Book Image

ColdFusion 9 Developer Tutorial

By : John Farrar
Book Image

ColdFusion 9 Developer Tutorial

By: John Farrar

Overview of this book

Adobe ColdFusion is an application server, renowned for rapid development of dynamic websites, with a straightforward language (CFML), powerful methods for packaging and reusing your code, and AJAX support that will get developers deep into powerful web applications quickly. However, developing rich and robust web applications can be a real challenge as it involves multiple processes.With this practical guide, you will learn how to build professional ColdFusion applications. Packed with example code, and written in a friendly, easy-to-read style, this book is just what you need if you are serious about ColdFusion.This book will give you clear, concise, and practical guidance to take you from the basics of ColdFusion 9 to the skills that will make you a ColdFusion developer to be reckoned with. It also covers the new features of ColdFusion 9 like ORM Database Interaction and CF Builder.ColdFusion expert John Farrar will teach you the basics of ColdFusion programming, application architecture, and object reuse, before showing you a range of topics including AJAX library integration, RESTful Web Services, PDF creation and manipulation, and dynamically generated presentation files that will make you the toast of your ColdFusion developer town.This book digs deep with the basics, with real-world examples of the how and whys, to get more done faster with ColdFusion 9.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
ColdFusion 9 Developer Tutorial
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

AJAX


I was around before AJAX was called by that name. There were mavericks creating libraries that achieved some of what we have today. Now with the Web 2.0 generation, we have had some tools mature to make this more broadly approachable to the development community. Firebug and jQuery are my favorite tools overall for doing AJAX at this time. There is of course ExtJS, MooTools, Prototype, and other great libraries.

Firebug

Visit the Firebug website at http://www.getfirebug.com/.

This will of course require the Firefox browser, http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/firefox/. This adds a number of awesome tools to the developer's tool bag. These tools are also useful to the designer for examining layout and CSS. Mostly the developer gets a console command-line that interacts with the loaded DOM. It also shows what files were requested for the page and data about those requests.

jQuery

Visit the jQuery website at http://jquery.com/.

The simplicity, speed, and power of this library has earned it a place of honor in the web hall of fame. There are tons of libraries that extend or plug in to give additional features. One of the best is an associated core library called the jQuery UI library, http://jqueryui.com/. Learning this tool is and has been a choice solution for me for years.