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Coding: ActiveEntity Style

Now let's build the same thing but using ColdFusion ORM and our ActiveEntity approach from the ColdBox ORM Extensions module.

ORM

You will first make sure your contacts datsource exists in the Administrator and then we can declare our ORM settings in our Application.cfc

// ORM Settings
this.ormEnabled       = true;
this.datasource          = "contacts";
this.ormSettings      = {
    cfclocation = "models",
    dbcreate    = "update",
    logSQL         = true,
    flushAtRequestEnd = false,
    autoManageSession = false,
    eventHandling       =  true,
    eventHandler      = "cborm.models.EventHandler"
};

These are the vanilla settings for using the ORM with ColdBox. Make sure that flushAtRequestEnd and autoManageSession are set to false as the ORM extensions will manage that for you.

In this example, we also use dbcreate="update" as we want ColdFusion ORM to build the database for us which allows us to concentrate on the domain problem at hand and not persistence. You also see that we add our own eventHandler which points to the extension's event handler so we can make Active Entity become well, Active!

Activating ORM injections

Now open your ColdBox.cfc and add the following to activate ORM injections inside of your configure() method.

orm = { injection = { enabled=true } };

Contact.cfc

An object that represents a contact and self-validates using ColdBox Validation Module, and is an awesome ActiveEntity object. Let's use CommandBox to build it:

coldbox create orm-entity entityName=contact primaryKey=contactID properties=firstName,lastName,email --activeEntity --open

Then spice it up with the validation constraints

/**
* A cool Contact entity
*/
component persistent="true" table="contacts" extends="cborm.models.ActiveEntity"{

    // Primary Key
    property name="contactID" fieldtype="id" column="contactID" generator="native" setter="false";

    // Properties
    property name="firstName" ormtype="string";
    property name="lastName" ormtype="string";
    property name="email" ormtype="string";

    // validation
    this.constraints = {
        firstName = {required=true},
        lastName = {required=true},
        email = {required=true, type="email"}
    };

}

Contacts Handler

That's right, go to the handler now, no need of data layers or services, we build them for you! This time, we show you the entire CRUD operations as Active Entity makes life easy!

Then spice it up

Views

Here are the views as well, which are pre-created via CommandBox handler creation command.

index.cfm

<cfoutput>
<h1>Contacts</h1>

<cfif flash.exists( "notice" )>
    <div class="alert alert-info">#flash.get( "notice" )#</div>
</cfif>
<cfif flash.exists( "errors" )>
    <div class="alert alert-danger">#flash.get( "errors" ).toString()#</div>
</cfif>

#html.href(href='contacts.editor',text="Create Contact")#
<br><br>
<cfloop array="#prc.contacts#" index="contact">
<div>
    #contact.getLastName()#, #contact.getFirstName()# (#contact.getEmail()#)<br/>
    #html.href(href='contacts.editor.id.#contact.getContactID()#',text="[ Edit ]")#
    #html.href(href='contacts.delete.id.#contact.getContactID()#',text="[ Delete ]",onclick="return confirm('Really Delete?')")#
    <hr>
</div>
</cfloop>
</cfoutput>

editor.cfm

Check out our awesome html helper object. It can even build the entire forms according to the Active Entity object and bind the values for you!

<cfoutput>
<h1>Contact Editor</h1>

<cfif flash.exists( "notice" )>
    <div class="alert alert-info">#flash.get( "notice" )#</div>
</cfif>
<cfif flash.exists( "errors" )>
    <div class="alert alert-danger">#flash.get( "errors" ).toString()#</div>
</cfif>

#html.startForm(action="contacts.save")#
    #html.entityFields(entity=prc.contact,fieldwrapper="div")#
    #html.submitButton()# or #html.href(href="contacts",text="Cancel")#
#html.endForm()#
</cfoutput>