One of the things I’m most excited about in the latest CFEclipse 1.3.5 release is the new code formatting feature.

At work we have a LOT of spaghetti code…  weird indenting, mixed case tags, etc.  With the new code formatter in CFEclipse getting this cleaned up is a matter of a few keystrokes!

Format Source - New in CFEclipse 1.3.5

The mixed case tags really drive me nuts as well and I’ve kept Homesite installed because it can easily swap case on tags.  I asked Denny about this (Denny is one of our awesome CFEclipse developers) and he added an experimental ‘change case’ feature!  Woot!

Change Case Option - New in CFEclipse 1.3.5

It doesn’t work with cfscript but most of the older code I work with was probably written before the cfscript was introduced so it isn’t a huge deal.

See this list for more new features in the CFEclipse 1.3.5 release.

I’m working on an older project written in Fusebox (I’m so happy to be working on something using a framework for a change!) and was struggling to weed through the circuit files.

I’m using CFEclipse and editing the XML files using Aptana’s XML editor.

My first thought was I could use the Outline view but that didn’t give me anything useful:

Aptana XML Editor - Default Outline View

Digging in the Aptana preferences however turned up this GEM:

Aptana > Editors > XML

“Tag attributes to show in outline view”

By default this is set to ‘id’.  I added ‘name’ (it accepts a comma delimited list) and viola! It now shows my fuseactions in the Outline view:

Outline View Showing Name Attribute

I think CFBuilder is using Aptana under the hood so I would imagine this may work there as well.

In the past I’ve bashed on Adobe about costly software, broken extensions and lack of Linux support but today I have something nice to say!

Recently on the CFEclipse mailing list we were discussing the ColdFusion 9 dictionary file and someone mentioned it would be nice if we could simply use the one from ColdFusion Builder. I shot off an email to Adam Lehman from Adobe and honestly expected either a) no reply or b) a firm ‘No’.

But instead Adam did reply and indicated he’d “look into it”.

So I waited a few weeks knowing Adam is a busy person and emailed him again. And again he replied! He said it seemed like sharing the dictionary file was possible but he still had to ‘run it by legal’.

OK. Now we’re doomed I thought.

So I waited another week or so and bugged him again. And low and behold this comes across Twitter:

@thecrumb btw. I got Adobe VP approval to share the #ColdFusion Builder dictionary w/ CFEclipse!

So I’d just like to publicly thank Adam for following through on my inquiry, and thanks to Adobe for sharing their toys with the other kids!

Now about that Linux version of ColdFusion Builder…

Lately with all the news about open source CFML I’ve been wondering where CFEclipse fits in?  We all know Bolt is on the horizon but being an Adobe product I simply don’t see it supporting the other CFML engines.

While CFEclipse certainly isn’t going anywhere – I do wonder about it’s future. Mark Drew has moved on to Railo (a good thing!).  While Mark has stated CFEclipse is not dead, I do wonder how much time he will realistically be able to commit to the project.

So What’s The Big Deal?

I use CFEclipse everyday and it does work, but much like a car, without regular maintenance things begin to fall apart.  Today there are over 200 open tickets in the CFEclipse bug tracker.  The Adobe ColdFusion Extensions are broken.  And I wonder if interest is waning because Bolt is coming?

The Future

I’ve always thought that CFEclipse should be an open “CFML” editor and given the Eclipse plugin architecture it seems like CFEclipse could be built to support the CFML Advisory Board’s ‘core’ CFML language by default and other vendors could supply plugins (free or commercial) that would provide language support for their products. Grand ideas for sure…

The Solution?

I’m not sure what the solution is?  People on the mailing list have openly stated they would be willing to pay to have features added to CFEclipse. But who to pay is the question?  While we have an abundance of users -  people with the time, skills and knowledge to work under the hood have been hard to find.

It may be too early for this but I have wondered if the new CFML kids on the block (OpenBD and Railo) would have spare resources available to help support CFEclipse?

For years the biggest complaint about ColdFusion was the lack of a good IDE.  CFEclipse has filled that gap, and with the alternatives (Bolt, Homesite and Dreamweaver) being Adobe products -  the CFML community will have much to gain by keeping CFEclipse healthy and open.

Today I’ve been thinking how great open source is…

• All the recent Railo and OpenBD news – big things for CFML!
• E Text Editor goes ‘open company‘ (now maybe we’ll see a Linux version!)
• And my daily work with JIRA is enhanced because I know I can peek under the hood at any time…

And then I get an email on the CFEclipse mailing list about the ColdFusion extensions from Adobe being broken.

Usually when people post off-topic items on the CFEclipse mailing list I try to help out as much as possible.  But in this case I really can’t do squat and it’s frustrating.  I’ve blogged about the ColdFusion extension issue before:  Dear Adobe, The Eclipse Extension Is Broken…

But…

• The extension source is closed so no one outside of Adobe can do anything to help fix it
• Adobe has no public bug tracker for their tools (except Flex) so I don’t know where to ‘officially’ go to report an issue

So I’m left to whine on my blog and hope someone from Adobe stops by…  Ben Forta actually responded to the thread above but his anwser was a bit vague.  It sounds like this CF Extension functionality will be rolled into Bolt but will there still be a free version available for Eclipse afterwards???

One topic that pops up constantly on the CFEclipse mailing list is what do you use to edit HTML/JS/CSS/XML?

The typical answer is Aptana, but I may have found an alternative:  Amateras’ Eclipse HTMLEditor.

I’ve just installed and am still digging around but it looks feature rich.  There doesn’t seem to be autocomplete for CSS but it does have a neat ‘preview’ mode which shows you want your CSS will look like.

They also have a few other tools I’m going to checkout:

• AmaterasUML – UML Diagrams
• AmaterasERD – ERD Diagrams
• AIR GEAR – Flex and AIR support

Recently on the CFEclipse mailing list there has been some confusion as to what the latest version of CFEclipse is, and how to get it.

CFEclipse is actually up to 1.3.3 in “Cutting Edge” mode.  But depending on your Eclipse platform and setup you may not know that.

Turns out your version of Ganymede, and your choice of update mode in Eclipse makes a difference (don’t ask me why).

The trick to see the 1.3.3 update is to revert back to the “Classic Update” mode in Eclipse.

If you download “Eclipse Classic” then you should be able to easily change your update mode to “Classic” (Windows > Preferences > General > Capabilities – Enable “Classic Update”).

But I recently downloaded Eclipse and when I went looking for this – I didn’t have a “General > Capabilities” menu selection!  Turns out only Eclipse Classic has this.  I had downloaded “Eclipse IDE for Java Developers“.   After doing a few Google searches I found this hack on the Ham and Eggs blog (great name!):

In reality that is quite simple, just browse to WORKSPACE/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.runtime/.settings/org.eclipse.ui.workbench.prefs and add a new line containing:

UIActivities.org.eclipse.equinox.p2.ui.sdk.classicUpdate=true

Restarting Eclipse I still didn’t have a “General > Capabilities” menu selection, but the Classic Update is activated.  Now when I add the CFEclipse update site and check I see:

CFEclipse 1.3.3

I have been working on some really old code lately and to say it is a mess would be an understatement. Evaluate statements all over, font tags and queries with no queryparams.

I’ve been using the first version of QueryParam Scanner for awhile now and discovered that it’s been recently updated – nice new interface:

QueryParam Scanner

Also a nice new options screen:

QueryParam Scanner Options

And I also noticed a blurb about an Eclipse plugin.  Installation instructions are on the link above via the traditional Update Site method or you can download the .jar file directly.

When I first installed it I was a bit confused on how to run it from within Eclipse but after a bit of digging I found it!  Simply right click on your directory and there will be a new option “Scan With QueryParam Scanner”

QueryParam Scanner Eclipse Plugin

This will then open up your browser, start QueryParam Scanner and load the selected directory.   Very slick!  Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a way to pass in options (recurse directory) so it will only zip through the files in the root of the directory you select.  The author Peter Boughton does mention these are early releases. Hopefully he can tweak this a bit in future versions to give you more control.

In my opinion every project should be run through QueryParam Scanner and the VarScoper, just in case. :)

Update:
Peter left a comment and after checking there is indeed a QueryParam Scanner option under the Preferences menu (which I somehow completely missed!)

QueryParam Plugin Preferences