CF Widgets == Small Rich Internet Applications
With the release of flash 6, we started hearing about the benefits of the RIAs, the marvels of a web application without refreshing, the "one page" interfaces, etc. By the time version 7 was released, Flex and Lazlo (ok, Lazlo was first) began to show the advantages of developing a RIA without the flash IDE. Now we have NeoSwiff (in beta), Xamlon (in Beta), Ajax (in JavaScript), xul (from Mozilla foundation), etc.
On the other hand, there exists the cool concept of a widget, a mini-application that sits on the desktop. Apple will introduce widgets with Dashboard when it releases Tiger in a few days. But this is not something new, Konfabulator (which works on Mac and PC) and others have previously implemented them. But widgets are not limited to the desktop, a small RIA can also be called a widget: etrade made a good one in flash 6, xamlon made a calculator and Lazlo made a weather app. In this way, the concept of a RIA and a widget are related.
With the introduction of Flash Forms, ColdFusion now gets into the party. Flash forms’ primary goal is to enhance regular html forms, that is why they are called rich forms (and not rich internet applications). However, we can create small internet app or widgets with them. I called them small because they have limitations and we cannot make big applications with them.
I’ve made two CFwidgets that are built with cfforms only. The first one is CF Weather. It uses a cfc to pull the data from weather.com. You can add your zip code or your city and it will remember your information in a cookie.
The other one is CF Calculator, a simple app, but very easy to extend to handle other functions such as square root.
View CF Weather in action.
View CF Calculator.
Download the weather.
Download the calculator.
Patrick Mineault
Arindam Biswas
Great work!
PaulH
Nahuel
Cornel
See you at PbD v.2006 !
Mike
/home/softball/
/softball/ (coldfusion mapped directory)
/softball/ (apache mapping)
I've tried those 2, and neither work - but that's where the folder is, so I'm at a lost as for what it's expecting.
Laura
http://www.example.com/dir1/dir2/mypage.cfm
and you want to have the weather app in mypage.cfm, then your basepath will be:
/dir1/dir2/
If that does not work, then the problem could be something else.
jason
i signed up with weather.com so i have my own auth codes.
any ideas?
Laura
Do all other flash forms work?
jason
Laura
is it the same path whether you access it locally or from outside?
ie: http://localhost/mydir/cfmpage.cfm
and http://externaladdress/mydir/cfmpage.cfm
would be the same path.
jason
maybe i have a base path issue?
i'm a cf developer and i really like these cf flash forms but i'm disappointed in the long load times, especially for dynamic forms. the weather app loads pretty quickly, yet it is dynamic. what's the secret to get these cf flash forms to load in a reasonable amount of time? have you noticed long load times? if so, how have you been dealing with it?
thanks
jason
jason
thanks for your help and the cool little widget.
any thoughts on flash form load times?
jason
Nahuel
In addition, try not to use too many nested containers if possible, but I don't have a secret.
Ian
I have tried settings baspath to C:\WWWROOT\CFWeather\, to http://devnet.devlab.net/cfweather/ and to /CFWeather/. Still the 'Expression Exception' error.
Can anyone offer any insights?
Roy F
I am am trying to use CF weather, but keep getting the following error:
Cannot find CFML template for custom tag flashCallCFC.
ColdFusion attempted looking in the tree of installed custom tags but did not find a custom tag with this name.
Any idea how I can fix this? thanks for any help.
Regards,
Roy F.
manuel
Error Occurred While Processing Request
Local variable keys on line 190 must be grouped at the top of the function body.
Nahuel
Para que ande es necesario que tengas ColdFusion MX 7, ya que las cfforms que uso solo estan disponibles en la version 7
Saludos
manuel
Nahuel
En CF 6.0 es imposible. Lo unico que se me ocurre es que lo hagas con puro flash y uses CodFusion para obtener la data ( pero de esta forma tardarias mucho mas en el desarrollo).
Lo mejor es que instales el coldFusion 7 :)
Joe Falletta
I am am trying to use CF weather, but keep getting the following error:
Cannot find CFML template for custom tag flashCallCFC.
ColdFusion attempted looking in the tree of installed custom tags but did not find a custom tag with this name.
Any idea how I can fix this? thanks for any help.
Regards,
Joe F.
Dale M.
I am having the same problem with the custom tag error "Cannot find CFML template for custom tag flashCallCFC". I'm pretty sure that the absolute path is set correctly.
Anyone have an answer to this problem?
Dale M.
Joe F.
To those that had same problem I had, the custom tag error "Cannot find CFML template for custom tag flashCallCFC". The fix is easy, take files in the "cfwidgets" directory, not the com/cfwidgets but the plain cfwidgets directory and copy/paste them into your route install of CFMX in the "CustomTag" directory. Having doing that all worked OKay
Jet
Sif
James
<br><br>
Here's my set up:
<br><br>
http://localhost:8500/cfweather/index.cfm
<br><br>
I click "View CF Weather" but I get the above error.
<br><br>
http://localhost:8500/cfweather/weather.cfm
<br><br>
<cfmodule template="/com/cfwidgets/weather.cfm" locationid="92660" units="s" ignorecookie="false" serviceObject="#application.cfwidgets.weather.service#" basePath="/">
<br><br>
What URL do I need in the basePath?
<br><br>
Also I have added a mapping called /com pointing to com directory.
Can someone please help me set this up? :)
Thanks
James
Seems like an easy enough addition to the readme.txt for those having the same trouble.
John Barrett
This is so wonderful`-`
Finally got this to work, did not know I had to set up cftags in the cfadmin(mappings). cool that I got to learn that tonight.
Just wondering the settings do not seem to work. I did sign up for my own IDs through weather.com.
Thanks so much for sharing this`-`
Aloha,
John
Panos
Any comments?
Element conditions is undefined in a CFML structure referenced as part of an expression.
The error occurred in F:\inetpub\intranet\www\demo\include\ermesintranet\cfweather\com\cfwidgets\weather.cfc: line 228
Called from F:\inetpub\intranet\www\demo\include\ermesintranet\cfweather\com\cfwidgets\weather.cfm: line 39
Called from F:\inetpub\intranet\www\demo\include\ermesintranet\cfweather\com\cfwidgets\weather.cfm: line 1
Called from F:\inetpub\intranet\www\demo\include\ermesintranet\cfweather\com\cfwidgets\weather.cfm: line 1
Called from F:\inetpub\intranet\www\demo\include\ermesintranet\cfweather\weather.cfm: line 11
226 :
227 : <cfscript>
228 : if ( weatherData["conditions"] NEQ "N/A" ) {
229 : data = data & '<font size="16" face="#font#" color="#fontcolor#" ><b>' &weatherData["conditions"] & "</b></font><br/><br/>";
230 : }
j.martin
Any ideas?
Jeremy
Jeremy