Archive for category ColdFusion

Any developer or artist will tell you – you are only as good as the tools you use.

As an artist when I am considering starting a new piece my first consideration is the materials I am going to use and the tools I have at my disposal to create.
The better the tools, the nicer the finished piece is going to be, and the higher the quality of the materials the longer it is going to last.

Database query – Oracle SQL Developer:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/sql_developer/index.html

Coding – Eclipse:
http://www.eclipse.org/pdt/
I can’t wait for the official release of the Eclipse based ColdFusion builder but until they finish putting it together I’ll continue using Dreamweaver and Eclipse.
I primarily use Dreamweaver but I like both. I’ve just been using Dreamweaver for so long I haven’t been compelled to switch over to Eclipse full time.

SEO – Website Auditor:
http://www.link-assistant.com/website-auditor

Analytics – Google Analytics:
http://www.google.com/analytics/

You could build your own analytics maps using a network ip location database system. There are lots of them available online but why reinvent something that google does so well!

I searched and searched and searched for weeks trying to find something that documented all the necessary packages, where to find them, and how to get them all installed and working in the Snow Leopard system and I wanted to document the process so others can find my final solutions and possibly save yourself a lot of headaches along the way.

I only had to follow the following advice once so I was lucky I had it setup and working but before you start this process: INSTALL AND CONFIGURE TIME MACHINE!!!!!!! And make sure it’s all working flawlessly by doing some test deletes and restore those files the following day or even a few days later. If you are like me once you start doing something like this you just attack it head on like you’re driving a brand new Mustang Convertible on the open freeway, never slowing down to consider the risks.

Ok so backups are working and you want to get a truly impressive developer system with all the bells and whistles!

On Snow Leopard and probably all future versions of OS X the first thing you’ll need is Mac Ports. These people are far better programers and developers than I ever will be so take their advice and use the tools they’ve put in place. They’ve already broken everything that could be broken and are working HARD to make sure we developers have clean tools to work with. You can download and install MacPorts here: http://www.macports.org/

Following all of their advice you open up a terminal and type:
# port selfupdate [enter]

Next you have to figure out all the packages you’ll need for your environment.
In my case I need Apache2, PHP, Subversion, MySQL, FreeTDS (odbc for MSSQL), and any dependency packages.
Here are all of the packages I ended up installing in my environment, you can find out all the packages on your system by just typing:
# port installed [enter]
The following ports are currently installed:
apache2 @2.2.14_1+darwin+preforkmpm (active)
apr @1.3.9_1
apr @1.3.9_2 (active)
apr-util @1.3.9_1
apr-util @1.3.9_2 (active)
autoconf @2.65_1 (active)
autoconf213 @2.13_1 (active)
automake @1.11.1_0 (active)
bzip2 @1.0.5_3+darwin (active)
db46 @4.6.21_6 (active)
expat @2.0.1_0 (active)
freetds @0.82_0 (active)
gawk @3.1.7_0 (active)
gettext @0.17_4 (active)
gperf @3.0.4_0 (active)
gsed @4.2.1_0 (active)
help2man @1.37.1_1 (active)
libiconv @1.13.1_0 (active)
libtool @2.2.6b_0 (active)
libxml2 @2.7.6_0 (active)
m4 @1.4.13_0 (active)
mhash @0.9.9.9_0 (active)
ncurses @5.7_0+darwin_10 (active)
ncursesw @5.7_0+darwin_10 (active)
openssl @0.9.8l_0+darwin (active)
p5-locale-gettext @1.05_2 (active)
pcre @7.9_0 (active)
perl5 @5.8.9_0 (active)
perl5.8 @5.8.9_3 (active)
php5 @5.3.1_1+apache2+darwin_10+macosx (active)
php5-mssql @5.3.1_2 (active)
pkgconfig @0.23_1 (active)
readline @6.1.000_1+darwin (active)
sqlite3 @3.6.22_0 (active)
zlib @1.2.3_4 (active)

To install any package all you have to do once you’ve installed MacPorts is type:
# port install [name of the package]

So if I needed to install apache2 I would just type:
# port install apache2

I am documenting all of this for both Mac OS X Snow Leopard as well as VMWare installation of Ubuntu(Linux) the process is very similar on both systems. Ubuntu uses a similar package manager called apt-get.

apache2 config is found at /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf

In order for PHP files to load properly these have to be configured properly in Apache conf httpd.conf:
This loads the php module for the web server:
LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so
This tells apache that when found the files index.php should be loaded when a directory is called.

DirectoryIndex index.php index.cfm index2.php index.html

This allows the directories for php applications to load without needing to run a redirector in html files.
You can add anything you want here like home.php home.php5 or whatever you want – as long as the server recognizes the format of the file being opened then it can be the main load page when a directory is called. I have an application that loads home_frameset.cfm when a directory is called that opens the primary frameset from a ColdFusion application. So this is included in this directory tag. That way when the main page loads for http://mydomain.com/ the server knows that this file should be loaded by default.

The next configuration file to check is the PHP config found at /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini
again if you pico /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini
The following features are of special note:
register_globals = On
This option should be turned off in most configurations but if you like me are updating an older application then you’ll need to turn it on until you fix your code. I had to fix about 20,000 different code references that required the register_globals references.
If you are running this as a development platform set your error reporting to:
error_reporting = E_ALL
If you don’t want all your errors reported in a live install
error_reporting = Off

The last step in getting PHP to talk to your database took me several days to find any information about.
You have to explicitly define your database connections to your servers in the freeTDS configuration files.
The file is found at: /opt/local/etc/freetds/freetds.conf OSX mac-ports
In Ubuntu its found at: /etc/freetds/freetds.conf
The config should read:
[global]
tds version = 8.0

[myserver]
host = sql.mydomain.com
port = 1433

[myserver2]
host = unixbox.mydomain.com
port = 4000
tds version = 5.0

[myserver3]
host = instancebox.mydomain.com
instance = foo
tds version = 8.0

Once freetds knows your database location it can now talk to mssql servers and your database calls will work.

Now that all of the php,apache2,freetds configs are setup restart your apache server by opening terminal and typing:
sudo apachectl restart

I normally just authenticate my terminal as root by typing su root and then enter the root password for my server that way any commands I type in the terminal don’t need the sudo command before I tell the terminal to do anything.

Verify that everything is running correctly in the browser for PHP applications and then we can move on to the ColdFusion install.

In my environment I download the ColdFusion 8 or 9 and install the development server.
Once ColdFusion is installed you just have to tell apache what modules to load and where the JRun is located.
I normally skip the automatic apache config options in the installer and add these to apache myself.
On OSX using ColdFusion 9
If you install a live version and use the multiserver options and the J2EE server then you’ll need to change the location of the module to /Applications/JRun4

# JRun Settings
LoadModule jrun_module /Applications/ColdFusion9/runtime/lib/wsconfig/1/mod_jrun22.so

JRunConfig Verbose false
JRunConfig Apialloc false
JRunConfig Ignoresuffixmap false
JRunConfig Serverstore /Applications/ColdFusion9/runtime/lib/wsconfig/1/jrunserver.store
JRunConfig Bootstrap 127.0.0.1:51800
#JRunConfig Errorurl url
#JRunConfig ProxyRetryInterval 600
#JRunConfig ConnectTimeout 15
#JRunConfig RecvTimeout 300
#JRunConfig SendTimeout 15
AddHandler jrun-handler .jsp .jws .cfm .cfml .cfc .cfr .cfswf

That’s it now restart apache again and you’ll be able to run PHP and ColdFusion documents from the same server!