Ted On Flash: Flex Search Engine and ColdFusion adoption

Flex Search Engine and ColdFusion adoption

DIGG IT! 8 Comments Published Wednesday, November 01, 2006 at 2:28 PM .

I have kept this secret so close and didn't want to admit it happened. Sometime last month I fell for ColdFusion. I was writing yet another app in PHP and Ray Camden popped on IM. We chatted and I asked him how to do this in CF and I got a one tag answer. Hmmm interesting, this takes 30 lines of PHP. That is how it started and Flex Search is my first real CF application.

I dug a bit deeper last month on a top secret Flex Search Engine for Flex.org. I wrote the spider, indexer, and API in CF and it took about 3 days at most. I indexed some 57,000 urls using CF and processed the page data into MYSQL. I then wrote a CFC to expose everything via AMF3 Remoting API and it worked way too well. The productivity of CF API backends for Flex is a jewel of a workflow.

Then Ben Forta popped onto IM and things got even more intense with CF. We collaborated on the Flexifier and seeing that app go from 0 to working prototype in 1 week was too much. Somewhere between Ray Camden and Ben Forta I have adopted ColdFusion. Having written apps in Java, C#, Python, PHP, ASP and a myriad of other tools, CF just takes the cake in terms of write less, accomplish more development. Given the UI moving to the client side with Flex, the ability to build rapid backends for distributed apps is a big deal.

So the top secret Flex search engine in nearing completion for public beta after MAX APAX Taipei. It was a big project and I was solo on this effort with CF.

Here is the high level view of Flex Search:

- FlexCoders, FlexComponents, Adobe DevCenter, Flex Documentation, AS3 API Documentation, Flex Blogs
- Single Search Interface
- User and Exit rating
- Aggregation API that is automatic and simple for any blogs or articles on Flex
- Developer API to access AMF3 search results (mash up Flex Search!)
- Whitelist and Blacklist support for evildoers
- Wicked Fast with AMF3 Remoting

Special thanks to Ray and Ben for supporting my ColdFusion learning curve and making the switching easy. Ray even said I get a T-Shirt and get to learn the secret CF handshake. WooHoo!

More to come!

Ted :)

8 Responses to “ Flex Search Engine and ColdFusion adoption ”

# Andrew Trice November 1, 2006 3:34 PM

Its about time you started liking ColdFusion ;) Welcome to the club!
# Jeremy Rottman November 1, 2006 4:05 PM

Welcome to the wondrous world of CF.
# Ben Forta November 1, 2006 4:31 PM

And now I can actually admit that I know you. ;-)

--- Ben
# Stacy Young November 1, 2006 4:52 PM

Glad to see you've turned to the dark side. :)
# Peter Bell November 2, 2006 6:44 AM

Hi Ted,

Great to see you've joined the team!

Gotta say, though, one of the few web tools I would NOT usually write in CF is a spider given that the algorithm is simple, but multi-threading and performance are usually a real concern.

Any tips you'd like to share for writing a performant spider in CF would be greatly appreciated as I was considering writing one before I finally got vspider (the free Verity spider) playing nice!
# Pete Freitag November 2, 2006 9:54 AM

Welcome to CF Ted!
# Rey Bango November 2, 2006 10:45 AM

Awesome Ted! This is the type of feedback that guys like Kevin Yank, editor, of SitePoint.com need to get their facts straight about CF. You can see what I mean here;

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2006/10/26/the-state-of-coldfusion

Rey...
# Teddy R Payne November 3, 2006 10:19 AM

From one Ted to another, welcome to the flock. CF Uber Alles.

Cheers,
Teddy