Model Integration is one of the latest features in the ColdBox framework. What this provides is, essentially, an DI container where you can define dependencies in your model objects by cfpropery annotations or setter methods and then just calling getModel("mymodelobject") in your controller gives you a fully initialized object. It also provides metadata-driven caching functionality. For more details, check out the ColdBox docs.
A while ago, Brian Kotek released his FormUtilities.cfc. It's a very useful tool that allows you to create implicit arrays and structures from form fields which can be arbitrarily nested. Not only is this useful for dynamic forms where you don't know in advance how many sets of data will be submitted, but it can also be used to address the "all or nothing" nature of the entire event object being submitted along with the form in framework-based applications. Read more about this in Brian's blog post. I definitely saw how this could be useful in my ColdBox development, so I made a plugin out of it.
I've mentioned before how impressed I am with Sava, an open source ColdFusion CMS released by Blue River Interactive. In my spare time, I've been tinkering with it quite a bit, but now I am really looking forward to an upcoming project in which I will be knee-deep in Sava.
One of the cool things about Sava is how it's been designed to be extended and integrated with third party code.
Last week at the Boston CFUG meeting, we had an "open mic" night where CFUG members went up and gave short presentations in front of the group. I decided to follow up the talk that Luis Majano gave on the ColdBox framework back in July and give an intro on ColdBox plugins. I had some technical problems with my Winblows laptop early on, but Brian Rinaldi graciously let me borrow his laptop for my presentation. It was fun to present and it went well overall. But due to time constraints, I didn't get a chance to go over the code of the custom plugin that I demoed, so I decided to do it here on my blog. (Besides, it's been getting stale around here).
In a previous post, I commented on how I discovered that using slash-delimited component paths worked in the CreateObject() function. In the comments to that post, the general sentiment was that use of this "undocumented feature" should be avoided, as it may lead to unexpected behaviors. I kind of figured that already and make it a point to stick to using dot-delimited paths.What brought this to my attention in the first place was the following example code in the Coldbox Framework Documentation
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