Raymond Camden's Blog Rss

Announcing CFAM - ColdFusion Administrator Mobile

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Posted in ColdFusion | Posted on 07-28-2010 | 3,637 views

So Todd Sharp and I have been dropping hints over Twitter the last few days about a secret project. Today at CFUNITED I showed it off for the first time. CFAM, or ColdFusion Administrator Mobile, is a mobile optimized version of the ColdFusion Administrator. Imagine that you're at a bar. Your client calls to tell you the site is down. You open the site with your mobile device and confirm that - yes - the site is down. It would be helpful to be able to hit up the CF Admin and check various things to diagnose what the problem is. CFAM provides a nice mobile optimized version of the CF Administrator focused on the more common tasks you may do while debugging. Features include:

  • List DSNs and provide a verification button
  • Enable/Disable Trusted Cache and allow you to clear it
  • Enable/Disable Server Monitor and view settings
  • Tail Logs
  • View email in the Undelivered folder and respool it
  • And much more more

This is still a work in progress so we aren't quite ready to release it, but here are some screen shots to give you an idea. This is built in jQTouch and runs fine on the Android or iPhone.

FYI - that chart up there is "live" - it updates every 4 seconds. You can also watch a video of the app in action here. Note that this is a bit out of date from what is currently supported.

This will be free, open source, and hosted up on RIAForge. It is written for ColdFusion 901.

Comments

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andy matthews said on 07-28-2010 at 3:52 PM #
DAMN DUDE! This would make a CF server administrator look like a BADASS! You and Todd do some great work.
Henry Ho said on 07-28-2010 at 3:54 PM #
Sweeeet~ can it work over https?
Rachel Luxemburg said on 07-28-2010 at 3:58 PM #
awesomeness!!
Tom Jenkins said on 07-28-2010 at 4:32 PM #
Absolutely awesome!
shakti said on 07-28-2010 at 4:49 PM #
BRAVO! that is awesome. cant wait to get it once its launched.
Gary Funk said on 07-28-2010 at 5:14 PM #
Dear Ray,

I love you.

Gary
James Edmunds said on 07-28-2010 at 8:16 PM #
Coolest because it is a great CF tool. No, coolest because it is a nifty jQTouch project. No, coolest because it is a great CF tool. No, coolest because it is a nifty jQTouch project, No...
Akbarsait said on 07-28-2010 at 8:34 PM #
Awesome and Handy one for every CF developer. Looking forward for it's release!
Ryan Vikander said on 07-29-2010 at 6:18 AM #
Will this run pre-2.* on Android phones? Does it use any flash?
Raymond Camden said on 07-29-2010 at 6:46 AM #
To all: Thanks!

To Henry and Ryan: This is ONLY html/js, so it should run fine over https and older Droid phones.
Pedro Morin said on 07-29-2010 at 7:19 AM #
You guys are killing me, the one excuse I had was "Sorry, I'm not in front of my computer" ... now that won't work anymore once word breaks about this app!

J/k guys, great idea, can't wait to start using it on my Droid!
Louis said on 07-29-2010 at 7:52 AM #
Nice one, will it support CF8 ?
Raymond Camden said on 07-29-2010 at 7:55 AM #
Right now it only supports 901. The 901 part is -very- small (a for in loop), the 9 part is the utility CFCs. It could be ported to 8. I'm not sure I'd be in favor of that (for the 'release version'), but maybe Todd and I could be convinced.
andy matthews said on 07-29-2010 at 8:12 AM #
If it's such a small portion of the code requiring 9.01 then I'd heartily recommend altering it so that CF8 users can take advantage of this.

I made a similar decision when I wrote foursquareCFC. Rather than doing the whole thing in script (for the practice) and require people to have CF9, I made the decision to write it in tags. I was a little bummed, but I think it was the right call.
Raymond Camden said on 07-29-2010 at 8:21 AM #
The 901 portion is small. The 9 portion is not quite as small. It's only 2-3 CFCs though.
andy matthews said on 07-29-2010 at 9:30 AM #
Roger. I'd be happy to help you rewrite if you like. Up to you though. Lots of people are on 9 and this could be a good incentive for people to migrate from 8, or 5 (cough, cough).
Kevin Benore said on 07-29-2010 at 11:29 AM #
I vote for 8 as well! Please, please, please. (Regaining my dignity now).
Aaron West said on 07-30-2010 at 3:20 PM #
Ray/Todd, very nice work here. I can't wait to download this once it's up on riaforge.
Craig M. Rosenblum said on 08-02-2010 at 1:45 PM #
I recommend moving to cf8 as well. Not all of us have control or vote power to recommend cf9.

Looks like a sweet app.

One main question though, should there be security limitations, so that while you may want to allow some personnel to view performance stats, they should have limits as to what they can do, such as garbage collection etc.

Just a thought...nice work btw!
Raymond Camden said on 08-02-2010 at 1:52 PM #
It uses the Admin API, so if you do not give a user access to something, they will get an error.
Raymond Camden said on 08-10-2010 at 8:28 AM #
Guys - sorry about this. I posted the code last night and forgot to tell yall.

http://cfam.riaforge.org

Note - the requirements say 901. That's not myself or Todd saying you guys can't mod it for 8 (well, it's OS, you can mod it at will, what I mean is, it doesn't mean we are OPPOSED to CF8 support), it just means that _right now_, it only works in 901.

Anyway - enjoy - and be sure to note the iPhone warning.
Kevin Benore said on 08-11-2010 at 8:55 AM #
On the iPhone bug, does that mean you must re-authenticate on every page view or it's not lasting past X minutes/hours.

As far as the version 8 question, you said "but maybe Todd and I could be convinced". Given the last comment post, does this means you'd rather not but encourage anyone who wants to give it a go?

I know that every time a new version comes out, it gets lots of love by the early adopters ... but unfortunately for some of us corporate users ... adoption rates move slower (especially those of us no longer in the 2-year maintenance window). So we are still still using 8 for now, but it is wonderful to see what 9.x can do!
Raymond Camden said on 08-11-2010 at 9:08 AM #
iPhone: The issue I saw was that calls to the Admin API were failing because the app "lost" it's access to the Admin API. This should not happen, and does not happen on any other platform. It isn't a cookie issue - you stay logged into the main app.

version8: I'm just opposed to using an older version of CF. But I think 8 isn't too bad. Consider me "Not happy" but OK with CF8 support. I believe Todd is as well.

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