Learning ColdBox
Lately, I've undertaken to learn ColdBox, as I'll be using it on an upcoming project. ColdBox is a powerful, robust ColdFusion framework. Luis Majano and contributors have done a pretty terrific job, it appears to me. In fact, all FOSS developers could learn a great deal from how well documented the project is.
So I mean the project no disrespect when I say that, as a newb, what would be most welcome is a small but comprehensive sample application. Since version 3.0 was just released, (http://www.coldboxframework.com/), it seems that this would be a perfect time for such a sample app/tutorial.
I've found that trying to explain something is a great way of learning that something. So, I'm going to undertake a sample app/tutorial with ColdBox. I tweeted about this a few hours ago and Jim Collins and Ben Densmore kindly offered to help guide me through the process. I think, perhaps, my newbiness might actually help others. I'll be posting my work over the next several days and asking my "guidance team" for their input. I'll be the student and will ask for help from more experienced ColdBoxers.
For the app itself, I thought something small might work best. What, then? A blog? That's not that small. Reinventing twitter? Too boring. A simple CRUD application? Maybe that combined with a little game play?
So, here's my idea: I'll create a "Great Philosophers" game in which philosophers can be entered into our system. Each philosopher can be rated on three dimensions:
- comprehensiveness: How broad is their vision? How big is the philosophy?
- sunniness: Is their philosophy a happy or a gloomy one?
- influence: How widely has their philosophy been adopted?
Then come the Battles: Epictetus v. Aristotle; Shopenhauer v. Nietzche, Rand v. Augustine. How we'll determine who wins each battle -- not sure about that yet, but it's really just an excuse to learn ColdBox -- and, hopefully, help others learn it. Or, if you have a different idea, let me know. I'll be posting the code at https://github.com/halhelms/ColdBox-Sample-App
If you're interested in participating (i.e. answering my stupid questions), please shoot me an email at hal/at/halhelms.com.
Note: For a while, I've required comments be approved. This is due to the inordinate number of "comments" for Nike shoes, Coach handbags, etc. It became really tiresome having to delete all those, but I'll open it up so that anyone interested can chip in their thoughts or questions.
As far as sample apps, the full bundled package version includes several starter app templates (simple to advanced features) as well as sample apps in the \coldbox\samples\applications directory.
I look forward to seeing your example, as I concur while ColdBox is a model as far as documentation goes. The demos could use a little TLC.
See you at the LACFUG next week.
In my opinion you can never have enough case studies to showcase a technology. I hope my previous post didn't come across as trying to discourage a new one :) . I just wanted to point that there some ColdBox samples already in the bundle in case you or others reading this didn't see it.
AS far as building a case study, I agree with you, cover the basics and (if it's within your goals) I'd take a step further make different samples to showcase the different features. One of the biggest frustration I see people griping from sample apps is they have everything crammed into it and it's sometimes hard for folks to isolate a particular feature they are trying to learn.
Like you, I'm very stoked about ColdBox and I think this community needs to appreciate the concept of building modules that can be quickly mashed up together to form whole applications (I'm working on something big that I hope to release later this year), it makes for a very attractive rapid application platform for business decision makers.
Let me know if you need any help in this tutorial, I'd be more than glad to give a hand.
Cheers..
BTW, Glad to see you "back" blogging on CF stuff, always enjoyed reading your opinion and looking forward to more..
I am very excited to see that you are going to start this series. I have been playing with Coldbox for a couple of years now and I am blown away by how rich both the framework and the documentation is (I bought the book as well, but it's mostly a paper version of the online docs - even so, I was just happy to support Luis!)
I have found that the amount of documentation to be a bit daunting and so even though I have several apps running on Coldbox, I feel that I rolled into CB dev bass-ackwards (e.g. I read the docs and looked at the sample apps and implemented without exactly having the best understanding of how the flow should be and WHY) and on top of that, I did all this while right in the middle of the HUGE transition from 2.6.x to 3.0 which radically changed a lot of things.
I mean no criticism of CB by that at all. But I have always thought that a walk through on a basic CB app would be of great benefit. Start out with the basic separation of concerns and using the rc and the flash scope, etc. and then show how moving some of that functionality into a plugin would be beneficial, and then show how moving that plugin to an interceptor would maybe make more sense. Then add some jquery goodness through CB's ajax proxy and then show how once you have a core-unit functionality how you can just turn it into a module (basically add a single file!) Jason Dean did some good work on this awhile back but it was all CB 2.6 and so much has changed since then...
There's so much documentation on the details and APIs *once you know how it all goes together* but if you have a hard time grokking the big picture of how to architect a CB app, you get a little analysis paralysis when looking at where to start.
Anyways, I look forward - as always - to digesting what you come up with!