Coolskool : Kola Oyedeji's Cool Technology Blog

What ColdFusion tools do you want?

posted Thursday, 26 April 2007

What ColdFusion tools do you want?

Following on from my last post discussing Java tools support and whether it made working in Java more productive , I'd thought I would point out some of the tools that are missing from the ColdFusion landscape. ColdFusion has matured quite a bit since CFMX, we now have unit testing frameworks, debuggers and an open source IDE .
But there are still a number of tools missing which are availble in Java which I would love to see.

Top of my list is code review tools - I'm yet to look fully into whether I can utilise checkstyle for ColdFusion. I could kill for an automated ColdFusion code review tool, one that I could integrate into a build process.

Rules engine - Typically quite expensive although it should be possible to wrap something like Drools up in a ColdFusion API.

Code coverage tools - I'm not one of those people who obsesses over reaching the magical figure of 100% code coverage, but for those that are, something similar to Clover would be useful.

UML cfc generator - Enterprise architect allows generation of code from a UML diagram for both Java and C#. Does anyone have
an XMI UML to CFC converter. One that supported round-tripping as well would be ace! :)

Any more?

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1. markd left...
Thursday, 26 April 2007 8:01 pm :: http://www.markdrew.co.uk

I hate you Kola, you have given away CFEclipse 2.0 and CFEclipse 3.0 roadmaps ;)


2. Randolph left...
Thursday, 26 April 2007 9:29 pm

I'd love a tool simliar to a JavaDoc generator for CFCs where the generated docs are simple HTML files that I could read without a ColdFusion engine.


3. James Holmes left...
Friday, 27 April 2007 4:41 am :: http://www.bifrost.com.au/blog/

@Randolf - Spike's CFCDoc could be modified to write out content to the filesystem to give you the Javadoc-like documentation you are after:

http://www.spike.org.uk/projects/cfcdoc/index.cfm


4. Sean Corfield left...
Friday, 27 April 2007 7:25 am :: http://corfield.org/

Refactoring. Even if it was just variable / function renaming. But it's very, very hard with a dynamic language (especially since you can dynamically inject methods and construct arbitrary variable names dynamically).


5. RTJ left...
Friday, 27 April 2007 2:44 pm :: http://www.mayoclinic.com

Simular to the cfc generation from UML. A tool to take a variety of the framework config files (coldSpring, ModelGlue...) and turn them into UML or at least some visual flow chart (uml, flex, pdf...). Like Flex Builder for frameworks. Heck, I'd even pay for it.


6. markd left...
Friday, 27 April 2007 2:56 pm :: http://www.markdrew.co.uk

@RTJ: How much? ;) Oh.. if you are going to cfObjective, keep your eyes and ears open for maybe an announcement I might (or might not) be making :P