I am releasing today a set of addons for ColdBox-Transfer interactivity:

  1. TransferConfigFactory.cfc : A factory cfc that produces transfer configuration objects based on ColdBox Datasource configurations. This is thanks to Tom de Manincor

  2. TDOBeanInjectorObserver.cfc : A transfer observer based on Brian Kotek's amazing TDOBeanInjectorObserver in his Coldspring Utilities project, used to create rich decorators by injecting them with dependencies from Coldspring and Lightwire. However, we had to take it a step further, so it can even inject dependencies from the ColdBox Cache.

You can download these tools from here. All you need to do to install them is drop them in the /coldbox/system/extras folder. This will create a transfer folder that holds these cfc's inside of the extras folder. That's it. Then you need to configure them via a coldspring.xml or a lightwire configuration object or manually (ohh brave one). The tools have also been added to the SVN and I will be adding a link to them from the extra downloads section of the website.

Transfer Config Factory

This object is used to create a transfer configuration object based on the datasource information found in the ColdBox configuration file. This idea is thanks to Tom de Manincor and his musings in ColdBox-ColdSpring-Transfer. This let's you maintain all of your application's configuration in one single location and not create a datasource.xml. It is meant to be used alongside coldspring but it can be used as a separate object too (You will have to do the wiring). Anyways, here is a sample coldspring declaration for this usage:

${Setting: TransferDSNAlias not found}

${Setting: TransferConfigPath not found}

${Setting: TransferDefinitionsPath not found}

As you can see, we first define the coldbox factory element and construct a datasource bean element with it. We then setup the transferConfigFactory.cfc as a coldspring factory bean. The last step is configuring the transfer factory. We send in a configuration bean and set it up as a call to our transfer config factory with the same parameters we are used to, except that for datasource we use the dsnBean element and have it referenced to the datasource that we want to use, in our case MyDSN, that we defined at the beginning. If you need a refresher on how the ColdBox Factory for IoC works, please read the following IoC Integration Guide. That's it. Simple as that, now you can define all your configurations via the coldbox configuration file and let coldspring do the heavy lifting.

TDOBeanInjectorObserver

This handy tools is based on Brian Kotek's original observer. I want to say thank you to Brian for his contributions and incredible code. Thanks Brian.

However, we have modified it to use ColdBox beanFactory plugin to do the autowiring for us. For those familiar with the ColdBox autowiring conventions, you can do autowiring via annotations using the cfproperty tag or via setter injection. Not only that, but you can use ColdSpring or Lightwire seamlessly, and to top it off, you can autowire objects from the ColdBox cache. Here is a sample of some cool autowire annotations:

As you can see from the code we have two dependencies marked by their types: ioc and ocm. The type of ioc means that this dependency must be injected from the ioc plugin (coldspring/lighwire) and the type of ocm means that the dependency must be injected from the ColdBox Cache. The scope attribute is also useful as you can define in which scope or pathed scope you would like this dependency injected. The default value is variables.

The theory behind this tool is to be able to very easily create rich decorators that can be injected with dependencies from the IoC container or the ColdBox Cache. It is a great way to have your objects be composed of other objects and utilities. So let's see the coldspring.xml, but first, please note that the instructions below are for ColdSpring 1.2 that enables the usage of the lazy-init property. For Coldpsring 1.0, you will have to do some more manual work. (More instructions found in the cfc's themselves).

beanFactory

true or false

onDIComplete

true or false

We first define the ColdBox Factory, then the beanFactory plugin we will use. We then define our Observer with some cool parameters:

  • Transfer : The transfer bean reference

  • ColdBoxBeanFactory : The beanFactory plugin we just defined

  • useSetterInjection : A boolean variable that enables or disabled setter injection in preference of annotations via cfproperty. If enabled, it will do cfproperty annotations first and then look for setters.

  • onDICompleteUDF : The name of the UDF to call in your decorators once they have been injected with their dependencies. The default value used is onDIComplete. This means that you create a method in your decorators called onDIComplete or whatever you like and when the bean factory injects the dependencies, it will call this method afterwards. You can use this to do configuration or object setup.

  • debugMode : This boolean variable is part of the bean factory plugin. If set to true, it will log to the logging facilities all the interactions when trying to autowire the objects.

That's it folks. Once application starts up, coldspring will create and register this observer for you. So when transfer objects are created and have autowire dependencies, they will be wired up.