103 Cool Lucee CFML (GigaBytes file parsing and more) with Gert Franz

Gert Franz talks about “Cool Lucee CFML (GigaBytes file parsing and more)” in this episode of the CF Alive Podcast, with host Michaela Light.

Show notes

Why are you using Lucee at DistroKid

• • Fast, Secure, Scalable with cloud
  • Node → Lucee 
  • Bitbucket pipelines
  • CommandBox
  • TDD
  • AWS autoscaling
• Tell us something about DistroKid

CF performance tuning

• • Know your data
    • Keep common lookups in memory (structure)
  • One background file parsing process went from 330 hours to 2 hours!

What is the advantage of Lucee over other languages

• • CFLoop File=fileName
    • 20 GB text files
    • Index, Item 
    • Array of values from separators (eg comma-separated data etc)
    • Uses much less memory than CFFILE Read which sucks the whole file into memory

Lucee tasks 

• • • Can continue automatically if server crashes
  • ParseCSV
    • OnBody
    • OnHeader
    • OnFooter
  • Asynchronous Queries to database (for Logging etc)
    • Loggin analytics to
      • Elk
      • Logly
    • Log events are added to a queue then batch added to the database in the background
    • <cfquery async=true listener=component|closure>
  • Query Listeners
    • Checks for async query errors
    • SQL manipulation pre-running query
  • Mail Listeners
    • Email pre-send events
    • On error event
    • Update headers in email for test server
  • Future listeners
    • CFHTTP calls

Lucee LEX extensions

• • • Minimum install is 21 MB – add extensions for optional features such as PDF processing, image processing etc
      • → Fast load time
    • 25-30 extensions
    • Extensions can be written in CFML or Java

Lucee 6 faster load time

• • • Goal < 0.5 second
  • Blue-Green deployment strategy to cloud cluster

Allowing CFTag in CFScript

• • • All CF tags have script equivalents – just remove the <CF and > part and add {s 
    • Add trip ticks (‘’’) for code
    • Why cfscript
      • less code
      • less output of whitespace 
      • Other developers who know JavaScript can code CFscript
    • Avoid EnableCFOutOnly and other whitespace workarounds in CFML
  • Strict mode – require scoping
  • Lucee hidden features

Programming language choice

• • .Net “free” or expensive
  • Language Religion or Drug addiction

What are the key features you use?

How did the usage of Lucee change during your time at DK

Why are you proud to use CF?

WWIT for you to make CF more alive this year?

• • Show up and share your passion and love of CFML
  • CF dark matter x100 verbose

Mentioned in this episode

• Lucee 
• Redis
• MemCache
• Data Grid

Bio

Gert was born in 1967 and lives in Switzerland since 1997. He is one of the key people behind Lucee. Back in the late eighties he studied astrophysics in Munich but switched to later IT as a profession and programmed for several companies in the past as a database administrator and system analyst. Gert spoke a lot at all major conferences in the past and will for sure in the future. He now leads the Dev department at DistroKid.

Links

• Gert (at) rasia.ch
• Website
• Twitter  
• LinkedIn

Interview transcript

Michaela Light 0:01
Welcome back to the show. I'm here with good friends, all the way from Switzerland. And when we talk about cool new stuff in Lucee cfml, including gigabyte file parsing and asynchronous logging to the database and mail listeners, query listeners, all kinds of cool things you can do in Lucy these days and catch up with what he's been up to. So welcome, Gert.

Gert Franz 0:38
Hello, and thank you for having me back. Because you're so right, yes,

Michaela Light 0:42
it's been nearly a year it's far too long. I mean, so many things. So if you don't know who God is, he's heavily involved in the Lucy open source ColdFusion project. And since he was an astrophysicist he just decided he must do something more complicated and decided to start writing a cold fusion application server.

Gert Franz 1:07
Well, just to correct you. I was never an astrophysicist even though I studied that. But

single day, I never worked a single day as an astrophysicist. Only maybe in my free time when I pull out my telescope. That's okay, maybe go back to those days. But I'm a programmer by heart. And from the bottom of my heart since the last day I was in uni, or even before that since I was five years old, started with basic. Wow. I remember even the day the first day that I saw a computer program that was in 8584. It was an 84. But I didn't remember the day because I was watching over the shoulder of a guy and he was showing me something complex and what it was actually doing and I was flabbergasted. And the first thing that I remember in 84 that I was able to Was I managed our text printer to print out graphics, like graphics not being consistent just to have wild characters, but what you had to do, you had to modulate the characters and kind of plot them there. And we I was able to do some kind of charts with that. And I was very, very proud being 16 or 17 years of age. And wow, coming on. Snyder that was

Michaela Light 2:25

Read more

Michaela Light is the host of the CF Alive Podcast and has interviewed more than 100 ColdFusion experts. In each interview, she asks "What Would It Take to make CF more alive this year?" The answers still inspire her to continue to write and interview new speakers.

Michaela has been programming in ColdFusion for more than 20 years. She founded TeraTech in 1989. The company specializes in ColdFusion application development, security and optimization. She has also founded the CFUnited Conference and runs the annual State of the CF Union Survey.

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