new JRun Cheetah feature sets. The best apps developed by you will be rewarded, and on qualification, will be featured as part JRun releases in samples section.

I'm happy to see JRun getting some Adobe-lovin since it seemed to be only existing as a server for other products.

A new site by my company, Mindseye, was launched today: Celebrities for Charity. This is the first JSP site I worked on, and I have to say I was quite impressed by how powerful the language is. I know some Java developers frown on JSP, but I found it quite nice. I also liked how easy it was to build my own class files and use them from within the application. Tomcat was a bit difficult to understand at first, but for a free application server, I'm very impressed.

So, I'm still kinda new at this Java thing. I'm working on my first real JSP based web site, and ran into a problem that I couldn't fix today. The only change I had made in the past week was to update the Java SDK from 1.3.x to 1.4.x. What I forgot - though - was that I had many JSP files already compiled by Tomcat. My coworker AJ pointed out that I should delete the compiled files in my work directory. So - I did that - and restarted - and it worked perfectly. I also remember this suggestion from others in the past. So - in the hopes of helping others, I'm passing it on here.