Peter Amiri talks about “CFWheels ColdFusion Framework (new structure and features)” in this episode of ColdFusion Alive Podcast with host Michaela Light.
"...CFwheels is another ColdFusion framework. And it was originally modeled after Ruby on Rails. So if you remember back in the early 2000s, when Ruby on Rails came out, it was a complete mind change on how applications could be built. And that's why I got a huge following. And there was a lot of effort on the ColdFusion side to see if we could take that momentum that Rails had and bring that framework over to the ColdFusion side of the house..."
Show notes
What is CFWheels?
Ruby on Rails for CF
MVC framework vs procedural or heaven forbit spaghetti code
Convention over configuration
Eg Views dir vs XML config
Built in structure / scaffolding
The CFWheels open source project has been around since 2005
CFWheels is an open source CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language) framework inspired by Ruby on Rails that provides fast application development, a great organization system for your code, and is just plain fun to use. One of our biggest goals is for you to be able to get up and running with CFWheels quickly.
Why should you use CFWheels?
Types of CF Devs
Professional devs, CS trained, modern development patterns
Self learned developers, procedural devs
Easy onramp to Self learned devs to get MVC benefits without doing a CS degree first
While modern for CS type devs
Getting started materials
Using CommandBox can get a sample CFWheels app in 5 seconds
Moving from legacy CF frameworks
Fusebox, Model-Glue, Mach-2, F/W 1
If MVC used then translates easily
New CFWheels dev team
Changing of the Guards at CFWheels
Peter frontman/evangelist and admin and structure
Been involved in CFWheels since near the beginning
Worked on the CFWheels CLI project
Worked with Rails books author to draft CFWheels book, which needed CLI
Uses CFWheels in work projects
Joined the core team
Tom King, David Belanger, Adam Chapman, Per Djurner focusing on coding CFWheels
Admin burnout, stepping back a bit
Major CFWheels features
Easy MVC
Industry established concept MVC
Easy MVC, no need OO expert compared to ColdBox
Or legacy CF frameworks ModelGlue, Mach2
Conventions
Routing engine
Resource based RESTful routing engine for GET, POST, PUT, PATCH & DELETE
Databases
CFWheels uses ORM and Migrations. for database
Less CRUD and SQL coding
Automatically works if database structure changes
Or even database changes
Built in database migration system even across different DBMS
App Documentation
Automatic App Documentation using the built in doc viewer which grows with your application
From special comments. Similar idea to JavaDocs
Eg CFWheels API uses this
Local docs (offline work)
CFWheels API
Lets you call the atomic components of CFWheels separately
https://api.cfwheels.org/v2.4
Hybrid Development - Switch in and out of Wheels conventions
Ecosystem
CFWheels plugins at ForgeBox
Add to the framework core
Overwrite core functionality to change behavior
https://www.forgebox.io/type/cfwheels-plugins
Eg bCrypt, JWT, SAML, dotEnvSettings shortcodes
CFWheels Fully Embraces ForgeBox Packages
Community
CFWheels has moved to GitHub Discussions.
https://github.com/cfwheels/cfwheels/discussions
Google discussions archived
The CFWheels Channel on CFML Slack Has Been Archived
the reasons for this move are to
Move our discussions closer to the code in GitHub, allowing the poster and respondent to more easily link to specific branches, files, and even lines of code.
Issues can be converted to discussions if they warrant further community input or discussions promoted to an issue once an issue or feature has had ope...
