Question

I am a web application developer using Coldfusion 9. I have incorporated the use of cfc’s in my code for some time. I would done like to incorporate more OOP principles in my design.

I am looking for books, tutorials, videos, etc that cover application design and interaction using OOP principles.

Most of the material I’ve found covers the object design but not they are used in application design.

Thank you for your suggestions.

Answer 1

Matt Gifford wrote a fantastic book, Object-Oriented Programming in ColdFusion, which I highly recommend. I wrote a review of it earlier this year and Sean Corfield also wrote a good review if you are hesitant about buying it. Other great books I have found inspiration from are java-based OOP books, like Head First Java, which will teach you some java, but largely, OO concepts. The Head First series is both very gentle and engaging.

Outside of those books, there are a lot of great online resources, many of them are detailed on ObjectOrientedColdFusion.org which has a low-traffic google group for you to ask questions, plus lots of great reading material, and plenty of resource links.

Another of my favorite resources is Charlie Arehart’s UGTV, which has a large database of recorded presentations. I searched for “object oriented” and found some good ones like Brian Meloche’s Common Sense Object Oriented ColdFusion and Bob Silverberg’s Building An Object Oriented Model, which was really good when i saw it. Browse around, you will find more.

Reading code is a fantastic way to learn. The easiest way to find code to read is GitHub’s ColdFusion language page, but you can also find code through RIAForge. Some good code that I know of is BlueRiver (look into Mura CMS), Bob Silverburg (look into Validate This and Louis Majano and anything ColdBox related, just to name a very small few of the thousands of great code hackers out there.

Finally, remember that you are not alone in this. Many have traveled the path before and googling will help you find what they have done. For example, John Whish posted his OOP learning strategy. There are a lot of us out here learning and trying things and helping others. Get involved. I mentioned the ColdFusion OO Google Group, but there is a higher traffic email list, CF-Talk, which is also very helpful. Also look for local ColdFusion user groups, sometimes they have an email list or forum and they will have monthly meetings with a variety of topics. You can always find some very bright people there. Very last, there are conferences like CF.Objective() that you can attend annually which are full of amazing content.

Good luck as you learn OOP in CF!