Sorcerer's Isle

QueryParam Scanner 0.7.5 Release Candidate

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 20:59:44 GMT

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:

Added JSON output format, giving an alternative to XML for anyone using qpscanner in a scripted process.
Added variable for number of potential risk files, and improved related wording in HTML output.
Fixed bug where identical queries were causing incorrect line numbers.
Fixed bug where query names were not being detected.
Fixed bug where blank lines were incorrectly removed.

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.

Why Railo 3.3?

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 23:54:08 GMT

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.

CFML on Wikipedia

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 22:08:01 GMT

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.

Introducing the cfRegex Project!

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:20:48 GMT

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.

A New Era - A Colossal Adventure

Sat, 05 Feb 2011 00:03:26 GMT

Tonight, prepare yourself for the beginning of a new era, as one man - and his keyboard - begins his journey in an epic quest to save the world.

Continued...

Proposed Q&A sites for Photographers and 3D Modellers

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 19:27:56 GMT

The team behind the StackOverflow Q&A programming site have created a place for people to propose new Q&A sites to be created - once enough people have voted in favour of a proposal, the site gets created.

Although it has plenty of flaws (which I'm happy to point out), the Stack Exchange platform is still a good way of getting quick and comprehensive answers to questions, and it's much better than many of the forums out there.

So, there are two of these proposals which I am following, and if you are into either photography or 3d graphics you should definitely consider checking out these links, and following the proposals too:

These sites will only be created when enough people have followed/committed to them, so please spread these links to anyone else who might be interested.

International Regular Expressions Day

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:20:26 GMT

It's 1st June 2010 today, and that means we're celebrating for the third time the annual International Regular Expressions Day.

Ben Nadel kicked off this event two years ago, in order to promote the use of Regex, especially amongst those who might consider them something scary and obscure.

As before, Ben is running a contest, this year's prizes being some O'Reily Regex books and IIS Mod-Rewrite Pro licenses.

Entry to the competition requires writing some code, and the deadline is today, so if you're interested then hurry up and read the blog entry to find out more.

Happy Regex Day!

Railo: Still Awesome!

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:42:41 GMT

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:

Railo, pronounced /ˈraɪ.ləʊ/, is super fast Enterprise-level sofware for RAD webapp and website creation.
Railo is LGPL-licensed Free Software, so anyone can use it how they like.
Railo runs on any Java EE server, (but doesn't require Java knowledge), and is a Jboss.org project.
Railo uses the CFML language, like Adobe ColdFusion (the primary CFML engine), OpenBlueDragon, and others.
Railo is really awesome.

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

The Magnificent Art of ElDavo

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 23:53:36 GMT

I've recently been working on a gallery website for my brother, a brilliant artist and illustrator. The site is still under construction, but he's already got some great examples of his drawings and sculptures on there, and it is definitely worth checking out.

Head over to eldavo.co.uk to take a look, and if you like the work take a look at his blog where he has more of his art.

On the technical side, the main site is pretty simple, so far, with extra complexity coming later on. It runs on Railo and uses jQuery. The (private) admin part of the site was my first opportunity to use cfimage functionality, allowing thumbnails to be generated from uploaded images. I used jCrop for the client-side crop selection.

After the Storm

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:31:23 GMT

It's been far too long since I last posted anything, so I'll kick-off what I hope will be the start of more frequent posting with a couple of photos taken down on the UK's south east coast last month, immediately after some incredibly stormy weather.

The winds were still very strong and the evening sky nice and atmospheric, allowing me to create these two images: