One of the more common tasks in ColdFusion development is passing variables through the URL string. We are all familiar with the idea that the question mark (?) denotes the url query string start, and that name value pairs are separated with the ampersand (&).

I usually avoid using this in display templates, as it isn't great exposing your internal site workings to customers, and with Fusebox it is very easy to pass the URL variables to an "act_" template and remain hidden.

What happens when you want to use dynamic url variables with a URL re writing application like Isapi re write? I've been using Isapi re write in some FuseBox framework application, and it is relatively easy to set up a rewrite rule, as shown below.

Where the url /home/ would actually serve up the content specified in the fuse specified. But this is hard coded. What about dynamic variables?

We can create a regular expression to handle the translation of the variables.

We use a similar URL, but append the dollar ($) 1 = dollar ($) 2 string. In the re write rule we specify that appended variables are transposed into the string using the slash (/) as a separator.

So as an example we could pass a product id of 24 into the rule like this:

It would be rewritten to the more familiar url string. A handy way of continuing to mask the url.

One of the ideas that we have been throwing around the office is creating a platform that will create the form-validation-database cycle automatically. Something akin to ORM, but not. ORM looks good, but we want more control over what is happening.

In this article I am exploring the idea of automatically creating JQuery validation from a simple Coldfusion input. In this case a list of required fields. I'll say up front Ray Camden's blog entry on Jquery Validation (http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/index.cfm/2009/2/10/An-Introduction-to-jQuery-and-Form-Validation-2) has been an invaluable help.

The principle behind this is that you can create a generic validation object routine, and simple provide it with a set data object (list or struct, haven't decided yet) and have it match against a form and validate it. So with that in mind we will create a simple form.

As you can see from above, this is a simple form. Next we will include references to the Google code repository for the AJAX library, and out JQuery validation plugin. Next we have the JQuery script to validate our fields. Firstly we create a list of the fields that are required. By doing this it is incredibly easy to add another required field to the model. The next phase of this will probably accept a structure rather than a list, in that way I can combine field lengths and any other custom criteria, rather than merely the fact that it is required. The JQuery validation starts off in exactly the same way as usual, we create a function to catch the validation request, and use the id of the form as the reference. We declare the error container style of "#error". Next we loop over our list inside the "rules:" element. This creates the required rules for each field. I've also added a basic check for the value 'email'. This will create an email validation rule. Next we create custom messages in the "message:" element. Again this catches the email value and adds an appropriate message. Lastly we can create a style for the #error container we declared above.

This creates a totally dynamic validation routine - all fed from a list. I think it forms a good basis to build a more dynamic rules driven model, where you can set field lengths as well.

There is an example of the complete code here, along with a variation on the inline or external placing of the validation messages.

Follow this link for a demo of the JQuery validation model.