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I read a thread about some user wanting to make the switch to CF Eclipse (CFE) and wanted a case for switching. Now, I have been using CF Studio and HomeSite since ' 97 and I can truthfully say that it changed my life. It is truly a masterpiece of software engineering and to it's credit it still being used as the day in day work horse html/code/text editor for legions and people (Myself included) have hacked/extended it to write ASP, ASP.NET , PHP, Python,etc .. Even Macrome... err..I mean Adobe provides tag library updates for it even though it was dropped from their product line some 5 years ago.
Now, I never really liked DW (At the same time I never really liked the Rolling Stones either... I know that they are a great band but they never did it for me).. and I have avoided it for years (until V 8.0) for one simple reason: No short cut keys for snippets. I have short cuts for everything and can literally write an app and only type in the variables. I just started using DW for its CSS and Xhtml formatting abilities.
I never thought I would ever drop CF Studio as my primary web-coding tool. It is like my favorite pair of jeans that never wears out.. But that has changed and even I am surprised that a ColdFusion authoring tool could ever pull me away from CF Studio.....
Even though I have only been using it for about two weeks CF Eclipse (CFE) amazes me more and more every day. I am absolutely in love with CFE and I will tell you why.
First, in order to get the most out of CFE you really need mess around with it to see what all its features do and you most definitely need to tweak it.
You will want to add the Adobe CF RDS Plug-ins and make use of the Dictionary View, Outline and RDS Data and File View, Services Browser and Snippet Tree View. You can access these in the Window >> Show View > Other (if not listed).
I have broken the guide into 3 Flash presentations
How to install CFE and the Adobe CF RDS Plug-ins . This assumes that you have unziped the file to a directory and have it up and running
How to set up CFE and add all the ColdFusion related features so you can utilize it to it's fullest. I am sure that this is incomplete as I have only been using it for two weeks.
And lastly, a list of the features that make CFE and eclipse itself a great IDE.
What these things do:
Dictionary view:
This allows you to browse CF tags and functions alphabetically or by function (Much like the CF Studio’s expression builder.
Double click on a tag or function and it will give you a dialog so you can fill in the variables (like edit tag).
Right click on a tag or function and it will allow you to view the help for that item on cfdocs.org (DW’s help is horrible IMHO)
Outline View:
Allows you to jump to tags and functions in the document like CF studio’s and DW’s Tag view.
Component Explorer: This is like the CFC Browser in DW
This scans server and lists all the CFC’s and web services as well as their methods, properties and arguments. You can right click on a method and it allows you to insert the code needed to a call to that method via CFInvoke or createObject
Like so:
<cfinvoke
component="comps.workspaceBean"
method="getAmt"
returnVariable="workspaceBean" >
</cfinvoke>
createObject("component", " comps.workspaceBean").getAmt();
Now the Adobe RDS Plug-ins:outoup
RDS Dataview:
This allows you to Browse all the tables for all the data sources on the server. You can test Queries in the Query view.
Visual Query Builder
It has a Visual Query Builder that allows you to add cfqueryparams to your query. A very nice feature.
And if you right click on a table there is a feature under ColdFusion wizards called Create CFC. This thing is golden. It creates all the functions for CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete Records)
As well as Active Records, DOA, web services, flex data services etc. A real time saver.
Other Features:
Built in Version management
Edit Tags
Variables dropdown menu
Programmable Snippets
Inline help
Code completion
Jump to end tag
Code Folding
Problems Bar
Bookmarks
Fast view
Methods View
Search
Short Cut keys for common tasks
Tool bars
Resources:
My Snippets. Includes all of the following Cold Fusion Variables
CFCATCH_variables
CFDIRECTORY_Query_Columns
CFERROR_Request_Variables
CFERROR_Validation_Variables
CFFILE_Upload_Variables
CFFTP_ListDir_Variables
CFFTP_StopOnError_Variables
CFHTTP_GET_Variables
CFPOP_Query_Columns
CFREGISTRY_Query_Columns
CFSEARCH_Query_Columns
CFSTOREDPROC_Query_Columns
CGI_Variables
Client_Variables
ColdFusion_Query_Attributes
ColdFusion_Server_Variables
Eclipse RDS Support from .danvega.org t http://www.danvega.org/blog/index.cfm/2006/7/28/Eclipse-RDS-Support
ColdFusion FlexBuilder Extensions zip filehttp://www.cfreport.org/downloads/CF_FB_Extensions.zip
cfeclipse.org http://www.cfeclipse.org/
Eclipse downloads http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
