Spectra Tips and Tricks

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Spectra Tips and Tricks

• John Fendrick, President and CTO
• Kent Lynch
• Woodbourne Solutions, Inc

2
Cold Fusion and Spectra

• Spectra is an application that runs under Cold
  Fusion 4.5 and above on Solaris and NT
• Need advanced securities option
• Need a real database (LDAP on Solaris)
• Need a lot of CPU
• Need patience
• Desire a background in OOP

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Spectra Structure

• C/allaire/spectra/ handlers, customtags, PLP,
  rules, collections, database, pagetemplates
• Sub level by project for each system, webtop
• C/inetpub/wwwroot/allaire/spectra mediastore,
  webtop, documentation

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Spectra Change your thinking

• Design Phase
• Plan for common functions (Methods)
• Plan for functions with steps (PLPs)
• Plan for automation (Rules)
• Plan for nested tags (Customtags)

• Slower start but worth it
• Go in Handlers directory by project
• Go in PLP directory methods get created
• Go in rules, database, or customtags
• Go in customtags

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Internal vs. External Tables

• Decided on an object level
• Internal
• for apps built from ground-up in Spectra that do
  not need to share data
• for content thats used and maintained on the
  website
• for objects that requires little if any sorting
  for display.
• External
• re-using corporate data
• faster access
• more flexible data manipulation

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Nomenclature Methods Handlers

• Methods
• All actions that can be performed on a
  ContentObject are called methods.
• Each method has an associated label/name
  (create, display, delete etc)
• And each method has an associated handler
  (create_object.cfm, displayall.cfm,
  deletearticle.cfm etc)
• You create one method for each action.

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Nomenclature Methods Handlers

• Handlers
• The actual template with ColdFusion code.
• Saved in
• \allaire\spectra\handlers\project\object\
• create_object.cfm,
• displayall.cfm,
• deletearticle.cfm etc

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Custom Create Handler

• By the time the server processes the Create
  Handler, Spectra has already created the content
  item.
• You therefore will always have access to the
  objectID it just created (cfa_handler tag is used
  for this purpose)
• For this reason, the Create method is a
  misnomer a better description for it would be an
  initializer.
• Never place a cfa_contentobjectcreate tag on a
  handler whose method is called create.

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Custom Display Handler

• ltcfa_handler objectgt
• You can give the object attribute any value.
• This gives developers a scope for all the
  properties of the content item.
• If you dont create a Display handler spectra
  ships with a default display method and handler.

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Custom Edit Handler

• Basically a form submit
• More advanced a PLP (process logic path).
• Note, the returnto form field.
• On a Spectra site, you can call the any handler
  from any page.
• Update both the internal (Spectra) database and
  the external database table.

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Custom Delete Handler

• If your handlers Method is called delete
• by the time the server processes the page the
  content item is already deleted from Spectra.
• All thats left is to delete from the external
  table.
• Therefore never place a cfa_contentobjectdelete
  tag on the handler.
• If your handlers Method is not named delete
• place the cfa_contentobjectdelete tag
• then delete from the external table.

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Invoking A Method

• Extremely simple and powerful.
• Only one tag required
• ltcfa_contentobject
• method
• objectid
• datasourcegt

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Tips 1 General Lessons

• This will be a big undertaking more moving
  parts like databases, collections, scopes
• Distributed code leads to larger headaches if you
  have never done OOP
• This is a Version 1 product
• Longer to setup and program
• Good content management tool
• No E-commerce despite the hype
• More expensive than just Cold Fusion to scale
• Ver. 1 Better suited for small / medium sized
  sites

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Tip 2 Before You Start

• Know your resources Allaire.com/developer/spectrar
  eferencedesk/ techdocs.cfm
• Tutorials on Handlers, Pages, Containers
• Papers on Tips and Tricks
• Migrate the cfaobjects and userdirectory
  databases
• Modify the HKEY-Local-Software-Allaire-Customtags
• Configure Cold Fusion with more cache

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Tip 3 Managing the Project

• Plan all the objects
• Repetitive Functions need Properties (the data)
  and Methods (what you do with the data)
• Cfaobjects holds the mappings and list of
  Properties and Methods but code is in the files
• Create, edit, and delete are used by default if
  you create new ones then rename yours
• Initialize the application but get the templates
  set prior to entering data

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Tip 4 Managing the Project

• Build and test one object at a time
• Put reusable code in customtags
• Test each object
• Personalize last but plan ahead
• Only use the minimum number of page containers
• Keep complex navigation simple
• Cache at the container level unless the page is
  all static
• Page overrides the container

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Questions