What are snippets you ask? Just a little something I came up with to make my life and the lives of my clients easier.

DISCLAIMER: I set this up using FC 3.0.2. I do not know how it may function on FC 4.

I have set up a lot of sites that have little random pieces of content here and there. Usually I end up making a custom rule or sometimes a custom type to handle each piece of content. Bigger sites, however will end up with several custom pieces, each of which requires the client to do things just right.

Let’s face it, remembering a password is hard enough for some people, let alone managing multiple containers each with a different content type. My solution? Snippets.

A snippet is a data type (jcSnippet) that is similar to a dmNews object only stripped down. The most important piece is the body and the use of the WYSIWYG editor and the image/file/link inserters. The link inserter is also custom. You can see other posts about it on my blog.

Essentially what will happen is the user will create a snippet (some HTML) that will get dumped into a container. This will allow the users to completely customize container content when necessary using the WYSIWYG editor of your choice.

continue reading "Farcry Snippets"

This is a quick how-to for custom widgets. Widgets can be a really powerful tools if used correctly. I recently found a really good use for them so here is an explanation of how to create them and use them. Enjoy!

Create a folder path inside your project folder that looks like this: /farcry/project_name/tags/widgets. This will hold any custom widgets. I’ve blogged about this before but we are going to create a link inserter widget. Create a file inside the folder you just made called whatever you want (I’m using bodyInsertLink.cfm). Here’s the code:

<cfoutput>
	<cfquery name="getHTMLPages" datasource="#application.dsn#">
		SELECT	label,objectid
		FROM	dmHTML
		WHERE	status = <cfqueryparam cfsqltype="CF_SQL_VARCHAR" value="approved">
		UNION
		SELECT	label,objectid
		FROM	dmInclude
		WHERE	status = <cfqueryparam cfsqltype="CF_SQL_VARCHAR" value="approved">
		ORDER BY label ASC
	</cfquery>

	<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">
		function getLinkValueInsert()
		{
			objSelect = document.getElementById("links");
			tempStr = objSelect.options[objSelect.selectedIndex].value;
			arVal = tempStr.split("|");
			oID = arVal[0];
			label = arVal[1];
			//alert(tempStr+"\n"+oID+"\n"+label);
			if(!oID || !label)
				alert("Please select a valid link to insert.");
			else
				insertHTML('<a href="#application.url.conjurer#?objectid='+oID+'">'+label+'</a>');
			return false;
		}
	</script>

	<div class="relateditems-wrap" style="margin-left:30px;">
		<h2>Links</h2>
		<select name="links" id="links" size="3">
			<cfloop from="1" to="#getHTMLPages.recordcount#" step="1" index="i">
				<option value="#getHTMLPages.objectid[i]#|#getHTMLPages.label[i]#">#getHTMLPages.label[i]#</option>
			</cfloop>
		</select>
		<div class="f-submit-wrap">
			<input type="button" name="buttonInsertLinkInBody" value="Insert in body" class="f-submit" onclick="return getLinkValueInsert();" />
		</div>
	</div>
</cfoutput>

continue reading "Farcry Custom Widgets"

This is an update to a post I wrote a couple months ago regarding link insertion into the body of content objects: http://jake.cfwebtools.com/2008/02/29/farcry-insert-link-to-other-dmhtml-objects/. I’d like to formally apologize for my ignorance when writing that post. Please ignore it :).

The problem was that the site tree and the body editor are in two different iFrames causing focus to be lost when clicking on the site tree to try to insert a link. I had a brilliant idea (so I thought) to edit the core files of farcry to fix this. It worked fine, but hey, you had to edit the core files of Farcry. THIS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA! Here’s a better idea…

continue reading "UPDATE: Better Link Inserter for FC 3"

I want to preface this by saying you probably should not do this. Having contradicted myself, I’d also like to say that this is really cool!

You may have noticed that when editing an HTML page it is possible to right click on any other page in the site tree and use the “insert” function which will insert a link directly into the editor to that page. Pretty handy right? Well there is an issue with this in that the site tree is in a different iFrame than the editor so the position in the WYSIWYG editor is lost and the link gets inserted at the very top of the page no matter what. (I’ve seen this more so in IE7 than anything else). This is annoying and is not very friendly for a lot of clients because they then have to copy and paste that link somewhere else. If there is a lot of formatting in the page, sometimes this can get altered when copying and pasting so I wanted a better solution.

Warning! This required a change to a couple of core files so if you are up to that click through to read more. If not, there is a pretty “X” in the top right of your window. Click it now

continue reading "Farcry Insert Link to other dmHTML objects"

I searched for a long time on how to hack different browsers in CSS so I thought I’d post techniques for the 3 most popular browsers (IE6, IE7 & Firefox).

The Technique:

I strongly recommend writing CSS and testing it in Firefox. Get it to look right, then hack out IE6 & IE7. Nothing against any of the browsers but this has been the most effective technique for me. You will usually need to make several adjustments to widths and heights, padding and margints, etc in IE6 and IE7 should follow pretty much what Firefox does. There are a few exceptions like floating and positioning that I’ve found.

continue reading "CSS Browser Hacks"

Here’s another pretty cool example site. This one has a very unique menu which is a combination of javascript and CSS. The navigation class for this was quite complex.

The dmNavigation object was extended to allow node specific styling (which is how we achieved the ability to move the sub-menu around wherever we want. There is also some pretty neat Javascript throughout the site allowing for expandable sections of content.

NEI Global Relocation

This is an example of an execute function for a custom rule that is used for a custom type. This sorts the itesm by category. Now, here’s what’s really cool…

<cfset staffCategories = "#application.factory.oTree.getDescendants(application.factory.oCategory.getCategoryIDByName('Staff'))#">

This line gets all sub categories under Staff. This is used for the sorting. If the user wants to control the order of the categories in the sort, he/she need only move the sub category up or down in the list through the Keyword Manager tool in the webtop.

Here’s the full code:

<cffunction access="public" name="execute" output="true">
<cfargument name="objectID" required="Yes" type="uuid" default="">
<cfargument name="dsn" required="false" type="string" default="#application.dsn#">

<cfset var i = 1>
<cfset var stObj = this.getData(arguments.objectid)>
<cfset var qGetStaff = ''>

<cfparam name="request.mode.lValidStatus" default="approved">

<cfset staffCategories = "#application.factory.oTree.getDescendants(application.factory.oCategory.getCategoryIDByName('Staff'))#">
<cfset staffCategoriesList = ValueList(staffCategories.objectid)>

<!--- doesn't need to match all categories --->
<cfquery datasource="#arguments.dsn#" name="qGetStaff">
	SELECT	type.*, cat.categoryID, img.imagefile, img.thumbnail, img.alt
	FROM	refObjects refObj
	JOIN	refCategories refCat ON refObj.objectID = refCat.objectID
	JOIN	dmStaff type ON refObj.objectID = type.objectID
	JOIN	dmImage img ON img.objectID = type.teaserImage
	JOIN	categories cat ON cat.categoryID = refCat.categoryID
	WHERE 	refObj.typename = 'dmStaff'
		AND type.status IN ('#ListChangeDelims(request.mode.lValidStatus,"','",",")#')
</cfquery>
<cfoutput>
	<h1>#stObj.intro#</h1>

	<!--- get staff members by category --->
	<cfloop from="1" to="#ListLen(staffCategoriesList)#" step="1" index="i">
		<cfquery name="QoQ" dbtype="query">
			SELECT	*
			FROM	qGetStaff
			WHERE	categoryID = '#ListGetAt(staffCAtegoriesList, i)#'
			ORDER BY displayOrder
		</cfquery>
		<!--- get category name --->
		<cfset categoryName = application.factory.oCategory.getCategoryNameById(ListGetAt(staffCategoriesList, i))>

		<!--- display link to anchor --->
		<a name="#categoryName#"></a>
		<h1>#categoryName#</h1>
		<cfloop from="1" to="#QoQ.recordcount#" step="1" index="j">
			<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
				<tr>
					<td valign="top"><img src="/images/#QoQ.imageFile[j]#" alt="#QoQ.alt[j]#"></td>
					<td valign="top" style="padding-left:20px;">
						<span style="font-size:120%;font-weight:bold;">#QoQ.name[j]#</span><br>
						Title:  <i>#QoQ.title[j]#</i><br>
						Email:  <a href="mailto:#QoQ.email[j]#">#QoQ.email[j]#</a><br>
						Extension:  #QoQ.extension[j]#<br><br>
						<a href="#application.url.conjurer#?objectid=#QoQ.objectid[j]#">View Bio</a>
					</td>
				</tr>
			</table>
			<p style="border-bottom:1px dashed gray;width:100%;margin-top:0px;"> </p>
		</cfloop>
	</cfloop>
</cfoutput>

</cffunction>

I thought I’d start posting some example farcry sites as a way to demo some thing that can be done. Here’s the first example…

Hope Center

This site is really pretty simple but looks pretty good (IMHO). It makes strong use of containers and flash objects as well as a custom display method for the flash objects which I borrowed from Flex which uses an external .js file to write the flash object to avoid the ActiveX border in IE.

Also, have a look at the Events Calendar. This is a calendar that my boss had on another site that I borrowed and re-tooled to work seamlessly with the dmEvents object in Farcry.

Finally, the Contacts page is an example of a custom type. Each contact contains an image, name, title, email, extension, and bio. There are 3 types of displays for the contacts. On the right sidebar is a simple listing, sorted and organized by categories. This is some pretty ingenious code and I’d be happy to share it if asked nicely. In the content area is the main display of the contacts object, ordered and sorted the same way. These displays are both made possible by custom rules. Clicking on the “View Bio” link will take you to the displayPage for the Contacts type.

A brief discussion of logging in and out in Farcry. Farcry handles redirection beautifully (in my opinion). This is important when using a custom login page and/or members only section. If a user clicks on a link that is part of your member’s only section, you display the login form. But, how do you get them to the correct page once they’ve logged in? I say, very easily, that’s how.

Here’s an example of a members login link:

<a href="#application.config.general.adminserver#/farcry/login.cfm?returnUrl=#cgi.script_name#?#cgi.query_string#">Members Login</a>

You see, the login page that is referenced here first looks to see if you have a custom login form. If not it displays the default. All the default login pages can take a returnUrl parameter which is the page to re-direct the user to after a successful login takes place. In this case, #cgi.script_name#?#cgi.query_string# will pass something like index.cfm?objectid=0FE24133-9027-F64A-79D83E62FD5FF288 to the login page. Of course, that object id is based on the page they have requested.

Now, what about logging out? Why, that’s even easier! Here’s an example of that link:

<a href="#application.config.general.adminserver##cgi.script_name#?logout=1&#cgi.query_string#">Logout</a>

This is just a link to the page the user has requested with logout=1 passed somewhere in teh query string. The index.cfm conjurer page will automatically clear out the user’s session if this is detected.

Pretty slick, huh? Farcry really is a beautiful tool!

This is post number three for today in a series I like to call “Farcry is AWESOME!” I previously explained how to set up Branch Specific Permissions in the site tree. You can view that post at http://jake.cfwebtools.com/index.cfm/2007/4/20/Site-Tree-Branch-Specific-Permission. Then I discussed setting up a members only section of a site so a user has to log in to view certain content. You can view that post at http://jake.cfwebtools.com/index.cfm/2007/4/20/Farcry-Members-Only-Section. There’s one more thing I want to discuss really fast and that’s the login page.

Specifically, when setting up a members only section, it is not very nice to be re-directed to the default blue login page of farcry then back to the site. You’ve spent all this time skinning your site and setting up your nav classes to wow your customer that this could possibly dissatisfy them. So, to avoid that I suggest a custom login page that has the same look and feel as the rest of your site. Here’s how you’d do it…

continue reading "Create A Custom Farcry Login Page"