I Am So Idiot

Today I found myself chasing my tail for a bit. This function threw an exception at runtime, which indicates that the argument passed in does not match the designated cfargument type. I spent a half hour finding different ways to verify that both inputs, Group_ID and Max_Allowed, were indeed of type Numeric.

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Hair-Trigger

I spent most of my morning chasing a sneaky little bug. Basically, once upon a time one of our tables contained a column (to protect the innocent, let's say it was called Meaningless_Data). Several months ago, my team removed the column from the DB schema as well as all references to it in the code.

I grabbed the changes and continued on my merry way... until today, which apparently is the first time I've tried to use a function that touches that particular table. I kept getting an error:

Type: Database
Message: Error Executing Database Query.
Detail: Invalid column name 'Meaningless_Data'.

So it's looking for the column and not finding it. Not surprising, since we deliberately deleted it a long time ago. I triple-checked the code, but couldn't find a single reference to Meaningless_Data in any SQL statement (or anywhere else in the codebase, for that matter).

I drove myself batty for way too long before copying the query straight from CFCATCH.SQL and manually running it against my local DB. Same error. Okay, it's not a Coldfusion issue...

Then I ran it against the DB on our development server. Worked like a charm. Getting warmer...

I generated SQL scripts for the table on each machine and diffed them, and the culprit was revealed. A trigger was pointing to the missing column, and was firing every time I touched the table. The other developer had updated the triggers on his local DB and the dev server, but when I grabbed the schema and code updates, I didn't think to look there.

File under lessons learned.

Shady McShadingtons, Exhibit A: Experts-Exchange.com

As a web developer, I often find myself in need of professional help. (Don't we all?) Sometimes all that stands between me and a completed project is a quick Coldfusion, SQL, or Actionscript example. At times like these, I turn to Google.

Much of the time I can find what I need in the first few search results. A code example here, a syntax clarification there. One site that used to bug me, however, was Experts-Exchange.com.

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BlogCFC on GoDaddy (or, Why I'm Going Gray at 26)

I've been wanting to get a blog up and running for some time, and so a couple of weeks ago I downloaded BlogCFC, an absolute work of art spearheaded by Raymond Camden.

I popped open the zip file, read the documentation, saw how easy it was to set up BlogCFC, and basically got my hopes up. Then I remembered that my site is hosted by GoDaddy, and as many of you already know, this generally means headache and heartache for a Coldfusion developer.

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SQL Date Conversions - More Than You Want To Know

Today I was writing a query that performed some date formatting and found myself using this resource by Manuj Bahl, to which I've often referred but to which I've rarely given any thought. By dumb luck, I fat-fingered one of the codes and ended up with something not listed on the table, but the query ran fine.

Curiousity sufficiently piqued, I wrote a simple Coldfusion script, and a few seconds later found myself looking at a complete table of date/time conversion codes. Most of them are not terribly useful, but in case anyone wants an exhaustive list of every conversion code available, you'll find it behind the cut.

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GoDaddy and Flash Forms

Once upon a time, GoDaddy had an issue displaying Coldfusion-generated Flash Forms in Internet Explorer. I spent a few hours on the issue and found that it was related to a file that was unavailable, for whatever reason, to ColdFusion at runtime. I spent a lengthy amount of time working with GoDaddy's tech support personnel, who have since resolved the issue (good work!). However, I know that other companies that provide hosting may have similar problems, so the following is a workaround.

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