Explanation needed about ColdBox events

Communities ColdBox HMVC
1

Hello,

I come from a regular ColdFusion background and I haven't ever used a
framework before. I have read through the ColdBox book and played
with the tutorials a bit but there are so many terms used that I don't
know, the book and docs don't really help all that much.

I was wondering if someone knows of an example/tutorial that doesn't
get caught up using lots of technical explanation that is only of
benefit for people that already understand frameworks and is more
along the lines of; to have the event (employeeLookup) in the URL (or
form) trigger your transfer ORM, put this code in your handler, this
code in your model and this code in your view. I would hope they use
something besides the usual 'main' or 'general'. I keep getting the
events between those tied up and I'm not sure why. I think that
something along the lines of what I requested, would help me separate
things out a bit.

No explanations needed beyond that. It looks like I'm mostly just
getting confused by the information overload.

I have found a number of blogs and tutorials that were started, but
then not finished right before they got that far.

I think I am 'really close' to understanding, but I just need a simple
example of the event code.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

KR

2

Hi KR,

I understand your pain, but I think the information provided at the main coldbox site is quite complete. Still, there are quite a few tutorials around, but for beginners I found these particularly useful:

http://www.12robots.com/index.cfm/ColdBox?&startRow=11

Are you familiar with the MVC design pattern? IMHO it’s important to have a good understanding of it. Again, for that purpose I found this tutorial useful:

http://www.12robots.com/index.cfm/2008/9/28/Setting-up-a-ColdBox-Application--ColdBox-Series-Part-2

HTH,

Pedro.

PS: The tutorials refer to a previous ColdBox version, but the basics are just the same.

3

Hello,

Thanks for the reply. I'm working through the 12 robots tutorial now. So far, it is looking like it might be what I needed.

The 'PU-36 Code Generator' is great in and of itself. Hopefully after working through the tutorial, I will figure out the last little bit I need to be able to get something done in ColdBox.

Thanks again.

KR

4

Also, we have over 23 different sample applications in the bundle that can guide you on this. The simpleblog application is even built in 5 parts to lead you to simple to complex.

Also, thank you for your opinions and guidance on the docs, we are working really hard to create more hands on approaches, videos, webinaras, etc to help people out from different levels.

Thanks

Luis F. Majano
CEO
Ortus Solutions, Corp
www.ortussolutions.com

ColdBox Platform: http://www.coldbox.org
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/731/483
Blog: http://www.luismajano.com
IECFUG Manager: http://www.iecfug.com

Social: twitter.com/lmajano facebook.com/lmajano

5

Hello,

I liked the book (I bought it in both hard copy and electronic form) and recommend it highly for anyone wanting it for reference.

The only things I think it needs is a few more pages of reference/definition for a lot of the terminology that it seems to expect you to know and probably about 10-15 pages on a simple application sort of like the 12Robots one.

One of the things I have picked up about ColdBox that I rather like is that it looks like once you get the basics down, the rest looks like it just sort of falls into place. With that said, I’m sure I will have lots of other questions in the future, but it’s all looking good from here.

Best regards,
KR

6

Thanks Kevin, this is great, I love feedback as it would improve not only the product but the reference materials.

We cannot be perfect or anticipate everything, so we need constant constructive feedback to make ColdBox even better!

Luis F. Majano
CEO
Ortus Solutions, Corp
www.ortussolutions.com

ColdBox Platform: http://www.coldbox.org
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/731/483
Blog: http://www.luismajano.com
IECFUG Manager: http://www.iecfug.com

Social: twitter.com/lmajano facebook.com/lmajano

7

I can only find 4 sample applications in the bundle (and in the
nightly)
"SuperSimple"
"Simple"
"FlexAirRemote"
"Advanced"

Though I do remember seeing more, but at some point they got removed.

8

http://blog.coldbox.org/post.cfm/installing-coldbox-samples-from-github

That should help.

Curt

9

Hi Luis, I truly hope you take what I'm about to say as constructive
criticism. I too feel the pain of OP in the sense that the
documentation reads as if it's written by someone who is trying too
hard to prove the relevancy and merit of themselves and the software
they've written. You should not be trying so hard (at least from my
perspective) to include every possible buzz word, lingo and jargon in
the docs as you possibly can. Like OP says, you are all over the place
with your documentation and have very few start-to-finish working code
examples in the docs. To further my point, the models page starts
talking about building a book lookup system, gets sidetracked then
goes into how to set up a user auth system (which is the closest thing
to a start-to-finish code example)

Also, STOP YELLING IN CAPS - to me, it comes across as elitist and as
if Im being berated for something I did (or am doing) wrong. Another
suggestion is to alter your writing style a bit, you really just need
to focus on the message and not try to be humorous. You're a
programmer, not a comedian, so my suggestion is keep the jokes and
silly remarks to an absolute minimum. For example: "A conventions DSL
(Domain Specific Language) has been created to facilitate what needs
to be injected in the models (Don't shiver with fear yet, please keep
reading)"

And last but not least, there are errors everywhere in terms of
misspelled words, incorrect and outdated code examples, omitted and
superfluous words and all of it really needs to be addressed. Again, I
hope you're not offended by my candor and I really hope you take some
or all of my suggestions into account. Thank You

10

Thanks for your comments. All of them appreciated. It requires a lot of hard work to produce not only quality documentation, but samples, books, etc. Everybody has an opinion, likes, dislikes, what they need, what they don’t need, what’s funny, what’s not funny, what too much jargon, too little, what concepts to but, to leave out etc. If I had to cater to everybody’s needs, I would probably not this anymore. With that said, I take all criticism with a grain of salt to improve and better not only the product but myself. Believe it or not, everything has been written by me in the spawn of 6 years and there are definitely improvements coming now that we are professional open source, in terms of cohesiveness, spelling, editors, more authors, etc.

The undertaking of maintaining documentation alive alongside the development of the platform is a herculian effort by far. We are also asking the community to help contribute errors, samples, etc, to make this community driven documentation even better. In a few months we will release the fork feature for our wiki, where anybody can fork a page and fix issues, spelling, etc. Then we can merge the contributions easily into the main documentation.

Again, I thank you for your comments, they are all welcomed and hopefully in the coming weeks all the documentation will be updated to version 3.1. Just check out our feed: http://wiki.coldbox.org/feed/page/listUpdates.cfm and you will see the intense labor that goes into this.

Kind Regards

Luis F. Majano
CEO
Ortus Solutions, Corp
www.ortussolutions.com

ColdBox Platform: http://www.coldbox.org
Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/731/483
Blog: http://www.luismajano.com
IECFUG Manager: http://www.iecfug.com

Social: twitter.com/lmajano facebook.com/lmajano

11

The fork capability sounds like a good idea however only if its all
done via web interface. I think requiring users sign up on at one of
the hosted code repositories (or even require any type of
registration) before they can start editing, is a hassle. I hope your
new process will be as quick and easy as editing wikipedia where you
are basically one click away from editing a page. If contributor abuse
becomes an issue then cross that bridge when you get there. I couldn't
agree with you more on the fact that developing coldbox in conjunction
with documenting the entire thing is a huge effort (to say the least)
and that's why you can't/shouldn't do it by yourself. Anyhow, I am
looking forward to the new docs and wish you luck. One last request..
for some reason, every time I read the word "funky" in the docs, it
makes me think of gonzos nose from the muppets. Maybe turn the funky
knob down on bit on the next incarnation?