Public beta of Builder Extension for VS Code

July 29, 2022

Kishore Balakrishnan Follow

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Comments

(7)

July 29, 2022

Public beta of Builder Extension for VS Code

Kishore Balakrishnan Follow

(3)

(7)

(3)

We are pleased to announce the Public Beta of ColdFusion Builder extension for VS Code. If you are using ColdFusion Builder, would you like to take part in helping the CF team make Builder the best it can be? Please download the CF Builder Extension from https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=com-adobe-coldfusion.adobe-cfml-lsp.

The all-new Adobe ColdFusion Builder plug-in on VS Code helps developers to edit and validate code, manage files and projects, debugging and scan for security vulnerabilities.

Check out some of the cool features in the VS Code Plugin:

1. Adobe ColdFusion Server Panel :: The Integrated Server management allows developers to manage their ColdFusion Servers.

2. RDS :: It lets you access files and data sources registered on a ColdFusion Server.

3. PMT Code Profiler Report Integration :: It helps to improve the performance of CF codes by showing exactly how much time it took to run a specific line of code.

4. Security Analyzer Report Integration :: The Security Code Analyzer can validate the CFML syntax of an application by running the ColdFusion compiler on pages and reporting the errors it encounters.

5. Code Assist :: It is designed to assist with code completion. It prompts with hints relevant to the code entered and once the code is typed, it also assists with a list of valid CFML tags, parameters, and attributes.

6. Code Refactoring :: It helps clean up the code, reduce complexity and improve functionality of a program.\

7. Quick Fix :: It helps to recognize the usage of methods, classes, and CFC/CFM files in the code and helps you generate them.

There are a lot more cool features to explore in the plugin. The documentation of the plugin is provided here.

If you uncover any bug please log it at https://tracker.adobe.com/#/add_bug using the Product as “ColdFusion”, Version as “VS Code 1.0” and the component could be starting with “LSP:VS Code Plugin:”.

We would love to hear from you about the Plugin.

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Kishore Balakrishnan Follow

7 Comments

Ashlyn Jinnette

Aug 14, 2022

Ashlyn Jinnette

Aug 14, 2022

Could anyone point me in the right direction to find the file that allows Code Assist to work? Evidently, it is not installed on our server and I’d like to hopefully find a download. The extension appears to be looking for a file named cf2018.xml.

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(2)

Charlie Arehart

Ashlyn Jinnette

's comment

Aug 14, 2022

Charlie Arehart

Aug 14, 2022

Ashlyn Jinnette

's comment

I can point to that file, but you say “it is not installed on our server”. To be clear, vscode might not be installed on your server at all, and this Adobe CFML extension would be within folders for vscode–so not necessarily “on your server”.

More specifically, that file should exist within a hidden folder that vscode uses to hold all extensions you have installed. That path will of course change for each OS and user (and even different versions of a given extension). For me on Windows, that top-level folder for VSCode extensions is:

C:\Users\careh\.vscode\extensions\

And within that folder, the one for the (current) Adobe CF extension is:

com-adobe-coldfusion.adobe-cfml-lsp-1.0.429

And within that, there’s a folder of “dictionaries” where the extension has stored the currently available dictionaries for CF2021 and 2018, including that file you sought. So for for me, the full path to that is :

C:\Users\careh\.vscode\extensions\com-adobe-coldfusion.adobe-cfml-lsp-1.0.429\dictionaries\cf2018.xml

If you may find you have the one for cf2021 and not the one for CF2018, I or someone could perhaps share that here…but if I were you I’d want to make sure that’s not the ONLY file that you’re “missing”. Indeed, I’d wait to hear from Adobe if they may say that it should not happen that you find even this one file “missing”.

If indeed you may not find that one cf2018.xml file, please do make sure first that you can at least find and look in that dictionaries folder, and/or the folders above it.

Let us know if this gets you going.

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Ashlyn Jinnette

Charlie Arehart

's comment

Aug 15, 2022

Ashlyn Jinnette

Aug 15, 2022

Charlie Arehart

's comment

I was able to fix the issues by uninstalling and re-installing fresh. I used mapped drives instead of UNC for the server settings, workspace, and projects. Seems to work perfectly now.

Thank you so much for pointing me in the right direction.

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Mark Takata

Jul 29, 2022

Mark Takata

Jul 29, 2022

FOLKS PLEASE LISTEN TO CHARLIE
Read. The. Docs.
Yes, it is a bit different. It is “built like builder” so if you’re familiar, yay! If not, you might be confused. The docs are great.
And finally, yes. FREE. FREE FOREVER. Free during beta, free after beta. As the commercial goes, free free, freefree free.

(1)

Gary__F

Jul 29, 2022

Gary__F

Jul 29, 2022

Wow, this sounds good. The docs don’t specify a minimum CF server version that it will connect to. It also doesn’t specify a minimum CFML version for language/intellisense support.

Now it would be impressive if it turns out to be free. Adobe haven’t done freebies for CF devs since… I can’t remember. 🙂

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(1)

Charlie Arehart

Jul 29, 2022

Charlie Arehart

Jul 29, 2022

So great to see this released. Some will love it, some will lament it (can’t please everyone).

Let me offer some tips for those getting started with it: to get full value of the IDE features added by this extension (vs simply code editing), folks should DEFINITELY check out the docs, especially if they never used cfbuilder previously. There are ways things work that are not typical of other vscode extensions, in terms of connecting it to a running cf instance, whether local or remote to you.

There’s also considerable configurability, to make it work more to your liking.

See also the hour-long intro video/walk through offered by Adobe folks presented as a session at the recent cf devweek. I offer a post here with more including a link to all those videos:

https://coldfusion.adobe.com/2022/07/all-devweek-2022-videos-now-posted-on-youtube/

And do note the tracker link offered above for filing concerns. And before doing that, see also the “known issues” listed at the bottom of the doc page offered above.

Finally, neither the post above nor the docs address the concern, but some will surely wonder about any cost for the extension after the beta. While typically Adobe doesn’t discuss prices of products before final release, I’ll note at least that Mark Takata of Adobe said during the webinar that it would be free! 🙂 This was at the end of the webinar, during the start of q&a.

Folks should definitely start digging in, to help Adobe make it the best it can be. (Mark did say also that it was “not open source”, so it’s unclear whether we as a community will be able to contribute directly to the extension.)

I’m sure MUCH more will become clear in time on many aspects of the extension, using it, and more.

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