This article deals with a work around for a problem I had been experiencing with the imageCFC ( http://www.opensourcecf.com/imagecfc/ ) open source project. When resizing an image the file permissions were being lost on the edited file. This meant that the server operating system could not read or serve up the file to the browser.

I've been using imageCFC as I have a variety of coldfusion server versions (7 and 8), and I like the fact that in the resize method you can specify the maximum size for the width and height, and it will resize down to that size, and keep the aspect ratio of width-to-height.

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I've been dealing with bulk data recently, CSV files of around 500mb or more. These can seriously stress out your pc. In the process of trying to write data import scripts I found an application that has proven its worth a few times over. This application allows you to split text files at points of your choosing.

File Splitter Pro, from wonderwebware. It doesn't look amazing, and it has a relatively simple interface, but after going through three or four alternatives that for the most part couldn't even open a 500mb csv file this has come through every time. What I really like though is the function that allows you to select N number of lines and move them to another file.

There is a trial version available too:

http://wonderwebware.com/file-splitter-pro/

(P.S I don't get commission or anything.)

A recent piece of functionality required a user to be able to upload an image, and view a thumbnail of that image alongside all the other related details that they were entering (item specific data etc).

After having a look through several forums it seemed that people's opinions were split on whether this could be accomplished using Ajax at all. So I decided to go old school and use an iFrame. I'm not a big fan of frames in any incarnation, but in this case I was willing to make an exception.

So firstly there is an upload form. It is a pretty standard ColdFusion form. Just remember when uploading a file to set the enctype="multipart/form-data". Also the submit button does not submit the form, it fires a JavaScript function 'changeFrame()'. The JavaScript function sets the target of the form submission to the iFrame, and then submits it.

The form submits to the 'action.cfm' template. This template displays a placeholder image thumbnail initially, but when the form is submitted it performs the file upload using cffile, then displays the newly uploaded file instead of the placeholder. Ideally at this point I would like to resize the image with cfimage, but my hosting company is still using ColdFusion 7, so I may have to use a third party tag to do the same.

It is a shame I had to use an iFrame, and it would be really interesting to see if this is possible in a more web 2.0 scripted way.

A recent development involved some changes to a large script that was using a product called ImageMagick (link). It is an image manipulation tool that allows you to perform transformations and other actions on image files. The product seems stable enough, and can be executed from a web interface using cfexecute, in a kind of command line prompt method.

It got me thinking as to why the application wasn't using cfimage, and then lead me to examine the wider topic of whether to use ColdFusion's in built functionality, or opt for other third party products.

I can think of a few obvious deciding factors for both pro and con, the first that springs to mind is performance.

Is there a marked performance difference between a ColdFusion function, and the third party application? Is it better to pass the load of to the operating system, rather than have ColdFusion perform whatever processing function it is supposed to do? In this case it would be a race between cfexecute, and cfimage, so there may be very little difference in it.

The second major point that springs to mind is the knowledge base of the developer, and the structure of whatever framework you are using. What I really mean by this is 'if your chosen technology can perform a function, why not utilise it to its full potential?' . It seems a bizarre choice indeed to deliberately not harness a function that your platform can already provide, and instead introduce another code base or application into the framework.

It also introduces another hurdle for the development staff, they may well be familiar with how an existing Tag works, but be totally unaware of the third party application, as was my case here.

A long winded intro, but here is the code I used:

During a batch process that I was writing recently I was using a CFfile operation to rename some files.

When running it I came across this error message:

This is the calling cfml code. The actual variable values aren't important.

So I checked and doubled check the source url, and manually browsed to the directory and viewed it. The file was right there! I had a wander around online and found that this isn't a new issue, but more a bad error report.

The error isn't actually relating to the 'source' attribute at all, but rather the 'destination' attribute. In this case it was a file/folder permissions problem. (I didn't have write access). It was simply a case of Coldfusion server reporting it incorrectly.

I was recently migrating some data from one application to another and came across a stumbling block in MySQL. If you are trying to run a large SQL file backup restoration and the source file is quite large you may encounter the error : 'Packet too large' or 'MySQL server has gone away'. This is cuased by a MySQL server memory error.

If you look in the mySQLserver installation path directory you should see a 'my.ini' file. This controls the default settings for SQL server when you start the service.

Add in a line of code like this:

under the value of [mysqld]. Save the file and then restart mySQL server.

You should now be able to run:

show variables like 'max_allowed_packet';

And have it return your ini value.

As long as the value you have set it to is greater than the file size it should run successfully.

You can also run it as a set session variable command in your SQL environment, like this:

This will set the same value for that instance of the sql server.

Update:

There also seems to be a massive difference in performance in running the imports directly into a GUI environment, or through a shell command. I've had a 600mb file fail several times in the GUI, but running:

It has imported within around 10 to 15 minutes.