Rumor Starter? ColdFusion Builder === Aptana Studio

Yes, yes. We all know by now that ColdFusion Builder (CFB) and ColdFusion 9 (CF9) have been released into the wild as public betas. This post isn't about these applications or a tutorial on using either or both. Rather, this is a post to pose a potentially inappropriate or ill-timed question: Is Adobe readying to buy Aptana? Or, is some sort of business merger coming or is there a partnership already in place?

Why am I throwing this out there? Well, there are a few things that have caught my attention over the past week or so and, especially, today after checking out CFB.

My conspiracy theory got rolling just after Aptana released a new version of Studio (1.5). While that doesn't seem conspiracy-worthy per se, I found it interesting that Aptana decided to essentially dump two popular plugins (iPhone and Nokia WRT) without so much as a peep. Okay, they eventually announced the iPhone plugin was deprecated, which I think was a bad idea, but nothing on Nokia ... still.

Things got even more suspicious in my little mind this morning with the release of CFB. I downloaded, installed, and launched CFB this morning to give it a once-over.

Here's what I found so interesting*:

The same 'File' view in Aptana is in CFB—same features, matching icons, etc.
A similar HTML project option ('Existing Hosted Site') and the same base 'Project Files' as Aptana: HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Lexer, etc. (they also use identical icons for the file types, identical preferences, and the like).
When you create an HTML file, it is exactly like Aptana Studio. Same colorization, same template, etc. Same freaking editor, so far as I can tell
The HTML, JavaScript, and CSS preferences editor mirror that of Aptana Studio
Seemingly identical JavaScript, CSS and HTML toolbars as Aptana
Aptana tool bar options in CFB for Piano Keys in your editor (alternating background colors for each line), which I love, and the same tool bar button enabling the view of whitespace.
And the capper: You can import the same (well almost all of them) Ajax libraries into your CFB project JUST like in Aptana

I want to stress, these commonalities are mostly surface level items and may be nothing but a series of coincidences between the two programs. Maybe Adobe is just licensing (or bought) the rights to the Aptana HTML, JavaScript and CSS editors so as not to reinvent the wheel. Certainly, that would be smart since Aptana has built very good editors for these file types.

Perhaps it's something more. There's been a pro-ColdFusion groundswell within the Aptana user base for some time, with a wide range of forum posts and feature requests for ColdFusion support within Aptana Studio. Considering that Aptana has already acquired existing IDEs for integration into Studio, including support for Rails (the former RadRails IDE) and Python (the former PyDev IDE), further mergers and changes seem more inevitable than not.

In addition to the incorporating of RadRails and PyDev, Aptana has created their own, robust, PHP IDE/plugin to go along with their superb HTML, JavaScript and CSS editors (oh, and there's a plugin for HTML/Ajax AIR development, too).

Taking that base of Aptana Studio and adding ColdFusion to it would make for one masterful, all-encompassing, web development IDE. And, if I were Adobe, that may just be a sweet set of tools I'd like to have in my company's arsenal.

Of course, this is probably just the conspiracy theorist in me running amok, but, a guy can dream of a unified, streamlined, powerful, all-in-one IDE for web development :)!!

If anyone else out there is interested, check it out for yourself and let me know what you think.

*All comparisons were done between CFB (beta 1), Aptana Studio Stand-Alone 1.5, and Eclipse 3.5 (the 'version' for J2EE Developers). I included Eclipse 3.5 to see what exists within the base of the Eclipse IDE relative to what CFB and Aptana Studio do/use.

Comments

Craig Kaminsky

@anon: thanks for that! I did dig into the install dir and saw the Aptana stuff.

@brian: I knew there was something else that I meant to add in. Good call!!

@webrat: I think you're right abut the deal (and no buyout), especially since Aptana got US $8 mil in additional funding yesterday. I guess what I found so interesting about it all was more the choice of Aptana, as opposed to other, open-source options (Eclipse Web Tools, etc.). Don't get me wrong, I'm VERY glad they chose Aptana since I use it daily and don't have to learn any other special steps for CFB.

webRat

I just think it's a deal with Aptana, not a buyout.

Brian Deitte

Aptana was founded by Paul Colton, the guy who started Live Software. This was the company that created JRun and cfanywhere.

Anonymous

I can confirm for absolute sure that CF Builder is based on Aptana, but I have no idea on your other ideas haha. If you look in CF Builder's install directories you'll quickly find all the Aptana Jar files. Personally, I think this was a smart move overall but hopefully they work out some of the kinks in it all. I'm thinking they just made a deal to build an Aptana based product.

Your thoughts are a lot more fun though.

ColdBox Series Part IIb - Getting Comfortable with Conventions

This post, the second in an on-going ColdBox series, takes a look at the conventions used by ColdBox to bring an application to life. It's more a general overview of the file structure and the purpose of various files/folders than code and samples, which comes in the next post ... really!

ColdBox, like many web application frameworks, uses the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture pattern to separate application tasks into those three components types in its name. In brief, the Model is your business logic, the View is the presentation, and the Controller is, basically, a traffic cop, telling everyone where to go and what to do.

However, unlike a number of other web application frameworks, ColdBox enforces "convention over configuration". This convention-based approach is really just a fancy way of saying you have to put your files in certain places based on the file's specific type or function.

I've grown increasingly fond of these convention-based frameworks, having used them for projects built with Ruby on Rails and CakePHP. There's a decent amount of active debate over frameworks and how they set about accomplishing application tasks but there's something about the more rigid structure of convention-based systems that just works for me. Ultimately, I intrinsically know where everything is ... and I like that!

Prior to delving into the framework itself, I think its a good idea to step back a bit and get a sense of the lay of the land, as it were. It's especially helpful with conventions-based frameworks, like ColdBox. In that vein, following is a screen shot of the folder structure for ColdBox's default application skeleton. I'll note the purpose of each folder following the screen shot (below).

Mini-tangent: Before I get into the directory structure, I would highly recommend taking a few minutes to read, at least, two sections of the ColdBox docs:
General Overview
Request Lifecycle

Application Skeleton File Structure

Application Files (in root directory)

Application_noinheritance.cfc—the main application file, it does not extend the system's coldbox object.
Application.cfc—the main application file, extends the system's coldbox object
build.properties—this is for using Ant scripts, you can most likely just dump these (unless you plan to run Ant scripts.
build.xml—same as above, it's for Ant scripts.
coldboxproxy.cfc—this file is called and used when your ColdBox application is used as a model framework (from an Ajax or Flex front-end, for example)
favicon.ico
index.cfm—a placeholder file, all action happens in the Application.cfc
readme.txt
robots.txt—a base robots file for search engine spiders, it keeps the search engines from indexing content we don't want it to see.

Application Folders

config—this holds configuration files (settings, not logic) for your app. There's typically little work to do here (DSNs, etc.) ... unless you're using things like ColdSpring, Transfer, or Lightwire.
handlers—this holds the controllers (CFCs) of our application. They receive instructions from the system and control the application (get data, show the data, etc.).
includes—items you will include in your application, such as, images, css, etc.^
interceptors—an interceptor does what it name implies: it intercepts the processing of a request and performs its action, adding functionality to the request (like enforcing security for part of your application). They also act as broadcasters/listeners, which can really extend your application ... but that's beyond our scope right now!*
layout—your layout (page) templates, they show content generated in the views in the browser (phone, etc.).
logs—a location for ColdBox to store log files.*
model—business logic objects (beans, DAOs, gateways, and the like) are stored in this folder.
plugins—custom plugin location.*
test—test scripts.*
views—all view files, these generate our content, which will appear, most often, in our layout files.

*optional
^optional but you really should have it.

Tomorrow or Wednesday, I am going to add the next post in the ColdBox series. That post will end with a custom layout file for the project's website. We'll start with the layout file generated by the application skeleton and turn it into our own. Along the way, we'll briefly touch on event handlers and models but, mostly, we'll work with layouts, views, and viewlets.

Comments

Craig Kaminsky

I did have to abandon it last year ... got a full-time contract and just have not had time to pick it back up (we're using CF but not ColdBox). I do hope to pick it back up in a month or two, as some time is freeing up and I'm hoping to get back to blogging more regularly.

Education media Clearinghouse

Did you abandon this series? Any more on coldbox?

Craig Kaminsky

@greg: I was going to mention reconfiguring the configuration but I'm so damned long-winded anyway, I decided to bag it. Thanks for mentioning that!!

@anon: glad to hear your digging the MVC structure with Fusebox (great framework, too). When you get 'bored' checkout CakePHP, too. Pretty nice PHP framework.

Anonymous

Thanks for the introduction to Coldbox - looks interesting. I certainly know what you mean about knowing where everything is - since I started using Fusebox with an MVC structure for both my Coldfusion and Php development many, many issues I used to fact at the beginning of projects just disappeared.

Hope I have time to look over CB one of these days.

gfranklin

One of the first things I learned about Coldbox when I fired it up and played with it is that you can override the conventions for folder locations if necessary.

The optional (commented-out) <Conventions> tag around line 135 of coldbox.xml.cfm is where that occurs. So, while Coldbox enforces "convention over configuration", you can still tell Coldbox where all of these "conventional" places are, and name them whatever you want.

(note: I find out about your new blog posts via Twitter. Keep those tweets comin'!).

Rumor Starter? ColdFusion Builder === Aptana Studio

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