Kevin A. Schmidt

If you've ever generated any type of custom report using ColdFusion, odds are you've fielded this question at some point in time. And while the task may sound rather difficult, it can be made relatively simple with a particular open-source third-party tool. HTMLDOC The tool, offered by Easy Software Products (www.easysw.com), is called HTMLDOC. The company has made this tool available through the GNU General Public License, so you can download and use it for free. Among the many things HTMLDOC allows you to do is convert an HTML file to a PDF. HTMLDOC is a normal Windows application, but it has a command-line interface that allows you to access the application with ColdFusion. So, by utilizing CFCs, the tag, and the tag, you can create a simple, easy... (more)

Company Calendar

Ever wonder how to keep your colleagues up to speed on what's happening within your organization? How best to inform them of company picnics, community events, and ColdFusion clinics? Wouldn't it be nice to direct them to a Web site where a single resource provides all this info and more? With ColdFusion it's easy to assemble and maintain your own online events calendar. Just think, no m... (more)

Functional Literacy

Now that some of the hype surrounding ColdFusion 5 has begun to die down, you may find yourself ready to tackle one of its new features - user-defined functions. User-defined functions (we'll call them UDFs) are one of the most talked about features of ColdFusion 5 and certainly one of its best. UDFs are powerful, yet simple to create. They're also fast and highly flexible. (For more de... (more)

Setting Up Shop: Adding a Cart with ColdFusion

Ever wonder what's going on behind the scenes when you click that "Add to Cart" button on your favorite Web site? Sure, whatever you want to buy gets dropped in your cart, but what actually makes it work? There are actually several answers here, so let's go step-by-step through the principles of designing and developing a simple shopping cart system with ColdFusion. The Shopping Cart Say ... (more)

The Question: What's FTP?

When I told them there was a better way to send us large files. They'd been accustomed to sending large image files via an e-mail attachment; I wanted to get them away from this practice and suggested that they use FTP (file transfer protocol). That's where I hit the roadblock. Many of our clients only knew how to send e-mail, surf the Web or create a document in Microsoft Word. So rath... (more)