Flex 4 app, coldfusion help

Question

I have some* experience using the flex framework for building web apps.

But I have no experience with server side languages, I have heard the saying "choose one and stick to it" several times in reference to programming.

I have chosen coldfusion.

Now I have no clue what to do or where to start.

Now to the details:

It will be a site for food showcases. Food menus sorted by cultural origin, vegetarian or meat kind, etc. Things like that.

I intend to build a web site that enables subscriptions, and keeps them updated whenever updates are made. And a commenting system to encourage user feedback. And I would like the site to have a database of food items (as mentioned earlier); from my research coldfusion will enable me to do this.

I would like resources that I could go to, and do more research myself. And all recommendations that can be provided.

Whether you think I dont need coldfusion, and if I can get this done with just flex and as3.

I appreciate all feedback, thanks for taking the time to read and respond. * = not much experience, still a "beginner"

Answer 1

Probably the best place for you to start would be the "CFWACK" (ColdFusion Web Application Construction Kit) series of books. Pick the series specific to the version of ColdFusion you have available to you -- CF9 is relatively new to market, and the books are available, but a majority of shared (e.g. cheaper) hosts still use a previous version. Find out what version you will be working with, and then get the books.

• ColdFusion 9:
  • Volume 1: Getting Started
  • Volume 2: Application Development
  • Volume 3: Advanced Application Development
• ColdFusion 8:
  • Volume 1: Getting Started
  • Volume 2: Application Development
  • Volume 3: Advanced Application Development

For prior versions, just search Amazon for "ColdFusion {version} Web Application Construction Kit"

That is, by and large, the canonical reference for learning ColdFusion. It is updated for each new version of ColdFusion, by some of the biggest names and most thorough developers in the CF Community.

Once you've learned any given version, it's relatively easy to catch up with a newer version by reading the release notes for that version. ColdFusion documentation is traditionally very thorough, which is amazing.

Once you've read the CFWACK books, and you're ready to start day-to-day developer life, (if this is your sort of thing) there is a huge community of ColdFusion developer bloggers, as well as on twitter. Just because of ubiquity and continuous flow of content, I would recommend you start with Ben Nadel and Ray Camden's blogs.

Answer 2

I'll ditto the recommendation for CFWACK, but as one of the authors I'm a bit biased. One point of clarification. The books are NOT written from scratch for each new version. In cases where we can just update, we do.

Now - I definitely want to see everyone buy CFWACK - but don't forget that Adobe ships a multi-thousand page PDF for CF docs. This is a wealth of information that is 100% free.

Answer 3

The best resources:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/Developing/index.html

http://www.carehart.org/ugtv/

Keep yourself in the loop:

http://twitter.com/danshort/coldfusion

http://feeds.adobe.com/

If you're stuck with some CF questions, post up here or ask one of them:

http://www.bennadel.com/ask-ben/ask-ben-nadel.htm

http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/contact.cfm