CArehart.org

You may (or may not) have heard that CF2021 added (in 2020) a new command-line tool called CFSetup--but first, did you know that it could be used with ANY CF version, not just CF2021? And perhaps you heard its main value is to export/import CF Admin settings via JSON: it can indeed do that, and while that may excite some, others may yawn if they've "seen that elsewhere". (To be clear, it can export/import either ALL settings or selected ones.) But did you know it could be used for far MORE than that alone? And did you know that those exported json config files could be used to set the admin configuration on startup of CF 2021 Docker images. Even if not using Docker, the tool can be a boon for all sorts of automated deployment of CF--again any CF version. And did you know you don't even need to install CF2021 to use it? While the feature is well-documented (and offers its own help), who has time to read the docs, right? In this session, veteran CF troubleshooter Charlie Arehart will present and demonstrate the key capabilities of CFSetup, as well as others that may surprise you. He'll also conclude with a brief discussion of the similar (but different) tool, CFConfig, a plugin for Ortus Commandbox. He'll touch on the question of why one might choose one over the other (it's ok to use either or both with the same CF instance). He'll also contrast these with the much older CF "CAR" Admin migration tool. Each tool has its value for different needs.

We did it, reaching episode 300! Join us as we celebrate this momentous anniversary. The Online CFMeetup was formed in 2005 and has been hosted since 2007 by Charlie Arehart, with sessions from over 150 speakers on a wide range of topics related to CF. In this session, we'll celebrate the past and look to the future for the group, where I will propose a new direction/format. All still about CF, of course. Here's to 300 more!

Machine Learning and AI are massive buzzwords but are they relevant for you? You might be surprised to know Machine Learning is available on Supercomputers, Smartphones, and tiny Internet of Things devices. No longer the domain of Artificial Intelligence PHDs, AI and ML have been democratized and are ready for your use. In this talk, I'll discuss the current state of ML, and AI, show you practical examples of both, and then give a demonstration of TinyML, a service to enable machine learning for all developers with an open source device SDK.

In this session, we are going to plan and build our very own Developer Feud Quiz. To do this, we will analyze and plan our app, starting with the User Stories, and then mapping that to Database, Models, and we can start building out our API, using CRUDDY by Design philosophies. We'll shell out our TDD style Tests, and then create a couple of resources and routes.

Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) vulnerabilities allow an attacker to make arbitrary web requests (and in some cases, other protocols too) from the application environment. Exploiting these flaws can lead to leaking sensitive data, accessing internal resources, and under certain circumstances, remote command execution. Several ColdFusion/CFML tags and functions can process URLs as file path arguments -- including some tags and and functions that you might not expect. If these tags and functions process unvalidated user-controlled input, this can lead to SSRF vulnerabilities in your applications. In addition to providing a list of affected tags and functions, I'll cover some approaches for identifying and remediating vulnerable code. My goal for this talk is to raise awareness about what may be a security blindspot for some ColdFusion/CFML developers.

While CF2021 has been out now for a year (released in Nov 2020), many orgs may only now be considering moving to it, whether from CF2018 or perhaps CF2016, CF11, CF10, or even earlier. How have the versions changed, in ways that some older code may not run on CF2021? And if you're skipping some CF version/s, what might have tripped you up in those, though not really "new" in CF2021 itself? And what can you do to mitigate such challenges? In this session, CF troubleshooter Charlie Arehart will share from his experience helping folks make such migrations the past year (and for years with previous CF versions), whether in his role as an independent consultant or providing assistance to the CF community. He'll cover things you can consider in advance of the migration as well as things that might help during or after the migration. Most important, this talk will focus on the differences between CF2021 and various earlier CF versions. (Note that he has previously given a talk on migrating CF admin settings, and he plans a future talk on some other aspects of migration.)

Feature flags are a system of enabling certain functionality in your app based on test groups, cross-cutting segments of users, and your internal release processes. Feature flags can be updated on the fly at any time by any user and don't require deploying new code to your servers. LaunchDarkly is a system that helps you manage your feature flags and how they respond to the users of your site. It offers detailed tracking of each user, each flag, and a robust set of rules for determining which users see which features. In this session, we'll see an overview of how to use the new LaunchDarkly SDK which can be used in ColdFusion applications. Demos will include both ColdBox apps and non-ColdBox legacy apps.

Every ColdFusion developer is a builder and an artist. We want to create and craft beautiful, elegant solutions with CFML that are powerful and dynamic... but sometimes, we still need to deal with the legacy code that was built a decade ago by a developer who has long since left the organization and didn't know what they were doing to begin with. Or, maybe the company direction has shifted (again) and what was a priority in the past is no longer relevant. Maybe the approach you originally took to a problem can be done cleaner, and more efficiently. Maybe there's new functionality in ColdFusion that renders old approaches obsolete. At some point, modernization of your approach becomes necessary to retain your sanity! In this group therapy session, I will discuss legacy code, why it's difficult to manage, how to take incremental approaches to improving it and some techniques on how to modernize your development approach.

Most people know that there are differences between CF Enterprise and Standard, most notably the price, of course! But if pressed, I suspect most people could not name more than a couple other differences or perhaps a few, but there are literally dozens. And while you may think you "don't need" Enterprise when it "costs so much more", you may be surprised to find some things that could in fact be "worth it" compared to remaining on Standard: whether from a performance standpoint, in terms of certain tags that are throttled in Standard; or from a licensing standpoint, in terms how many more CPU cores are supported by Enterprise than Standard. It may even be possible that it would be less expensive for you to license CF Enterprise rather than Standard. In this session, veteran server troubleshooter Charlie Arehart will walk through the many areas that there are differences, some having to do with how CFML features may vary, or how CF Admin or even how CFBuilder features may vary. Is CF Enterprise right for you? Or is Standard "good enough"? In this session, it should become more clear for you, or at least you can be more confident/accurate about discussing the differences. Again, there's a LOT of misinformation/misunderstanding, as I watch discussions of the differences in the community. (And yes, of course, many will want to point out that there is the entirely free Lucee engine. If it suits your needs, that's an option. It doesn't suit everyone's needs, so it's not like it's "pointless" to discuss the differences between paying for CF Enterprises vs Standard.) You may even learn about things that are possible in Standard that you didn't know where there, when discussed relative to or indeed as as an alternative to Enterprise-only functionality.

We are excited to let you know that we are racing towards our vision of making Adobe ColdFusion the modernized platform of choice for building cloud native microservice applications with absolute focus on ease of use. The goal of this session is to showcase the progress we have made and help you get a sense of how you can leverage the next version of ColdFusion while you build powerful applications using ColdFusion. Whether you have been a part of the pre-release program or want to try out the public beta, this session is for you. We will covering various pillars of ColdFusion next around cloud integration across AWS and Azure, microservices and modernization of the platform itself. You will also be able to sign up for the pre-release if you haven't already at the end of the session.