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ValidateThis API Documentation Available

I'm in the process of creating a roadmap for future development of ValidateThis, my validation framework for ColdFusion objects. I am discussing the roadmap with interested parties via the new ValidateThis-dev Google group, so if you're interested in having any input, or just following along, I welcome you to join that group.

One item that appears on the roadmap is improving the documentation for the framework. There is quite a lot of documentation already available on the ValidateThis wiki (thanks to the CodexWiki team for the tool), but I know that there are some holes. I'm going to try to shore up the docs over the next while, but in the meantime I figured I might as well generate some JavaDoc-style API documentation for the framework using ColdDoc, so that's what I've now done. You can find the API docs at www.validatethis.org/docs/api/. I'd like to thank Mark Mandel for yet another rockin' ColdFusion open source tool (ColdDoc), which made this process oh so easy.

As always, the latest code is available from the ValidateThis RIAForge site, and if you have any questions about the framework, or suggestions for enhancements, please send them to the ValidateThis Google group.

A New Group to Discuss ValidateThis Framework Development

I've created a new Google group, ValidateThis-dev which is intended to be a list for discussing future development of ValidateThis, a validation framework for ColdFusion. I did announce this in a post a few days ago, but it was buried near the bottom of the post so I thought it wise to announce it separately as well.

The existing group, ValidateThis, will remain as the main location for discussions of how to use the framework, and is also appropriate for enhancement requests, whereas the ValidateThis-dev group will be for discussing the design and coding of the framework itself. This new group is a public group, so anyone is free to join. I'd be particularly keen on having anyone who is interested in contributing, or even just sharing their ideas about how the framework can be improved, as members of the group.

If you've never contributed to an open source project before here's a chance to get your feet wet. I promise that we'll be civil and welcoming to anyone that is interested, and with ValidateThis now housed on GitHub it's a nice opportunity to play with Git as well. I hope you'll consider joining and adding your voice to the conversation.

ValidateThis Futures from cf.Objective()

I returned from cf.Objective() a few days ago and have been catching up on all sorts of things. I hope to post a review/discussion of the conference as a whole soon, but for now I just want to touch on some things that came up around ValidateThis.

I gave a presentation entitled Easy and Flexible Validations for Objects during which I described what ValidateThis is, and showed how easy it is to work with. I demonstrated that you can add client-side validations to a form with a single line of code, and can perform server-side validations with just a few lines. I also discussed the different types of validation scenarios that VT is designed to address. There were some questions and suggestions which have prompted me to think of future enhancements to the framework, so I wanted to discuss them here.

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ValidateThis 0.93 - Automatic Property Descriptions

I've just released version 0.93 of ValidateThis, my validation framework for ColdFusion objects. It includes a small bug fix that affected the dependentPropertyValue param when used with ColdFusion ORM objects, and also includes one small enhancement.

Automatic Property Descriptions

Until this release, if you wanted the description of your property to be different from its name, you had to provide a desc attribute for the property in the xml file. For example, you might have a property called firstName. In order to have ValidateThis generate failure messages with First Name in them you would have had to define your property like so:

view plain print about
1<property name="firstName" desc="First Name">

While working on my presentation for cf.Objective() I realized that I could relieve some of this burden by allowing the framework to do this for you automatically. So now, as of version 0.93, any property names that are camelCased will be automatically assigned descriptions, which will comprise of each word capitalized. So firstName becomes First Name and numberOfCarsOwned becomes Number Of Cars Owned, etc.

I'm finding this very useful, and I hope others will too.

As always, the latest code is available from the ValidateThis RIAForge site, and if you have any questions about the framework, or suggestions for enhancements, please send them to the ValidateThis Google Group.

I'm Invading Your Airwaves Again

Yes, once again I've been interviewed for a ColdFusion podcast, and this time it's CFHour. Dave and Mike allowed me to wax poetically about a wide range of topics including ValidateThis, my validation framework for ColdFusion objects, the upcoming cf.Objective() conference and the pre-conference training that will be available, Model-Glue, specifically some of the new features that will be included in version 3.2, MXUnit, again talking about what's coming in version 2.0, and Dave also tricked me into weighing in on the CFBuilder debate.

It was a lot of fun, and I really appreciate being given the opportunity to let people know about all of this great stuff that is available to the ColdFusion community. If you don't mind listening to my Canadian accent for close to an hour, I encourage you to give it a listen. It's available via iTunes, and can also be listened to or downloaded directly from the show page.

ValidateThis 0.92 - Easier to Extend, More Object Support, and more

I've just released version 0.92 of ValidateThis, my validation framework for ColdFusion objects. I'm very pleased to say that I received a large code contribution from Adam Drew, most of which made it into the framework. I also finally got around to adding John Whish's changes to the bundled ColdBox plugin. Here's a summary of all of the enhancements, followed by the details for each one.

  • ServerRuleValidators can be located anywhere.
  • Business objects with an abstract getter are now supported.
  • New DependentFieldName parameter for conditional client-side validations.
  • Fix to future-proof ColdBox plugin.
  • Fixes for Groovy conditional validations.

The latest version can be downloaded from the ValidateThis RIAForge site. Details of the enhancements follow:

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ValidateThis 0.91 - Now with Groovy and ColdFusion on Wheels Support

I've just released version 0.91 of ValidateThis, my validation framework for ColdFusion objects. Here's a summary of the enhancements, followed by the details for each one.

  • VT can now be used to validate Groovy objects.
  • VT can now be used to validate ColdFusion on Wheels objects.
  • getVersion() is now available.
  • VT source code is now being housed at GitHub.

The latest version can be downloaded from the ValidateThis RIAForge site. Details of the enhancements follow:

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