Building CF Applications with Fusebox

1
Building CF Applications with Fusebox

• Steve Nelson
• CTO, Zero-G Commerce, Inc.
• member, Team Allaire
• Chairman of Fusebox.org

2
A CF Programmers Dream World...

• Imagine if.
• you could work in a team of developers and have
  all the code look like it was written by single
  person.
• you could understand the structure of your
  co-workers code in 5 minutes, without asking
  questions
• you could concentrate on solving the problem
  instead of thinking about how to write the
  application

3
What is Fusebox?

• A Structured application architecture for
  building ColdFusion applications
• Created by the ColdFusion community for the
  ColdFusion community
• The best part. Its free

4
Why use a Structured Architecture?

• File based applications get messy, a structured
  architecture helps to clean this up.
• Multiple person development
• Instant documentation of your architecture
• Solve the problem instead of the Applications
  Architecture

5
Before You Write Any Code

• Talk to the client (or boss) about general ideas
• Write down these ideas into a loose Specification
• Create a tight specification from the loose
  specification, this means figure out all the
  sections of the application and all the actions
  required to do everything the client wants to do
• Repeat this process until every action in the
  application is understood by everyone involved

6
Create the Directory Structures

• Use the Tight Specification to figure out all the
  sections of the application.
• Each section is given its own directory, each of
  these sections are known as Circuit
  Applications
• Circuit Application - This is a section of the
  overall Home application example
  www.ebags.com/search

7
Create the Index.cfm Files

• Every directory (Circuit application) has an
  index.cfm file
• Index.cfm controls all the FuseActions of that
  circuit application
• Is basically a single ltCFSWITCHgt statement with
  multiple ltCFCASEgt statements
• Each CFCASE is a different FuseAction

8
Create the Fuseactions

• A Fuseaction is made up of one or more .cfm files
• Determine what types of files (display/action/quer
  y) are needed to create each Fuseaction
• Create a CFCASE statement for each Fuseaction and
  CFINCLUDE each necessary file.

9
File Naming Convention (Fuses)

• app_globals.cfm - Global variables, one per Home
  application
• app_locals.cfm - Local variables, one per Circuit
  application
• dsp_filename.cfm - Display files
• act_filename.cfm - Action files
• qry_filename.cfm - Query files

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Create the Necessary Files (Fuses)

• All links and forms in the display files should
  point to one of the index.cfm files in the
  application, not to the specific dsp or act files
• All links and forms must specify which Fuseaction
  they point to
• Use the attributes scope instead of form/url
  scope this allows you to call the index.cfm file
  as a custom tag (This is for advanced Fusebox
  techniques)

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Putting it all Together

• One Home application is made up of many smaller
  Circuits applications
• One Circuit application is made up of a directory
  of files, it must contain an app_locals.cfm and
  index.cfm file plus other display/action/query
  files
• One Index.cfm file is made up of one or more
  Fuseactions
• One Fuseaction includes one or more
  display/action/query files plus any necessary
  CFML logic

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Conclusion Why use Fusebox

• Fusebox is most likely very similar to how you
  may already build an application, thus it will be
  easy to learn
• It is a well thought out process, and will
  continue to be improved by the CF community
• Itll save you time, which will save you money
• Most importantly it will prevent hair loss.