App Suggestions

[Steven Neiland]

Have an idea for a great app but dont think you will have the time to
develop it yourself. Suggest it here.

[Jason Blum]

Hey Steven great idea for a group: a place outside of debates over
CFML engines or frameworks, just for promoting the language we all
love.

I've been watching the "Gov 2.0" movement for a while, with its
efforts towards building an Open "Civic Stack" for governments at all
levels to leverage instead of blowing money on rebuilding the same
wheels over and over. No reason CFML can't play a big role in that
space.

Great quote from Vivek Wadhwa, a prominent Gov 2.0 thinker:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/23/the-goldmine-of-opportunities-in-gov-2-0/

"What is happening with the opening up of government data is nothing
less than a silent revolution. There are literally thousands of new
opportunities to improve government and to improve society—and to make
a fortune while doing it. Unlike the Web 2.0 space, which is
overcrowded, Gov 2.0 is uncharted territory: a new frontier to
explore, grow things on, and settle on. It’s fresh soil for unlikely
seedling ideas that, if they take root, could lead to very successful
ventures. So I encourage entrepreneurs to stake their claims as soon
as they can."

-Jason

[Steven Neiland]

Hi Jason,
Welcome to the group. I remember you had an idea about a social tool
for following politicians/ group voting on legislation. Would you care
to share your idea here?
-Steven

[lolajl]

On May 14, 11:00 am, Steven Neiland <steven.neil...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Have an idea for a great app but dont think you will have the time to
> develop it yourself. Suggest it here.

An e-commerce solution that doesn't depend on a CMS or framework and
can be integrated into a site, possibly as a plugin or helper in a
Model-Glue or ColdSpring framework. I'm looking for a decent module
that includes PayPal, allows for the ability to see products and what
sizes are available (from customer and manager perspective), with how
many is left in inventory for each size or non-apparel product,
shopping cart. Would like to see code adhere to best practices, i.e.,
components, no spaghetti code. There is one CF application that is
free, but it doesn't seem to be in active development and the
developer seems to have gone AWOL, and the other commercial solutions
cost too much for a company that is just starting out.

[Steven Neiland]

Is the existing app on riaforge/github? Please provide a link. This
group is not just about creating new apps, it is also about
maintaining them, and if necessary adopting orphaned apps.

A standalone e-comm app does sound like a good idea thanks for the
suggestion, but I am curious about why you specify no framework/cms
though. Nothing wrong with that just curious.

[Lola J. Lee Beno]

Well, I'm aware of Slatwell, but it's built into MuraCMS and I'm not
planning to use MuraCMS. And there's the StarterCart, but it's
currently set up to be hooked into Neptune framework. He does say that
StarterCart could be modified to work with Model-Glue. But I just don't
have the time or skills right now to do that. I've been trying to get
Neptune started up so I can try out StarterCart, but I'm getting an
error message having to do with location and I haven't had the time to
get back to this and ask the developer about this (I'm working on a
social network site as project manager so I've got many irons in the fire).

This particular open source software I'm talking about is CF ShopKart
and site is at <http://www.cfshopkart.com/>. The code really needs a
lot of refactoring/rewriting to be bought up to date, I think.

--
Lola J. Lee Beno
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lolajleebeno
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=714355583
Blog: http://www.lolajl.net/blog/

[Robert Zehnder]

That looks like an interesting project.  Didn't even know that was out there :)

--
Robert S. Zehnder
KIS Digital Communications
http://www.kisdigital.com/

Volunteer Community Manager

Railo Server - Open Source

http://www.getrailo.org/

[Lola J. Lee Beno]

On 6/9/11 12:11 PM, Robert Zehnder wrote:
> That looks like an interesting project. Didn't even know that was out
> there :)

Yeah. I just downloaded cfshopkart; trying to get it up and running and
running into a bug which I'm not sure how to resolve. Since the
developer seems to be AWOL and the forum has been taken down, I'm not
sure where to turn. Really need to get an interim shop up and running
(we're planning to offer swags for sale before the site launches
officially) and I might have to start looking at the php ecommerce
solutions or turn to that Wordpress plugin that supposedly does
ecommerce . . .

[Robert Zehnder]

I have it downloaded Lola, I planned on playing with it tonight.  I don't like the fact that it locks you in to their portal, but seeing how they handle the payment gateways is what I really wanted to look at anyway.  What error did you hit? I will see if I can work around it.

[Lola J. Lee Beno]

Right now, the problem seems to be in cfshopcart/common.cfm: line 109:

    <cffile action = "read" file="#request.catalogpath#config#request.bslash#defaulthtaccess.cfm" variable="htfile">

In config.cfm, I have request.absolutepath set to "/cfshopcart/", since I'm running this as a subdirectory off my local dev environment (OS X, CF9).  I have backslash set to "/".

I inserted the following code before 109:

<cfoutput>
#request.absolutepath#<br>
    #expandpath('#request.absolutepath#')#<br>
    #request.catalogpath#config#request.bslash#
</cfoutput><cfabort>

Here's the values that I got:

/cfshopcart/
/Library/WebServer/Documents/cfshopcart/index.cfm/
/Library/WebServer/Documents/cfshopcart/index.cfm/config/

So  . . . where is "index.cfm coming from???

[Robert Zehnder]

Weird.  I didn't have a chance to play with it last night, but I will see if I can get it up and running this weekend.  I am thinking about just writing my own cart/payment gateway stuff, because I will need one for a client soon.

[Lola J. Lee Beno]

I'd be happy to give your cart/payment gateway a swirl.  I anticipate that we may be setting up the shop sometime within the next two months.

[Lola J. Lee Beno]

On 6/10/11 9:31 AM, Robert Zehnder wrote:

> Weird. I didn't have a chance to play with it last night, but I will
> see if I can get it up and running this weekend. I am thinking about
> just writing my own cart/payment gateway stuff, because I will need
> one for a client soon.

Okay . . . here's the fix:

<cfset request.createcatalogpath =
"#listDeleteAt(expandPath(request.absolutePath),
listLen(expandPath(request.absolutePath), "/"), "/")#"><!---path on
server to store. End with "\" (or "/" if Linux server). Leave default
if this works.--->

<cfset request.catalogpath = "#request.createcatalogpath##request.bslash#">

[Robert Zehnder]

Yeah, still kinda weird it was appending the index.cfm to the end. ;)

[Greg Moser]

Hey guys, not sure if this helps at all but there is an open source payment gateway project that you may have seen and can be found here:

http://cfpayment.riaforge.org/

@Lola, I'm curious as to why you would want an eCommerce platform without a CMS?  It's no secret that I am one of the lead developers on Slatwall so that question - while it may seem slanted - is intended to be a completely honest one.  In fact one of the things that I have kept in the back of my mind is allowing Slatwall to operate standalone, or plug into a separate framework.

So my real question is why don't you want to use a CMS or Framework?  Is there a CMS or Framwork that you would be willing to work with?  Realistically I just want to know what aspects of the muraCMS + Slatwall doesn't work for you, and if there is something that would?

At the end of the day your feedback is very valuable to me, and can help to shape a product that will work for you.

-Greg

[Lola J. Lee Beno]

On 6/10/11 10:50 AM, Robert Zehnder wrote:
> Yeah, still kinda weird it was appending the index.cfm to the end. ;)

Yeah, I still want to know why this is happening. Is this a CF9 bug that
happens when expandpath is used on unix systema? I seem to recall others
having similar issues but can't remember exactly where I'd seen this.

[Lola J. Lee Beno]

The site I'm working on is a social network site, much like Twitter and
Facebook. I don't want to say more than that at this point except that
it's going to be very customized and the CMS doesn't really fit in with
how the site is going to function. I have to admit that I'm not too
fond of CMS - it works for certain needs, just not for this site's
particular need. (I've worked with Joomla so my perspective is colored
by this experience.)

I do plan on using Model-Glue. I'd be perfectly happy with Slatwall if
it could work within MG and it filled my needs (such as being able to
skin it so that it steamlessly fits into our site). I just feel that it
would be silly of me to install an entire CMS only to use the ecommerce
part.

[Greg Moser]

Cool, thanks for the Feedback.  I think that makes complete sense that you don't feel comfortable using a CMS for a social networking site like that, and it is a very valid point.  Hopefully in the future we can offer a Slatwall solution that works seamlessly with Model-Glue.

Mostly, I hope that you are able to get a workable eCommerce solutions figured out before you turn to this:

 I might have to start looking at the php ecommerce 

solutions or turn to that Wordpress plugin that supposedly does 

ecommerce . . .

If you do find you self in that situation, I'm more that happy to help you get a Mura/Slatwall setup running and customized which i think would be a better alternative to Wordpress if you are going to end up with a CMS anyway.  If nothing else it will be much easier to integrate with Model-Glue.

Thanks Again,

Greg

[Jeff Gladnick]

Greg, 

How much would you charge for that - we're considering switching greatdentalwebsites.com over to mura.

Jeff Gladnick
http://www.GreatDentalWebsites.com
San Francisco, CA
Office: +1 (415) 814-0078
Mobile: +1 (302) 584-1445

[Greg Moser]

@Jeff

As a rule of thumb, if all you are looking for is help getting stuff configured & setup... Myself and the rest of the guys provide pretty in depth support in our Google Group.

If you need more than that the company that you will want to contact is www.ten24web.com

I really don't want to derail this topic too much, so why don't you drop me a line at gr...@gregmoser.com.

-Greg

[Jeff Gladnick]

ok cool, i'll keep this in mind

Jeff Gladnick
http://www.GreatDentalWebsites.com
San Francisco, CA
Office: +1 (415) 814-0078
Mobile: +1 (302) 584-1445

[Russ S.]

I posted this idea elsewhere, but here it bears repeating: CF Gems! (like Ruby Gems)

How come this hasn't been done yet?

Seems like CF could really benefit from a central "App" repository that tracks dependencies and version requirements. 

[Greg Moser]

@Russ S.  What exactly is Ruby Gems?  Is it anything like RIAForge & CFLib?  Wen't to the site, but was a bit confused because I'm not a ruby guy.  It looks like it is a packager & sharing tool maybe?

[Lola J. Lee Beno]

I think so, it's a packager & sharing tool. A royal pain to install. I
needed to evaluate Redmine, which requires Ruby and Ruby Gems. But I
could never really get Ruby Gems to install either on my OS X laptop or
on my Ubuntu server completely. Ended up using the Bitnami package.

[Matthew Woodward]

We've had a plugin for OpenBD for quite some time that does this sort of thing. It basically creates a lib directory for CFML packages, and you can drop zips in there (e.g. a framework zip, your own bundle of files), and it'll expand it and make it available in your app. There's also the ability to auto-update from a URL.

Anyway, might not be exactly the same thing as Ruby gems but seemed similar enough I thought I'd mention it.

--
Matthew Woodward
ma...@mattwoodward.com
http://blog.mattwoodward.com
identi.ca / Twitter: @mpwoodward

Please do not send me proprietary file formats such as Word, PowerPoint, etc. as attachments.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

[Russ S.]

Ruby Gems is a package management system, similar to Synaptic on Linux. It contains a large repository of packages (aka gems) and all their versions. Most importantly, it allows you to install packages very easily and handles the dependencies for you automatically. So for example, if we had command line support for CF and a package management tool similar to Ruby Gems, all we'd have to do is type:

cfgem install blogcfc

to download and install BlogCFC. And since BlogCFC requires JsonUtil, Coldfish, CaptchaService, and probably some other stuff, "CF Gems" would automatically download and install the versions of those packages that BlogCFC needs. Then whenever we'd run:

cfgem update

it would update all of the packages on our system automatically, making it really easy to stay up on security updates.

There are a lot of complications that I'm leaving out, but if it works for Ruby (and Haskell, Linux, etc.) then I'm pretty sure we can figure it out for Coldfusion. 

I have a lot of ideas to improve upon existing package management systems. For instance, maybe we'd want to have an option to install packages to a specific directory, rather than globally? Maybe we'd want to develop a system that allows different projects to use different versions of a single package? 

Anyways, if anyone is interested in working on this with me, let me know. Or if someone else wants to make it, go right ahead!

[Jeff Gladnick]

Doesn't railo already have this built in?

sent from my phone

[Lola J. Lee Beno]

On 7/5/11 7:02 AM, Jeff Gladnick wrote:
>
> Doesn't railo already have this built in?
>

But not Adobe CF or BlueDragon . . .

[Jeff Gladnick]

Well isn't it open sourced?   If only there were some sort of cfml committee to talk to each other s the diff vendors could cordinate such a common system........

sent from my phone

[Matthew Woodward]

On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 4:03 AM, Lola J. Lee Beno <lol...@gmail.com> wrote:

But not Adobe CF or BlueDragon . . .

Not sure if my previous email didn't come through but OpenBD has a plugin for this, it's just not tied into a central repository.

I'm pretty sure you're correct that Railo's "app store" (not sure what they're calling it for real!) is open source so between that and OpenBD's plugin there's probably enough to go on.

[Matthew Woodward]

On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 4:26 AM, Jeff Gladnick <jeff.g...@gmail.com> wrote:

If only there were some sort of cfml committee to talk to each other s the diff vendors could cordinate such a common system........

We don't need a committee to make this happen. Having been involved with the CFML advisory committee I can say unequivocally it was nothing but an impediment to real progress. If the community is interested we just need to do it.

I'd suggest the best place for engine feature conversations these days is the CFML Conventional Wisdom group:
http://groups.google.com/group/cfml-conventional-wisdom

And so people are aware, OpenBD and Railo definitely talk to one another about high-level features that aren't yet fully implemented. Most recently we coordinated a bit on <cfscript lang="java"> since that's something we released in OpenBD that Railo was also planning on doing.

[Russ S.]

Yes, Railo does have something similar to Ruby Gems: their "Extension Store": http://www.getrailo.org/index.cfm/extensions/

It doesn't exactly match the features that Ruby Gems has, but it excels in other areas and I'm excited to use it. I hope it grows in popularity and features.

The biggest things missing are: support from all CF platforms and automated dependency handling. 

On a side note: I highly recommend that developers branch out and try new languages. I spent a lot of time mastering Coldfusion, but the things I have been learning from other languages lately help give me perspective on how Coldfusion (and programming in general) works.