Sorcerer's Isle

Welcome to Sorcerer's Isle, a weblog covering a multitude of topics, ranging from programming to 3D graphics; photography to gadgets; tutorials to tinkering.


Within Sorcerer's Isle are three sub-blogs, which each focus on different aspects:

At Sorcerer's Tower you'll find programming and web dev; Midnight Isle covers photography and digital art; and with 100% Geek you'll find gadgets, gaming, technology, and more.

Articles may appear on just one of the weblogs, or across multiple, but every article posted will always appear on this one.

Topics Covered

QueryParam Scanner 0.7.5 Release Candidate

I have just pushed an update of QueryParam Scanner to GitHub, containing various improvements.

This update is on the rc0.7.5 branch, and it'd be nice if people could take it for a spin and make sure there are no issues with it. (There is a zip download for anyone without git.)

The visible changes which you might notice are:

However, there are also significant under-the-hood changes. I removed my obsolete "Java Regex Utils" library (replacing it with the object part of cfRegex), and made a number of little code clean-ups.

A result of these changes is that qpscanner rc0.7.5 appears to be almost twice as fast as previous versions.

If you have any feedback, please feel free to contact me via GitHub, and similarly if you find any bugs then please raise them on the issue tracker.

Posted:
07 January 2012, 20:59
Tags:
CFML
Open Source
Projects
SQL
Comments:
None

Why Railo 3.3?

It's been over two and a half years since my last "why railo" post, and - despite Railo "only" being 0.3 versions on - there's been a lot of improvements!

In fact, because it's been so long, a few of the things here are not new with v3.3 (though they are all new since the previous article), but are still great features that deserve mentioning!

So, what are my ten favourite new features? Read on to find out.

Posted:
06 November 2011, 23:54
More
Tags:
CFML
Open Source
Railo
Web Development
Comments:
None

CFML on Wikipedia

If you've ever looked at the CFML related articles on Wikipedia, you can't fail to have noticed that, especially when compared to other programming articles, they're not very good.

When somebody puts "coldfusion" or "cfml" into Google, they will almost certainly see the respective Wikipedia pages amongst the top three results, but when they follow those links they're unlikely to get a very good impression!

If you agree that the CFML presence on Wikipedia can and should be improved, and it's up to the CFML community to do it, then read on to find out how you can help fix it.

Posted:
02 October 2011, 22:08
More
Tags:
BlueDragon
ColdFusion
CFML
Railo
Comments:
None

Introducing the cfRegex Project!

The cfRegex project is two things. Firstly, it is a complete regex implementation for CFML, providing more functionality, flexibility, features and power than the existing CFML RE functions. Secondly, it is a drive to encourage people to properly learn and make use of regex.

Read the rest of this article to find out more.

cfRegeX :: First-class Regex for CFML :: http://cfregex.net

Railo: Still Awesome!

It's nearly a year on from my last Railo blog post so it is well overdue that I write another - just in case there is anyone still sitting on the fence, unsure if they should use Railo - or indeed, anyone who might be unaware of Railo's very existance!


So to start with, a quick summary of what Railo is:


Find out why Railo is the perfect choice for your next development project.


Posted:
26 January 2010, 21:42
More
Tags:
CFML
Java
JBoss
Open Source
Railo
Software
Technology
Web Development
Comments:
None

Open Source Railo

Earlier today, the eagely awaited Railo 3.1 public beta was announced!

And the reason for much of this eagerness?

Railo is now Open Source and Free Software, released under the LGPL v2.

This license requires that any changes to Railo's sourcecode itself must also be released under LGPL v2 (or later version).

However, unlike the full GPL, it does not require that you release any packaged applications under a compatible license - so you can still use whatever license you like for your own CFML code, Open Source or otherwise.


Along with the announcement comes two new Railo websites: The commercial-oriented getrailo.com and the community-oriented getrailo.org, which also contains wiki-based documentation.

Details on updating this documentation, as well as information about the new features in Railo 3.1, will come later this week - stay tuned to the Railo blog for the latest details.

The next four months are going to be a very exciting time for Railo and CFML!

Posted:
31 March 2009, 21:03
Tags:
CFML
Open Source
Railo
Comments:
None

Why Railo 3?

It's been nearly half a year since Railo 3 was released, and with 3.1 just around the corner it is a good time to write a post about some of the features that continue to make Railo such an excellent CFML engine!

This blog entry gives ten reasons for using Railo 3...

Posted:
01 March 2009, 02:53
More
Tags:
CFML
Railo
Web Development
Comments:
None

Switch on String in Java

For anyone working with any other modern language, (such as CFML, C#, JavaScript, Ruby, and more), using a String within a switch-case statement is not an issue, and probably something you've done many times without thinking about.

However, when working in Java you cannot use strings in a switch statement.

Fortunately, despite what many sites suggest, there is a solution.

Posted:
12 December 2008, 21:50
More
Tags:
CFML
Java
Web Development
Comments:
1

QueryParam Scanner - v0.7 Released, v0.8 in progress...

I have released v0.7 of QueryParam Scanner, which introduces a variety of improvements over v0.6.1:


For more details and download information, visit the project page at Hybridchill.


Future Improvements

The following release, v0.8 will have three key features:

Posted:
23 September 2008, 20:09
More
Tags:
CFML
Projects
Software
SQL
Web Development
Comments:
1

Creating my very first Eclipse Plugin

I recently* completed my very first Eclipse Plugin, and I found the whole experience to be very interesting.
*(well about a month ago; took me longer to get writing this than intended)

This blog entry will focus on two main areas - my experience with Eclipse (as opposed to CFEclipse and similar), and the issues I encountered from a development perspective

Posted:
23 September 2008, 00:10
More
Tags:
CFML
Eclipse
Java
Projects
Comments:
None
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