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Reverse Proxy In Ubuntu

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 22:51:00 GMT

The last few days I have spend some time setting up 2 new servers. One running Railo on Ubuntu and the other Coldfusion in Windows. I needed to host this on a single IP address and needed both machines available on the internet. There are 2 ways I know of that can accomplish this task 1. Using Microsoft ISA and 2 Using Apache as a reverse proxy. As I already have Apache up and running I went with option 2.

While a seemingly trivial task I had never done this before and got hung up a few times the following are the steps I took:

Define the urls you want to re-direct to a different server:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName www.myExternalDoomianName.com
    ProxyPass / http://myInternalDnsName/    ( or ip address )
    ProxyPassReverse / http:// myInternalDnsName /  (or ip address )
    ProxyPreserveHost on
</VirtualHost>

ProxyPreserveHost keeps the host headers intact so the internal sever can still use virtual websites.
Then run:
A2ensite myReverseProxySites
Need some extra bits for apache.
apt-get install libapache2-mod-proxy-html
a2enmod proxy
a2enmod proxy_html
a2enmod headers
a2enmod proxy_connect
a2enmod proxy_balancer
Restart apache
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart
If something isn’t working start looking in the logs:
tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log

Flex, Data grids and Excel

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:00:00 GMT

I write a lot of data-focused applications, a lot of grids, reports updates and inserts. It’s the usual stuff the business wants, Flex and Coldfusion work really well together for this sort of thing. We produce quite a few custom reports using the often unknown little gem that comes for free with cf Coldfusion Report Builder. It can be clunky but I doubt there is a quicker way to produce what we need.
When all this is said and done and we are happy with what we have produced ( and so is the business of course ) they seem to inevitably come back with “This report is great, any chance I can get it in excel?”
As per usual it was required ASAP. We already write out several reports into excel but each report is different and I was after a generic solution. I was directed to this article by Dale Fraser: http://www.cflex.net/showfiledetails.cfm?ObjectID=298
Which didn’t really work and had a few issues not surprising it was for Flex 1. Plus I felt that all the HTML was unnecessary and I was after a cleaner simpler solution. I didn’t want to restrict the use to IE either so the js was to go aswell. What I came up with was a solution that loops the datagrid columns ( hidden and seen ) and produces a tab separated block of text that will paste into excell perfectly separating the grid columns into nice excel columns. It even takes into consideration label functions. The accountants where happy and could now paste into excel with 1 click and manipulate the data in anyway they want.
You can see an example of this where I grab the rss feed from fullasagoog and tidy it up a bit and put it in a grid. Let the grid load up, click copy, open excel, click in a cell and paste. It works on mac and windows ( I’ll assume linux my desktop is at home so I cant test ) in ie, safari and firefox.
http://code.kukiel.net/dgc
I also enabled code view.

Adobe MAX day 3

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 02:40:00 GMT

Well I am back home and the excitement has begun to die down. I’ve begun running trough my notes on new idea’s and products to try out and my wife is probably sick of me talking about Adobe, Coldfusion and Flex for a while and I’m actually looking forward to heading back to work.
Day 3 was still a fun day where I participated in the Coldfusion/Flex/Live cycle lab. Some of what we went over I was already currently using but I did pick up few tricks one of those was that while there is a connection limit to the included LCDS services in CF 8 standard the limit is around 1000 which is more then I need for the current app, but still good to know.
I spent some more time at the CF Unconference where I sat in on the CF Uber panel which will be on the CF Conversations podcast. I also got to meet Joe Rinehart the creator of Model Glue. He talked about Broadchoice and the technologies used. He actually spoke a bit on Groovy which I already have been thinking or looking at but after some of the quick demos I intend to take a closer look. I also sat in on a session where I was introduced to the webserver stress tool. A mid priced web stress testing tool. http://www.paessler.com/webstress/download ( I’m sorry I forgot the name of the presenter ).
I also went to the very last session on what’s new in Flex 4 and there are some nice new things, the integration of Flex Unit for one, 2 way data binding ie testInput.text =”{@myValue}”, the separation so a designer can do there thing and the dev there’s, the tighter CF intergration and more.
I hope I get to attend next year and catch up with everyone I met but I definitely intend to keep in touch with you all.

My new look macbook courtesy of the CF Unconference :)

I'm not a sticker guy but I'm proud to show this one.

Some videos from Adobe Max 2008 in San Francisco

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:29:00 GMT

Adobe kicks off Day 1 in San Francisco (keynote highlights and commentary from attendees)
From Adobe Flash Catalyst to Adobe CS4, see highlights from Day 2 (keynote highlights and commentary from attendees)
What was your geek-out moment of the day? (Day 1)
What was your geek-out moment of the day (Day 2)

ColdFusion Developer opening in Holland

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:09:00 GMT

I've been living and working in Holland for about 7 weeks now, and am loving every minute of it. Come work with me and other top-notch CF developers on exciting projects that will keep you interested for the long-term.

They have nice benefits, a fun working environment, and "perks" like getting to go to Adobe MAX Europe and to Luxembourg for a camping trip on company money.

Come join me: http://peoplexs.com/comp/ColdFusionDevelopers.htm

Who's gonna be a Adobe MAX Europe?

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:05:00 GMT

If so, post anything (i mean anything) below, and maybe I can buy the first round :D

I've only been in Europe (Holland) a month and a half, and don't know any CF'ers (other than 2 coworkers) in the area. I'm from Texas, so everything in Europe is "in the area" to me. Let me know.

how many bytes can a CF function be?

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:04:00 GMT

Apparently, the answer is 65535 bytes.

I had a huge laugh today when we got this error...

"500 cfReports2ecfc1683660545$funcRUN (Code of a method longer than 65535 bytes) cfReports2ecfc1683660545$funcRUN (Code of a method longer than 65535 bytes)"

... when trying to run a function I had just refactored for some inherited code. It had the dreaded problem that none of the function-local variables were scoped. So, I dutifully added cfset Var local = StructNew() to the top of the function and spent about 4 hours prepending all relevant variables with "local."

then, we got this error and noticed the huge, complex function has 2189 lines of CF code. I'm guessing CF server was able to compile the code, but just isn't allowed to run a function larger than 65535 byte.

Has anyone else ever seen this? (i did a short Google session, but didn't turn up anything)

Yes, I know this function needs to be rewritten badly to shorter functions, yadda, yadda... but I couldn't help sharing.

Adobe Max 2008 Day 2

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:09:00 GMT

Well it’s the end of Day 2 at 2008 Adobe MAX and I have to say I was impressed. I really like the look of the new ColdFusion IDE “Bolt” and it really looks like its gong to work well with CF9 and Flex, which to me is a huge plus. Ive been using CF Eclipse for a while now but a true ColdFusion extension its going to be great. The ability to type datasoure=” and have a lookup to available data sources is really nice. The right click and generate a CRUD from the IDE looks like what we can do in Flxbuilder already but is still nice although with all the noise of Hibernate ORM integration it surprises me that we didn’t see right click of a table, from a datasource and a CRUD generation using hibernate and CF. Although Ben did mention “Other frame works” I can only assume this is still to come.
I’m also really looking forward to Adobe Catalyst ( formerly Thermo ) as I’d really like to be able to produce some more applications that don’t look like standard Flex apps.
I attended 2 labs High Powered ColdFusion by Dave Watts and Extending Flex components with Matt Boles. Both were great sessions but it was the Flex session which in the first 10 mins I saw a solution that would help me cut down code by fixing some hacks I used to get around things I wasn’t sure you could do.
Lastly the sneak peaks did show a server side implementation of actionscript as a .sas file that is compiled on the fly and includes but the usual Flex code for displaying the data and the server side code for retrieving the data from the data base. This is interesting but I don’t think we will see this available for some time as currently CF and AS are a really nice fit.
Bolt information/Beta signup: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Bolt
(shame about the .php ? )
Oh and I forgot to mention there are plugin’s for Flex support into Visual studio 2008: http://www.ensemble.com/

Adobe Max Day 1

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:12:00 GMT

Well MAX is definatly bigger then I initially thought. It was the biggest turn out at any MAX event topping 5000 attendees. The opening session was full of Flash and the recent Flash 10 release ( including many mentions of AIR 1.5 ) and even included a visit from Arnie’s wife Maria Shriver ( First Lady of California ). Strangely absent was any news of ColdFusion although Flash being Adobe ‘s best known product ( other then Acrobat ) its not surprising that’s what they focused on.
I was almost sad as they talked about Flash on the iPhone ( as I just got a new Blackberry ) and while they say they don’t have it yet I highly doubt Adobe haven’t done there part and actually have it running on the device.
I was impressed with the CF un-conference and got to meet, in person Ben Forta, Ray Camden, Sean Corfield and Brian Meloche.
I finished the night with the Meet the CF team and the CMFL BoF’s which was great to meet the team and hear Ben give away some hint’s relating to CF9. Not really hints but anything cool he refused to answer I took as a hint ? It was great to hear Gert from Railo and other members of the committee discuss the standardisation of core cfml functions as choice gives freedom and I hope the 2 big open source CFML engines ( Railo and Open Blue Dragon ) can help promote cfml as a alternative to php.
I’m really looking forward to tomorrow key notes with Ben regarding Centaur.

Oh and I got this neat CF shirt.

Adobe Max 2008

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 22:57:00 GMT

From the first moment I learnt of Adobe Max ( Vegas 2006 ) I wanted to go. It wasn't until this year that I became as big a fan Adobe due to a position change and working with Flex and Coldfusion. San Fran is a gret city its the second time I have been here and the weather is just great. I'm really excited and can't wait to see/meet some of my internet idols and look forward to news regarding Coldfusion 9 and Flex 4.

See you there