Dan Mackey On ColdFusion Development

Following on from my last post I have released Version 1 of my ColdFusion HTML Diff Custom Tag, CFX_CompareHTML.

When we wrote Teamwork Project Manager one of my jobs was to compare versions of Notebooks which were marked up using HTML.

I did lots of searching and found Diff.cfc which did a line for line comparison but did not represent the changes in HTML format, it only output the differences line-by-line with all the HTML viewable.

Diff.cfc is perfect for text or source code but we needed something a little bit more user-friendly.

A great start on this was DaisyDiff,  a Java library that diffs (compares) HTML files.

The problem with this was that I had to use CFExecute and some timeouts, writing to the drive etc to get some results. It soon became a nightmare on large files so I decided the best thing to do was to build a CFX tag around the main components of DaisyDiff.

CFX_CompareHTML was born.

You can call the tag using :

<cfx_CompareHTML left="Some HTML content" right="Some more HTML Content">

The tag can be downloaded from here :

DOWNLOAD CFX_COMPAREHTML

I have a small project that I am working on that needs a Java custom tag that I'm writing. I need this running on ColdFusion 7/8 and Railo 3.

Adding the CFX to CF is fine and I had no problems, except that its laborious. Having to place the file in the right folder, adding that folder to the Java Classpath and restarting CF Application Server.

Railo is a little different. Infact, its a bit easier once you know.

Everytime Railo starts up it runs through the Railo/lib/ folder and adds all JAR files to the Class Path, saving you the hassle of adding them manually.

You still have to add the CFX tag using the Administrator though.

BTW : Railo 3 Community Administrator doesnt have a CFX option in the menu anymore (V2.0 had it) but you can call the page directly using: