During your application development, until you get more familiar with Mach-II, you may come up with questions like:

"What methods does the Event object have?"
"How can I access properties from a Listener/Plugin/Filter?"
"What methods does a Listener have? which methods does it inherit?"

The way to get the answer is to go to the framework documentation. Java developers are accustomed to using Javadoc to create API documention for java packages. Spike has developed a similar tool for CFCs, the CFC Documenter.

I have installed the CFC Documenter on Mach-II.info and pointed it at the Mach-II framework. I have a link to it in the Resources section under Documentation or you can click here to go to the docs.

I came across jComponents, a set of custom tags that provide DHTML-based UI widgets (tabs, accordions, trees and more). I have yet to use these in a project but they look very cool.

While browsing the demos I came across the ColdBakedBeans sample app. The app is a little utility to help make CFC "beans". A good demo of the jCompenents suite and it could save you some time/typing when creating your bean CFCs in Mach-II.

Rob Brooks-Bilson, a senior technology manager at Amkor Technology, wrote to let me know they built their customer extranet, http://webdata.amkor.com, on top of Mach-II. They developed several intranet applications using Mach-II as well.

BTW, Rob is one of the founders of CFCZone.org, an essential resource for all CF Developers. Keep up the good work Rob!

No, I'm not talking about the current Presidential election. I vow to keep this blog on topic.

I'm talking about Macromedia Bug #49546. Because of the fact the EXTENDS attribute of CFCOMPONENT cannot accept dynamic values, application frameworks such as Mach-II are forced to use hard coded component paths. This makes it very difficult to have multiple copies/versions of an application on a single(shared) server.

Macromedia Bug #49546 is a feature request to allow custom tag paths per application. Perhaps it could be implemented like <cfapplication customTagDirectory="d:\www\mysite\myCustomTags,d:\machii_1_0_10">

This would be a great enhancement for Mach-II apps. So, if you have access to the Macromedia beta program, you should have access to the bug tracker and you can cast your vote. If not, leave a comment here and we'll see if we get someone to submit a vote for you (you need to provide your name and email).

Alan Quinlan, a developer with Ken Cook Co., wrote to let me know that he used Mach-II to develop the John Deere Bookstore. This is a large site that provides all of the technical literature for John Deere internal employees, dealers, and the average consumer for the JD Hitachi, Construction, and Forestry divisions.

One interesting thing he notes is the site taps into another Mach-II application that is still under development. All database queries for products, submissions of orders, etc. all tap into their new inventory/order management system they call C.O.R.E. This is all developed with ColdFusion and Mach-II. Further, he says the John Deere site calles the C.O.R.E. listeners through a communication gateway. He describes it as a universal system with limitless Mach-II front ends. Their other customers like Volvo Cars, Ingersoll-Rand, and others will also be moving into this new system.

It's great to see Mach-II making inroads into large enterprises.

Thanks, Alan, for submitting your site. To you other Mach-II developers, if you haven't submitted your site what are you waiting for?

Update (10/13/2004 11:00am) - Including this component was a mistake. See this post.

I was doing a diff of Mach-II 1.0.10 against 1.0.9 and I noticed a new component, FlashRemoting.cfc. Sean mentioned such a component was under consideration but not much more was said about it after that. It wasn't even mentioned in the release notes.

Has anyone tried using this component yet?

Here's the comments from the file header:

<!---
$Id: FlashRemoting.cfc,v 1.4 2003/11/18 01:48:07 mbohl Exp $
Copyright (c) 2003 Macromedia, Inc.

Description:
I am a base class component that provides a way to call a Mach II from Flash.
Usage:
Extend me as index.cfc in your own application.
Override init() if necessary to set MACHII_* variables to something other than the defaults.
Remember to call super.init() if you override it!
The Flash movie then gets a service connection to {appname}.index and calls the
handleRequest() method using one of the following methods:
mySvc.handleRequest({event:"foo",arg1:"bar",arg2:"abc"});
mySvc.handleRequest(responder,{event:"foo",arg1:"bar",arg2:"abc"});
The first method assumes a default responder on the service connection. The second
method passes a specific responder for the call (and is the recommended approach, using
a separate responder for each event).
The actual name of the event parameter should be whatever the backend is expecting,
i.e., whatever the tag for eventParameter defines.
If the event parameter is omitted, the defaultEvent is used.
Notes:
This currently duplicates almost all of mach-ii.cfm which is not ideal.
Unfortunately, the current use of scopes in mach-ii.cfm makes it hard to split it
into reusable include files that could be included here as well. Something for a
future version!
--->

(btw, I've been using a great utility for doing file/directory comparisons. It's called Beyond Compare. I give it 2 thumbs up.)

Well, it seems that the FlashRemoting.cfc included in 1.0.10 was a mistake and should not be used. There were a few other filters included by mistake as well. The download package has been fixed but in case you downloaded the original zip make sure to delete these files:

- MachII/framework/FlashRemoting.cfc
- MachII/filters/EventToRequest.cfc
- MachII/filters/FormObjectBeaner.cfc
- MachII/filters/RequestToEvent.cfc
- MachII/filters/ValidateFormObject.cfc

Macromedia recently posted a security bulletin for CFMX. This was in response to a privilege escalation vulnerability and it recommends that the CFOBJECT tag and the CreateObject function
should be secured in a shared or untrusted developer environment.

Mach-II is dependent on the CreateObject function so locking it down will break it. Fortunately, the hosting provider where mach-ii.info is hosted uses CFMX Enterprise. With CFMX Enterprise, sandbox security can be implemented and the vulnerability is not an issue.

Anyone run into issues where their hosting provider locks down CreateObject and breaks Mach-II?

Mach-II 1.0.10 has been released. Download it from here. Here are the release notes from the readme file:

-Created MachII.framework.BaseComponent. This component is the base
for Listener, Plugin, and EventFilter.
-Added getProperty() and setProperty() method to BaseCompopnent.
All components can access global configuration properties via getProperty()
shortcut method.
-<view-page> element now has optional 'append' atribute for appending contentKey
values.
-Plugin execution occurs in order they were registered in configuration file.
-Added describeBean() function to MachII.util.BeanUtil.
-Updated mach-ii_1_0.dtd and mach-ii_1_0.xsd.
-The Mach-II Configuration Guide (pdf) has been updated.
-Fixed various bugs.
(Fixed: EventContext.hasPreviousEvent() threw exceptions.)
(Fixed: SimplePlugin had errorneous init() function.)
(Fixed: EventBeanCommand getters/setters made non-public.)
(Fixed: Type in EventManager method output attribute.)

Update (10/12/2004) - I just upgraded mach-ii.info to v1.0.10. I simply uploaded the new files and everything is running smoothly. Let me know if you notice any problems.