Building ColdFusion And AngularJS Applications

1. Building ColdFusion and
AngularJS Applications
Mike Collins
SupportObjective
CFSummit
October 2014

2. Today’s Agenda
Walkthrough Requirements for a CF AngularJS
Application
Build our ColdFusion REST Server side
 Building the API
 Testing the API
Build AngularJS the Client side
Intro to AngularJS
Core AngularJS features
Build and Demo AngularJS using CF REST
Wrap up

3. Our Project Requirements
Player Registration Application
– New Player Registration
– Player Manager
– ColdFusion 11 Server Side
– AngularJS 1.3 Client Side
– Use SQL DB to store data
– Use REST API with JSON

4. Client-side and Server-side
FRONTEND BACKEND
Angular Clients
JSON
JSON
REST API to receive
Use $http service to and deliver JSON
call backend REST
API

5. Team Development Approach
• The Client-side team and Server-Side team met and
decided on an API
• Parallel independent development
• The Client side will use AngularJS ngMock to mock
server-side communication until server side is ready
• Server-side can test the REST API using cfhttp or
jMeter to test until the client side is ready

6. Building the ColdFusion
REST based Server Side

7. ColdFusion Server Side Features
• What does CF bring to the server side
• ColdFusion RESTFUL Features
• Provide your applications dynamic pages
• Backend Integration to JDBC, LDAP, Web
Services, Email, PDF Services, JSON
• Improve Security with encrypted request tokens
• Seed applications with initial loading of data
• Dynamically build AngularJS apps with CF

8. ColdFusion RESTful Features
• New feature added in CF10
• Ability to create REST services by defining certain
attributes in the tags
– cfcomponent
– cffuntion
– cfargument
• RESTful Function Signatures
• Supports JSON and XML serialization/deserialization
• Client applications can consume REST services by
issuing HTTP/HTTPS requests format
• Also - other CF REST options exist such as TAFFY

9. Creating a CF REST Component
1. Define CFC as REST and define a restpath attribute
<cfcomponent rest="true" restpath="playerService">
2. Define REST function 3. Define REST
<cffunction
name="getPlayer"
access="remote“
httpmethod="GET“
restpath="getPlayer/{playerID}"
returntype="any"
produces="application/json">
function arguments
<cfargument
name="playerID“
required="true"
restargsource="Path"
type="numeric"/ >

10. Understanding RestArgPath
• CFFunction aguments can be retrieved from
multiple places
• Path, Query String, Form, Cookie, Header
<cfargument
name="playerID“
required="true"
restargsource="Path"
type="numeric"/ >

11. REST Component Registration
• Need to register your REST CFCs in CFAdmin
• Using 2 new settings in Application.cfc
– <cfset this.restsettings.cfclocation = “./, ./rest">
– <cfset this.restsettings.skipcfcwitherror = true>

12. Processing REST Requests
• /Rest is a new servlet mapping in web.xml
• How REST requests are processed with
Application.cfc
Method Processed
OnRequestStart Yes
OnRequest No
OnError Yes
OnCFCRequest No
OnRequestEnd Yes

13. CF RESTful HTTP Post Example
AngularJS APP
<cffunction name="newPlayer"
access="remote"
httpmethod="POST"
restpath="newPlayer" returntype="any" returnformat="json">
<cfargument name="playerData" required="true" type="string" />
<cfif not isJSON(arguments.playerData)>
<cfreturn errorjson("-1000","Request Error Code 1000 - Invalid JSON
#arguments.playerData#")>
</cfif>
<!--- Deserialize JSON --->
<cfset jsondata = deserializeJSON( arguments.playerData )>
…

14. ColdFusion 11 JSON Improvements
• JSON improvements
– Data type preservation for Query and CFC
– Case preservation of struct keys
– Added "Struct" as new QueryFormat
• Which is the format AngularJS expects
– Ability to define custom JSON serializer
http://blogs.coldfusion.com/post.cfm/language-enhancements-in-coldfusion-splendor-improved-json-serialization-2

15. Server-side Testing
• CFHTTP scripts
• jMeter Load Testing

16. About AngularJS

17. About AngularJS
• Adapts and extends HTML
• Some of the key features:
– two-way data-binding
– synchronizes model data and views
– Filters for client side data
– http ajax call features
• Follows a MVC pattern
– loose coupling between presentation, data,
and logic components.
• A complete client-side JavaScript solution
• Managed by a developer team at Google
Igor and Miska from
Google

18. AngularJS Application Framework

19. AngularJS Popularity
Project contributors per month

20. AngularJS Reach
• Browser support
– Safari
– Chrome
– Firefox
– Opera
– IE8, IE9
– Mobile browsers Android,
Chrome Mobile, iOS Safari
• AngularJS 1.3 does not
support IE 8

21. Getting AngularJS
Go to Angularjs.org to download
http://angularjs.org

22. Optional Add-on Modules
• Loaded after the coreangular.js file:
– angular-animate.js - Enable animation support
– angular-cookies.js - A convenient wrapper for reading and
writing browser cookies
– angular-resource.js - Interaction support with RESTful
services via the $resource service
– angular-route.js - Routing and deep linking services and
directives for angular apps
– angular-sanitize.js - Functionality to sanitize HTML
– angular-touch.js - Touch events and other helpers for
touch-enabled devices
– New angular-messages.js – helps with displaying
informative error messages with forms

23. Works well with Others

24. Many Server-side Integration Points
Angular Clients
http
resource
websockets
services
factories
restful
Cloud Services

25. A Simple AngularJS App
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/angular.min.js"></script>
<h1>Simple Data Binding with AngularJS</h1>
<div ng-app>
Name: <input type="text" ng-model="name" />
Welcome to AngularJS {{name}}
</div>
http://cfangular.com/simple/databinding.cfm

26. Getting Started Resources
• Dan Wahlin – AngularJS in 60ish Minutes
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9MHigUZKEM
• All the ng-conf sessions
– https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ng-conf
• AngularJS FAQ
– https://docs.angularjs.org/misc/faq

27. Building the AngularJS Frontend

28. Frontend / Clientside Team
• They have been busy writing the front end using
ngMock waiting for the Server API to be
completed
– ngMock as an AngularJS module to mock backend
communication
• Now let’s hook the frontend with the ColdFusion
REST server api
• Check out this blog for using ngmock with CF
– http://www.sagarganatra.com/2014/06/angularjs-resolving-data-services.html

29. AngularJS Startup
• Loading an AngularJS page builds our
scopes and bindings
Backend Providers
SERVER REST API
Datastore

30. AngularJS Features the team used
2 way Data Binding
Model - Form
Filters
Player Finder
Controllers
Each route gets its own
ngRoute – ngView
Load dynamic CF pages
Ng-repeat Directive
Custom Date Directive
$http service
Get and Post JSON
$http interceptor
Catch all server traffic
Form Processing
Validation and messaging
Built in Form CSS Classes
Ng-show directive
Ng-disable directive

31. Our AngularJS Home
<html ng-app="playerApp">
<head>
<!-- Load CSS other JS here-->
<!-- Load Angular and Angular Routes Module -->
<script src="vendor/angular.min.js"></script>
<script src="vendor/angular-route.min.js"></script>
<!-- Load main AngularJS application js -->
<script src="js/app.js"></script>
</head>
<body ng-controller="mainController">
---
</body>
</html>

32. Routes and Controllers and ngView
<body ng-controller="mainController">
<nav class="navbar navbar-default">
<div class="container">
<div class="navbar-header">
<a class="navbar-brand" href="/">Player Registration Manager</a>
</div>
<ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right">
<li><a href="#"><i class="fa fa-home"></i> Home</a></li>
<li><a href="#register"><i class="fa fa-shield"></i> Register Player</a></li>
<li><a href="#manager"><i class="fa fa-comment"></i> Manager Players</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</nav>
<div id="main">
<div ng-view class="parialview"></div>
</div>
</body>

33. Using Routes and Controllers
mainController
playerApp.controller('mainController',
function($scope) {
$scope.message = 'I am the home
page!';
});
Home.cfm
<div class="jumbotron text-center">
<h1>Home Page</h1>
<p>{{ message }}</p>
</div>
http://cfangular.com/playerapp/
App.js
playerApp.config(function($routeProvider) {
$routeProvider
// route for the home page
.when('/', {
templateUrl : 'partials/home.cfm',
controller : 'mainController'
})
// route for the register page
.when('/register', {
templateUrl : 'partials/register.cfm',
controller : 'registerController'
})
// route for the player manager page
.when('/manager', {
templateUrl : 'partials/manager.cfm',
controller : 'managerController'
});
});

34. AngularJS $http Features
• $http Caching
• $http Interceptors
• $http Headers
• $http Security
– Built in JSON vulnerability protection
– Built in XSRF protection

35. Calling the ColdFusion RESTful API
$scope.updatePlayer = function() {
if ($scope.manageForm.$valid){
$http.post('/rest/playerService/updatePlayer?callback=JSON_CALLBACK',
$scope.player).
success(function(data, status) {
$scope.status = data.status;
$scope.message = data.message;
})
.error(function(data, status) {
alert(data.MESSAGE );
$scope.data = data || "Update failed";
$scope.status = status;
})
}
else{
alert('Please correct fields in red and then resubmit form');
}
}

36. Using a AngularJS Filters
• We call into CF and load the playerlist array
• Define the filter for a data listing
<tr class="playerRow" ng-repeat="p in playerList | filter:search |
orderBy:'playerfirstname' " ng-click="getPlayer(p.id)">
<td>{{p.playerfirstname | uppercase}} {{p.playerlastname}}</td>
<td>{{p.playerleague}}</td> <td>{{p.currentteam}}</td>
</tr>
• Assign the filter to some user input
Search: <input ng-model="search.$">
<select data-ng-model="search.currentteam">
<option ng-repeat="t in teams“ value="{{t.name}}">{{t.name}}</option>
</select>
• When user selects a team only players on that team appear

37. AngularJS Form Features
• Built-in CSS classes
– ng-valid, ng-invalid, ng-pristine, ng-dirty
• Built-in Validations
– url, email, max, maxlength, min, minlength, number, pattern,
required
• Input Properties
– $valid, $invalid, $pristine, $dirty
– $error{} – contains field data for all invalid fields
– ngmessages – new in 1.3
https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ngMessages
• Methods
– $setValidity(), $setPristine(), $setDirty(),$addControl(),
$removeControl()

38. ngModel and Form Bindings
$scope.search = '';
$scope.player = {};
$scope.player['securitytoken'] = '' ;
$scope.player['playerfirstname'] = 'Mike';
$scope.player['playerlastname'] = 'Smith'; .
Binding to the model in a form input
<input class="cfang-input cfang-input100"
name="playerlastname" type="text"
ng-model="player.playerlastname“
value="{{player.playerlastname}}" placeholder="Last Name"
ng-required='1==1' >

39. Angular Form Code Example
• A CF page using AngularJS Form Features
• Input validation
• ngShow to show or hide based on form being valid
• Binding to model

40. What have we seen
• Angular App Design
• Forms Model Binding
• Form Validation
• Form CSS classes
• AngularJS Filters
• Using JSON
• Authentication
• CF Restful API
• Error Handling
• Services
• Factories
• $http
• $resource
• Interceptors

41. Working with client-side data
• AngularJS makes it easy to work with large
amounts of data on the client
• Concurrency may become an issue

42. Real Time Channel
• Easily hook in other JS to build real time
– HTML5 websockets
– Node.js
– Express Routing framework
– Socket.io
• Real time Services
– Firebase

43. Building in Security
• Custom request tokens
• AngularJS $http interceptors
• Security tools and techniques
– ZAP Application to test your RESTful api
– Pete Frietag’s Using Custom Security Headers
• Using Google Chrome Batarang
– View data in controller scopes
– View performance metrics

44. Q&A
Mike Collins
SupportObjective
cfObjective
May 2014