Nolan Erck talks about “Migrating legacy CFML to MVC (Model View Controller)” in this episode of the CF Alive Podcast, with host Michaela Light.

Show notes

What exactly is legacy ColdFusion?

A broad term

Non-framework code

Might use CFIncludes or some CFCs to be modular

Even giant 10k lines of code

Self-posting forms

What the MVC design pattern is and what problems it solves

MVC = Model View Controller

Model = biz logic and SQL

View = front end UI - HTML, CSS, JS

Controller = the glue that holds the Model and View together and says which part calls which

Customer in a restaurant ordering from a Menu (View) from a Waiter (Controller) to make the food in the kitchen (Model)

Maintenance easier

Whack a mole bugs

Biz logic, HTML, JS and SQL all mixed up together

Bit rot/Technical debt

Hard for designers to edit the code as the HTML is mixed up

Merge conflicts

Hard to fully test

Manually testing

Duplicate code, unused code (deadwood)

Specialization of labor

UI experts

CF developer

SQL database engineer

How the FW/1 and ColdBox frameworks use a convention-based approach to bring consistent structure to an application

Both are modern MVC

Use folder to separate the three parts, file naming conventions

FW/1 is minimalist, one file, easy to get started

MuraCMS uses it

ColdBox is heavyweight with more features and add-on packs in the Box ecosphere

Testing

Caching

Etc

Ortus supports

Other MVC frameworks that are not as maintained

CFWheels - These are convention based frameworks

Fusebox - XML config file framework

Mode Glue - XML config file framework

Mach-ii - These are convention based frameworks

What Dependency Injection (DI) is, how it simplifies the “model” portion of applications, and how they are used in FW/1 and ColdBox

Keeps your objects organized

Tools

DI/1

Wirebox

We did a whole interview on this topic in another episode of CF Alive

DRY = Don’t Repeat Yourself

DI and MVC are independent

How to refactor real-world procedural code into MVC-style code

What code belongs in the model, the view, and how the controller ties the two together.

Cut parts out of giant file to include files

Move out the SQL and CF logic

Dedup similar code

Move out the front end code to View include files

Start running with the remaining code in the View

Strategies for migrating large applications in phases.

ColdBox legacy tool feature

Version code such as Git

2 branches

Legacy

MVC

Maintain both

AB test each branch

All URLs will change

Using CommandBox and Git to spin up on-demand instances of ColdFusion and manage our code.

CommandBox

command line CF

Instant server setup or config

Any version, Adobe ColdFusion, Railo, Lucee CFML

Tool costs

FW/1 free

ColdBox free, pay or training and support

CommandBox - free

Git free to paid

Source Tree - free

Sublime Text - free to shareware paid $35

CF Builder free 30-day trial, $300

Why are you proud to use CF?

WWIT for you to make CF more alive this year?

What did you enjoy at CF Summit?

Nolan’s CF Summit workshop description

Do you maintain legacy ColdFusion applications, perhaps written with old procedural-style code? Have you been told you should be using a Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework but don't really understand how that works? Does the idea of rewriting the entire application seem like an impossible task? What if you could instead revamp your code in phases, without having to do it all at once?

Come to this workshop and learn:

What the MVC design pattern is and what problems it solves

How the FW/1 and ColdBox frameworks use a convention-based approach to bring consistent structure to an application