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Quotes being changed to question marks using cfsavecontent and MySql |
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One of the tables in an online application stores entire html templates in a blob field, this data is pulled out and used to build emails, replacing specific keywords.
I recently needed to update some of this data, but there is not an administration system for it, so a manual SQL script would have to do.
The problem I encountered was that creating a html template as a variable using cfsavecontent and inserting it into MySql was causing all the ' to appear as ?. I read a blog entry based on Coldfusion MX and setting the character encoding in your coldfusion administrator, for each datasource. Or you could do it in the template, like this:
2<cfcontent type="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
This didn't seem to work at all, in fact I found that it would error whilst trying to insert the cfsavecontent variable using cfqueryparam. There seemed to be some sort of encoding issue between the two tags.
2Html template code
3<body> etc </body>
4</cfsavecontent>
5<cfquery datasource="#application.dsn#">
6INSERT INTO table (fields)
7VALUES ('#htmlContent#');
8</cfquery>
This didn't work either with Cfqueryparam, or as a non param input. It turns out that you simply need to escape the characters (double them, or use character representations). IE don't use a single quote, use two . In this way the MySql encoding treats the character as a character, rather than a potential command. I still think that this is something that can be fixed by setting the encoding type, but in this case there was a far simpler solution.
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Lynda.com launches ColdFusion 9 Essential Training |
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The online education and training site 'Lynda.com' has just launched its new ColdFusion course.
The course 'ColdFusion 9 Essential Training', looks pretty comprehensive, and covers most topics you could think of, including installation, and using the IDE - ColdFusion Builder. It even has a section on using the new ORM frameworks for ColdFusion 9.
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Dynamically colouring swfs using Flashvars to match generic templates |
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One of the application frameworks that I regularly work in is an entirely generic, white box solution. It builds itself based on some instantiation variables. This includes the CSS for that instance of the application. More recently I was integrating a swf object that would be used on hundreds of instances of this application, but it was generically coloured, which just wouldn't work. I needed to somehow have the flash object fit the CSS style of that instance of the App.
Solution
The flash object accepts a series of Flashvars that are passed into it on load. Like this:
2 flashvars.path = "value";
3 flashvars.upload_url = "value";
4 flashvars.color = "value";
5 flashvars._border_color = "value";
So all I had to do was find a common element in the framework, pick its colour CSS property out, and inject it into the Flashvars object. Using the prototype method of 'getStyle' we can pass in the id of an element, and retrieve its CSS property, IE the background-color.
2swfBg = swfBg.parseColor().replace('#','');
3alert(swfBg);
This returns an RGB value, so we run it through the 'parseColor' method, and strip the hash. This gives us a valid Hex colour value, which we use in the Flashvars instead of a hard coded colour code.
2 flashvars.path = "value";
3 flashvars.upload_url = "value";
4 flashvars.color = swfBg;
5 flashvars._border_color = "value";
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Introducing third party applications into your frameworks, good practice? |
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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:
2<cfset variables.destination = "C:\dev\images\testimage.jpg">
3<cfset variables.source = "C:\dev\images\testimage.jpg">
4<cfset variables.width = "100">
5<cfset variables.height = "100">
6<cfset variables.exec = "C:\dev\apps\imageMagick\convert.exe">
7
8<!--- executing an external application version --->
9<cfexecute name="#variables.exec#" arguments="-size #variables.width# #variables.source# -geometry #variables.height# -strip #variables.destination#" variable="imageinfo" timeout="3" />
10
11<!--- CFimage version --->
12<cfimage source="#variables.source#" action="resize" width="#variables.width#" height="#variables.height#" destination="#variables.destination#">
