I just added a small but extremely useful tool to ajaxCFC: error trapping. When working with ajax applications something it’s hard to debug server side errors; of course, all the information travels asynchronously and if the server errors out, your call back function never gets triggered… well, you know there’s a problem, but what is it?

I had two methods of debugging:
1) check the server logs…
2) open an http header packet sniffer, check the method being calls, and emulate a direct call to get the output.

Therefore, I decided to add an error trapping to the server side and send the error back to the browser in an alert box. Now if you break anything in the server side you will immediately see the error message. Unfortunately, cfcatch doesn’t provide some useful information that cferror does, but it’s definitely extremely helpful.

If you have any more suggestions to make this framework as handy and useful as possible to the CF community, please do not hesitate to post a comment or email me directly.

I added two simple examples of ajaxCFC:

Echo example sends a string to the server, which just echoes it back to JavaScript and gets appended in a Div.

Complex object example uses the exact same code as echo, but this time it seamlessly receives a complex object from JavaScript and echoes it back. I used sDumper.js to dump the object into screen.

The component is extremely simple, all you have to do is extend ajax.cfc and you’re in business.
 

After dealing with cfajax I decided to write my own AJAX component. Don’t get me wrong, I like cfajax and it worked great for a while. I even wrote two articles about CF+AJAX, but I wanted something better (article 1, article 2)

CFAJAX has some neat features like using hints to automate some processes, but unfortunately, they’re useless to me.

ajaxCFC is component based and extremely easy to expand. It also automatically and painlessly maps all JS strings, arrays, or objects to ColdFusion so there is no need for wddx or json.

ajaxCFC permits both asynchronous (default) or synchronous modes. Many may argue that it defeats the purpose, but I will post some examples soon that show how useful and necessary is to send synchronous packets.

You can download the framework and some examples through the projects page. Documentation will come soon.

As usual, comments are welcomed.

I’m pleased to inform that the second part of my AJAX article was release yesterday. Check is out at

http://coldfusion.sys-con.com/read/154244.htm

Comments are welcomed.

Cheers

This makes reference to the same quick docs from Macromedia, but it’s made with cfajax and it’s way faster

 
http://www.techfeed.net/cfQuickDocs/

I just started posting articles at the CFDJ. I'll be linking those articles here each time they come out.

Check out this introduction to AJAX. I explain step by step how to set it up.

 http://coldfusion.sys-con.com/read/138966.htm