Coldbox, ColdSpring, Transfer, Refactoring And Me (part 1)

Today I started (gee, that's such a big and meaningful word) work on cwBlog. Since I'll be experimenting with this application, I thought it would be a great opportunity to try out some new (for me) technologies. I've been using Coldbox for a while, but decided it was time to take the plunge and try out some IoC and ORM frameworks (if you're not subscribed to Adobe Edge (you should be! (3rd-level nested text)), here's a great overview article Mark Mandel wrote on some of the most popular frameworks: Adobe Edge: October 2008). After reading the article and careful deliberation (5-10 minutes), I decided on ColdSpring for IoC, and Transfer-ORM for, well, ORM. Before I go into more detail, I just want to say that if it weren't for my unconventional server layout, this entire process would've probably been alot simpler.

Refactoring (we need to start somewhere)

I was talking about my unconventional server layout. Generally, frameworks like being installed in your server's webroot (or have a mapping point to their installed location). For example, Coldbox references it's internal objects with coldbox.system.someInternalObjects. What happens, however, when you need to have different versions of Coldbox installed on the same server? A standard approach I see more and more is to create a frameworks folder which will contain the different frameworks and their versions (coldbox_2_6_0, coldbox_2_6_1, etc.). The problem we'll quickly run into is that the internal objects still point to coldbox.system, not the new location. This is where refactoring comes into play. We need to change the way the frameworks work to make them point to their new locations. The technique is different for each, so I'll go through them one at a time.

Coldbox (Original location: /coldbox. New location: /frameworks/coldbox_2_6_1)

Luis includes a refactor.xml Ant task with his framework. However when I tried it it seemed to be broken (reported), so I had to refactor the files manually. Luckily, Eclipse's search feature (ctrl-h) scans through all the files in your open projects (other IDE's can also do this). You need to replace two distinct strings:

• "coldbox.system" becomes frameworks.coldbox_2_6_1.system"
• "/coldbox/system" becomes /frameworks/coldbox_2_6_1/system"

ColdSpring (Original location: /coldspring. New location: /frameworks/coldspring_1_2)

No Ant task with ColdSpring, but as we've seen with Coldbox there are ways around that. Using the same technique as with Coldbox, here are the two replacements we need to do:

• "coldspring." becomes "frameworks.coldspring_1_2."
• "/coldspring/" becomes "frameworks.coldspring_1_2/"

Transfer (Original location: /coldspring. New location: /frameworks/transfer_1_0)

After having so much success (let's admit it) blindly replacing strings in complex objects, I hit a snag with Transfer. When running my tests to make sure everything was working OK, I ended up realizing that some replacements actually broke Transfer! Rather than passing through the 1000+ occurences of "transfer.", I decided it would be best to search for another option. I luckily stumbled upon a post by Luis (yup, him again): Need to Refactor Transfer to meet your server layout? Here you go! In it, he shares an Ant task that automatically refactors the Transfer framework to the location of your choice. The best part? It works! I'll post it here also for posterity's sake:

There's one last thing left to change, and oddly enough that's in the Coldbox framework's system folder (in /frameworks/coldbox_2_6_1/system/extras/transfer/). Both cfc files reference the Transfer object, and need to point to the appropriate location. Find the occurences of "transfer." in these files and change them to "frameworks.transfer_1_0.".

In the next article I'll show you how I integrated these frameworks and got them working together.