Today I posted on Twitter that I would need to re-evaluate my friendship with anyone who couldn't make it to cf.Objective(). But alright alright... I'll still be your friend, even if you don't make it to cf.Objective. But you should... I just finished working up my schedule, and I'm once again excited to attend a conference. I've been "meaning to attend MAX again" for years, but the last few times I've been it's seemed more a social event, and less an "inspire me to build great things" event. But I still remember hanging out with Jared, Sean, Simeon, and "the rest of the gang" after the first cf.Objective() conference I attended.

After that first cf.Objective() conference is when I first started digging deep into OO development, and when I feel I really started becoming a "programmer" and not just a "developer". The last few years have been very stagnant for me, since I've spent almost all of my time maintaining and attempting to improve or refactor legacy applications. Well it's time to throw my hat back in the ring and go get some smarts.

So here's a list of everything I'm currently set to attend at cf.Objective(). If you're able to make it, please find me and say hello.

• Undocumented and Off Script: ColdFusion & Ehcache
• Code Deployment Shouldn't Only Be FTP - Using ANT to Automate Your Build Process
• ColdBox Platform 3.0
• Forms That Don't Suck (Quick, Easy, & Clean Forms and Data)
• Refactoring a Legacy Application to an MVC Framework
• Designing for Scalability in ColdFusion
• Write a Test Once; Repeat Forever – You Don't Have to Be a Unit Testing Guru
• Replace Your Iron with a Cloud
• Holistic Program Quality and Technical Debt
• Database Performance Tuning
• Pinpointing and Resolving ColdFusion Performance Issues
• Application Intrusion, Detection and Tracking
• Just Mock It! : Leveraging Mock Objects
• AOP For You and Me
• Intro to AngularJS, JavaScript Done Right

At the time that I'm writing this there are still 8 sessions still listed as TBA, so things may change. However, you can already see that there is an extremely diverse range of topics, from unit testing, to JavaScript frameworks, and automated deployment.

Check out the schedule and then register to get your own heavy dose of awesomeness.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

I have a fairly large Mura installation, with a good number of sites on it. I have some customizations that I'd like to be pushed out across all of the sites in my installation. For example, I've changed the way the dspPrimaryNav function works, so that I can prevent child pages from being displayed. Unfortunately, as flexible and customizable as Mura is, there is no good to make global changes to the `contentRenderer.cfc` without losing those changes everytime you perform an update to your core files.

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I had a need to figure out the next billing date after today, based on a known start date and billing interval. Here's the function I came up with to make it happen.

<cffunction name="getNextBilling" access="public" output="false" returntype="date" >
    <cfargument 
        name="StartDate" 
        type="date" 
        required="true" 
        hint="The date the billing started" 
    />
    <cfargument 
        name="BillingInterval" 
        type="numeric" 
        required="true" 
        hint="The number of units for the billing. For example, 
            if something is billed every 90 days, this value will be 90" 
    />
    <cfargument 
        name="IntervalUnit" 
        type="string" 
        default="d" 
        required="false" 
        hint="The date part for the billing interval. This is the 
            CF datepart, such as 'd', 'm', 'yyyy', etc. The default is 'd'." 
    />

    <cfset var TimeFromStart = DateDiff(Arguments.IntervalUnit, StartDate, Now()) />

    <cfreturn DateAdd(Arguments.IntervalUnit, TimeFromStart + Arguments.BillingInterval - (TimeFromStart MOD Arguments.BillingInterval), Arguments.Startdate) />

</cffunction>

Let me know if you spot a problem with the solution, or have suggestions for improvement.

It's horribly annoying trying to find a file on your file system when it's buried folders deep in your project, on who knows which hard drive. In an effort to make this easier I scoured the interwebs for you, and found a solution.

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AJAX: The panacea for all of your Web 2.0 problems...

Well not really... AJAX can sometimes cause more problems than it solves. Especially if you don't have a good handle on exactly what it is you're doing with it. The AJAX frameworks available today are large and daunting, and can be extremely intimidating.

ColdFusion, sticking with its "make hard thing easier" mantra, has done a lot of work to make it easy to incorporate AJAX functionality into your sites. Unfortunately, this requires a little training as well :-)

To get you started, I'm happy to announce the release of ColdFusion 9: AJAX Controls and Techniques.

This course will take you through all of the basics of using AJAX controls and techniques in ColdFusion 9 (is that a descriptive title or what!?)

After watching this course, you'll come away with the following nuggets of wisdom:

• Manipulating and securing container contents
• Debugging AJAX behaviors
• Building UI elements such as accordions and border layouts
• Using rich prompts with cfmessagebox
• Understanding advanced cffileupload
• Sorting and grouping data in grids
• Binding data to form fields
• Creating a map with markers

I hope you enjoy the new title, and let me know if you have any questions. I'll be watching the comments :-).