Two new and free ColdFusion services for you!

Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes

So I’ve been playing with Google App Engines, and decided to create two projects in favour of our beloved ColdFusion.
I know there’s tons of that stuff around the web, but I wanted to make one that would actually help people from all levels. I’ll put their URL’s here first, so you can cease your curiosity, and then I’ll explain more as we go.

http://cftagaday.placona.co.uk/
http://cffunctionaday.placona.co.uk/

Basically, from the URL’s you can guess what they do, but if you didn’t. It will select a random tag/function from it’s database, and display it for you with it’s brief description.
 
Pretty simple huh?

Well, the main idea behind it, is bring new stuff for ColdFusion developers. While building this apps, I realized I don’t know many of the ColdFusion tags and functions, simply because I never had to use them. I.e. do you know what the function FileSetAccessMode is for? Do you know what sorts of RSS can the tag cffeed generate?

Well, that’s exactly it, sometimes we close our eyes for all the wonderful functionalities ColdFusion has already built in, and end up re-inventing the wheel.
Never more!

I promise you that if you spend only the few seconds you spend once you open a new tab reading the contents of each randomly generated pages, you’ll not be part of the “didn’t know about that” statistics.

Also, as you might have already noticed, you can also use the services as live documentation, as by going to the URL and typing the tag/function name after it, you get its description and a link to Adobe’s documentation, so you can read examples and comments.
This is how it works:

http://cftagaday.placona.co.uk/cflogout
http://cffunctionaday.placona.co.uk/IsDebugMode

Simply type the function/tag name, and get the documentation with no hassle.

I’ve created one service for each category, so if you’re more of a “tag person”, simply add http://cftagaday.placona.co.uk as your browser’s Home Page; and on every single tab, you get a different tag. Whereas if you’re more into functions, add http://cffunctionaday.placona.co.uk and enjoy!

I’ve also created a service that mixes the two of them, so on each refresh you will get either a tag or a function. It’s on process of publishing, and will be up soon.

I hope you enjoy it, and please let me know if you find bugs, and can think of anything that can make the service better.

I’ll also be working on a Railo version of it, as soon as I can gather all the necessary tag and function information.