Collection of ColdFusion CFC Best/Recommended Practices?

Question

I have been building a list of CFC best practices to share.

There are a numerous of articles out there but I thought it might be neat to get any tricks and tips together here in one place that have been learnt through experience.

I'll add a few links here to get it going but I think the best thing would be not long articles that can be googled.

CFC Best Practices

Macromedia CFC Best Practices

Update: This has been made into a community wiki

Answer 1

O'Reilly's Top Ten Tips for Developing ColdFusion Components

Answer 2

Four quick things:

1. Get on the CFCDev mailing list (or google groups as it is now).

2. PDF of a Design Patterns in CFML presentation by Sean Corfield is a good quick read.

3. http://www.cfdesignpatterns.com has some good stuff with links to quality CFC design articles.

4. Article on the design patterns in CFML on Rob Brooks-Bilson's Blog .

Answer 3

Prior to using the ColdBox Framework I did not see any posts about using Momentos to capture the properties at that moment; however, now all my beans have a getMomento() and setMomento() method. I would encourage this as a best practice for anyone who needs to pass information from a bean into a DAO other object.

In my tests, getting a momento is much faster than passing the bean and getting the properties. Here is an example:

<cfcomponent name="userBean" output="true" hint="The account bean holds getter/setter information for a user's account.">

<cfproperty name="idUser"    required="true"  type="string"  rules="noZeroLengthString,validEmail"   invalidMessage="failed_data_validation_email"    hint="Key matching the 'accounts' table.">
<cfproperty name="loginEmail"   required="true"  type="string"  rules="noZeroLengthString,validEmail"   invalidMessage="failed_data_validation_email"    hint="E-mail address.">
<cfproperty name="password"   required="true"  type="string"  rules="noZeroLengthString,validPassword"  invalidMessage="failed_data_validation_password"   hint="Password stored in a SHA-512 hash.">

<cffunction name="init" output="false" returntype="userBean" hint="Initalizes the userBean with default values.">
 <cfset variables.instance     = structNew()>
 <cfset variables.instance.IDUser  = 0>
 <cfset variables.instance.loginEmail  = "">
 <cfset variables.instance.password  = "">
 <cfreturn this>
</cffunction>

<!--- SET LOGIN --->
<cffunction name="setLoginEmail" access="public" returntype="void" output="false">
 <cfargument name="email" type="string" required="true" />
 <cfset variables.instance.loginEmail = trim(arguments.email) />
</cffunction>
<cffunction name="getLoginEmail" access="public" returntype="string" output="false">
 <cfreturn variables.instance.loginEmail />
</cffunction>

<!--- ID --->
<cffunction name="setIDUser" access="public" returntype="void" output="false">
 <cfargument name="id" type="numeric" required="true" />
 <cfset variables.instance.IDUser = arguments.id />
</cffunction>
<cffunction name="getIDUser" access="public" returntype="numeric" output="false">
 <cfreturn variables.instance.IDUser />
</cffunction>

<!--- PASSWORD --->
<cffunction name="setPassword" access="public" returntype="void" output="false">
 <cfargument name="password" type="string" required="true" />
 <cfset var pw = arguments.password>
 <cfif len(pw) EQ 0>
  <cfset variables.instance.password = "">
 <cfelse>
  <!---><cfset variables.instance.password = hash(arguments.password, "SHA-512") />--->
  <cfset variables.instance.password = arguments.password>
 </cfif>
</cffunction>
<cffunction name="getPassword" access="public" returntype="string" output="false">
 <cfreturn variables.instance.password />
</cffunction>

<!--- MOMENTO --->
<cffunction name="setMomento" access="public" returntype="void" output="false">
 <cfargument name="momento" type="struct" required="true" />
 <cfset variables.instance = arguments.momento>
</cffunction>
<cffunction name="getMomento" access="public" returntype="struct" output="false">
 <cfreturn variables.instance />
</cffunction>

Cheers,

Aaron Greenlee My Site