Choosing the Right ColdFusion Consultant for Your Needs

ColdFusion is a new age framework to develop industry standard web applications using CFML language. ColdFusion has a special advantage over other languages that it can automatically hold both of your frontend and backend programmes within its framework. Due to its advance features it is a popular technology in the IT industry for first couple of years. Since the industry demands more and more web applications, all types of web domain specific language or framework have received a tremendous supports from the web developers and so the case for ColdFusion as well. In this competitive environment as a web developer or ColdFusion developer you must follow some thumb rules to come out as a good ColdFusion developer in the industry. Let us see what are some basic but important points, ColdFusion developer must follow while developing an enterprise standard web solution.

Naming convention is the primary: The first thing comes first. Naming convention is the most important and fundamental rule for any ColdFusion developer. ColdFusion supports letters, numbers and underscore for the naming of different variables and functions etc. But to make it more beautiful and uniform ColdFusion developer should use some specific type of formats to identify the difference between variable, functions, class name etc. Don’t forget to use a consistent pattern throughout codebase of the application.

You must use session when required: While developing any web application, the web developer must implement session into the application. This ensures the rendering of relevant data to the specific user i.e., it avoids the unethical access of private data of any user of your application. Moreover through session a ColdFusion developer can give its user a privileged feeling through continuous support from the web service. Session is also important for keeping the user logged in for continuous web access with proper encryption technology.

Your application should be reliable in different platforms and browsers: While developing in any ColdFusion application, as a developer you must implement cross platform compatibility in your application. For the same you have to create a logic or technique to identify the browser on which your application is being used and then you can use a technique to avoid any browser related issue for your application. Moreover this is also useful while you are dealing with different devices and operating systems. So it is the job of a ColdFusion developer to build his web application which can run in any platform and any situation without any issue. In other words we can say a good ColdFusion developer must learn how to develop stable and reliable web application which is platform independent.

As a ColdFusion developer, you must aware of future and modern technologies: A web application should be developed with a strong vision in mind so that it can withstand the demand of future as when required. To achieve the same, a ColdFusion developer should learn modern technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and JQuery etc to develop enterprise standard web applications that are stable enough to meet the demand of the future. In web language we can say a good ColdFusion developer should always give maximum effort to develop a responsive web application which can give rich and same user experience in all platforms, devices to its end user. To get maximum benefits of ColdFusion development, you may consider hiring services of a custom ColdFusion programming company.

We provide ColdFusion web development services. To hire ColdFusion programmers from us, please reach out to us at Mindfire Solutions.

Best Practices for ColdFusion programming

ColdFusion is one of the most adopted commercial platforms for web application development, especially when developers want to conduct everything rapidly as well as efficiently. But while developing applications on this platform it would help if some specific practices are followed so that the best results can be achieved with the minimum efforts.

Naming conventions- While naming, care has to be taken. Naming of local variables, arguments, methods as well as components must be done with caution; use good names as choosing non qualified or random names may turn out to be disastrous. Say no to cryptic naming strategies or abbreviations. In fact, abbreviations should be avoided altogether. If acronyms cannot be avoided then they should be capitalized. In case of package names, they must be in lowercase letters and totally unique. For interface/class/component names, they should be nouns since most likely objects or things are being represented by them. The writing should be in camel case and each word’s first letter must be capitalized. If possible, the letter I should begin the interfaces.

Compare two strings by using compareNoCase- True string comparison is denoted through the usage of compareNoCase. However, unless it is guaranteed that the data does not contain leading 0, it should not be used, when compared to IS NOT, using this feature is better as well as faster.

Separating business from play- This might be a very important thing once you start working with designers. It must be remembered that your application has to be passed off to some other developer and a designer and it is important that while working they do not over write the codes of each other. If that is achieved then it is a job well done. Creation of functions on display pages or running of inline queries should be avoided.

More and more comments- Under commented works may be not a very promising aspect. It is not that each line should be commented but including some comments make it very easy to read according to the functions and variable names.

Frameworks- When we include frameworks, it essentially means that the code must be organized into methods which will make it easy for you as well your colleague to work on the project; it will help you find exactly what is being searched for. It is a good idea to at least learn a simple framework which has great documentation.

Defaults should be set only once- This statement is almost like a rule for application.cfm. There are many developers who set variables throughout the application like datasources or titles in it. But often they commit a mistake of not checking whether the variables are defined or not. This results in the running of same code all over again every time. A check must be used in this respect to find out about the setting of the variables. If everything is good then they should not be bothered. This will result in slightly faster movement of the application.

Compulsory use of OnRequestEnd.cfm and Application.cfm- This is a great practise even if the case does not demand the usage of these files. This is because during each request, they will be hunted for by ColdFusion. You will be speeding up the page-processing time if you include some empty files with those names in the site folder.

Validating client data in server-side - Despite data validation with JavaScript, validation of data should also be done server-side. In fact, when possible, checking of variables must be done for type and this should again be verified.

These are only some of the practices that must be followed for a better result in ColdFusion programming. But the main things to remember is that when programming, try to access up to date open source libraries as well as existing applications so that there is less need for developing each and everything from scratch. Also try to release your open source applications frequently so that you can benefit others like others have benefitted you. To get maximum benefits of ColdFusion, you may consider hiring services of a ColdFusion web application development company.

We provide ColdFusion development services. If you would like to talk to one of our expert ColdFusion developers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

ColdFusion engagement with SOAP web services

For ColdFusion, integration acts as an important focal point as well as key strength. Most messaging frameworks along with protocols for effective communication with various platforms are supported by ColdFusion; the same is applicable for web services. The architectural style categorizes web service into two main divisions- those based on SOAP or Simple Object Access Protocol and REST or Representational State Transfer compliant ones. SOAP, the lightweight protocol is used for messaging systems or to invoke remote procedure cells so that information can be exchanged in distributed environment. Creation as well as consumption of SOAP-based ones are very easy for ColdFusion.

Web services are technologies related to software which facilitate machine-to-machine communication through a network. All machines supposedly understand as well as process the Web Services Discovery Language or WSDL format which sets up engagement rules for the interaction. The rules are in turn enforced through sending of messages which are carried by SOAP envelopes. The popular protocols like SMTP, HTTP, etc are used for carrying as well as delivery of the envelopes. The interaction language between machines is XML or eXtensible Markup Language. XML forms the basis of SOAP which consists of three parts-

• Convention for representation of remote procedure responses as well as calls.
• Encoding rule sets to interpret data types that are application-defined.
• Framework to describe the essence of the message and the way to process it.

The onerous task of data translation as well as data types conversion between service providers along with consumers is handled by SOAP.

Apache Axis is used by ColdFusion as the underlying engine for the implementation of web services that are SOAP-based. It is in fact a reliable and proven implementation of SOAP. The very first step in the building of ColdFusion-based ones is by writing a CFC or ColdFusion component which takes object-like approach for related functions grouping as well as business logic encapsulation. A leading role is also played for the accessing and defining of a single one. CFC may be created or prebuilt CFC may be reused with operations that may be exposed as functions to make the CFC remote call-accessible through specification of access=”remote”. Then web service makes the CFC location its endpoint with the remote functions becoming operations which may be invoked on it.

After the creation of web service, it can be invoked from ColdFusion through a variety of ways. It may be called with <cfinvoke>, <cfobject> and CreateObject. Then Stubs are refreshed or proxy is created.

When the services are developed, one very important thing to consider is security since many business functions get exposed with them, thus expanding the interaction boundaries which increases your security responsibilities that include access control, authentication, privacy as well as data integrity. The web service can be published over HTTPs as that will ensure point-to-point security since communication is secured by SSL at transport level. ColdFusion can also be used for control access.

While using web services we often feel confused which form to use- REST or SOAP-based ones. When opting for SOAP-based ones you must remember that they are object-oriented which helps in easy solutions. The declarative nature ensures that standard WSDL format is used for description. The tooling support is great as well. Using SOAP-based web service will ensure that access through middleware or intermediate server is beneficial.

Creating web service in ColdFusion can be quite an easy job especially if you have the basic knowledge to write components and functions. Consumer coding is very easy as well; just WSDL reference, arguments necessary for service and return variable must be provided. Great SOAP functionality is provided as well and encapsulating them into the components will yield you good results. You can hire developers from top custom ColdFusion development company in India who can help you build applications within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide ColdFusion development services. If you would like to get your application developed by our certified ColdFusion programmer, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.