ColdFusion for Android Development

Nov 09

You know what would be really cool? ColdFusion for Android.

Wait. I’m not talking about ColdFusion the server-side framework. I’m talking about ColdFusion the language and development platform. I’m talking about the data-oriented language with primitives for building task-centric applications.

I’m talking about the ColdFusion language that already has a cross-compiler to Java source and JVM bytecode.

If you look at Android development, it’s not all that different compared to CF development with an MVC framework like Framework/1. Each Android task equates to a FW1 View, and has similar enter and leave Controller validation. Android apps are backed by SQLite storage, and generally use the same Model-style access to their database. Apps can start Service components that can function as asynchronous threads, or as persistent Application-level objects.

I’m not advocating porting the CF runtime to Android, nor client-server style development where the app UI is just a wrapper around WebKit¹. I’m saying you take the CFML tags and CFScript language and cross-compile them to Java source and/or JVM bytecode. You write apps like this:

<cfwindow id="hello">
    <cfform action="#nextthing">
        <cfinput type="text" required="true" id="loginEmail" message="#localize.emailRequired#" label="#localize.emailLabel#">
        <cfinput type="submit" id="loginSubmit" label="#localize.next#">
    </cfform>
</cfwindow>

And poof, presto-magic, Eclipse compiles this into a native APK using native widgets and puts it on your Android. There are already a ton of CF tags for UI that are fairly render-agnostic. I’m not saying it would be a perfect fit, nor that every tag would be useful, but it’s a heckuva start.

Adobe has already made it pretty clear that they think Flash is the future for Android development. Some smart person who wants to make a ton of money should build a few proofs-of-concept and go to the smart guys at Railo with a business plan. If they turn you down, go through the presentation and replace Java/Android with .NET/WP7 and go talk to NewAtlanta. Once your pile of money is big enough, you shovel it into building an Objective C cross-compiler and start targeting iPhone.

ColdFusion is so ~~money~~ mobile and it doesn’t even know it!

Footnotes:

You’ve already got Appcelerator Titanium, PhoneGap, and other competitors in that space.

5 Comments

Brian Swartzfager
Nov 09 2010 at 16:31

Sorry, Rick, I’m not seeing exactly how you’d pull this off. CF doesn’t have tags that let you create visual page/window elements, just ones that enhance native HTML elements. PhoneGap works because it uses HTML elements within an Android WebView object (which processes HTML) to do visual layout, and Flex/Flash comes with its own set of visual objects.

I’m not knowledgeable enough about the inner workings of Android to say it’s flat-out impossible, but even if it were possible it’d be a LOT of work and I think the end-result would be pretty ugly.

Rick Osborne
Nov 09 2010 at 18:00

Sure CF has visual tags, hence the ones I used above, as well as cflayout, cfdiv, cfslider, etc. All of the new CF8/9 Ajax tags could be repurposed to compile to their native equivalent. Or, if you don’t like that, mix standard CF tags with the native XML on Android, like was done with CF+HTML.

But I think I may not be communicating exactly what I’m suggesting. I’m saying you could repurpose the language(s) to compile to native code. Don’t reuse the CF-renders-to-HTML model, nor use a dynamic or client-server approach at all. Instead, leverage the existing CF compilers to do what they do well already: generate Java classes and bytecode. So instead of rendering HTML, those AJAX tags now have a direct correlation to the underlying native widget.

So much work has already been done to build Java recordset classes, and XML and JSON de/serializers, etc, etc, etc. Instead of having to dig down into the guts of Android to figure out how MVC works there, leverage existing MVC patterns in CF and have the compiler/platform devs worry about how to wire it together.

Brian Swartzfager
Nov 10 2010 at 08:33

Looking at this with fresh eyes this morning, I think I have a better handle on what you’re suggesting. Still not convinced it’s worth the effort it would take to pull it off.

On the visual side of things, you’d have to either augment the existing CF visual tags with new parameters (or use some sort of CSS class-type hack) so that one tag can be transformed into several different similar Android objects or create new visual CF tags to cover the Android view objects that have no CF equivalent (the Table layout elements, the ListView, etc.).

Even if you solved that issue, I think you would lose too much “fidelity” in the translation of the CFML code into Android-equivalent code as a result of trying to cross the difference gap between the languages.

Marcel
Nov 14 2010 at 18:02

Given that Android apps can be created using JavaScript and JavaScript can be made to create web pages as well and now that OpenBlueDragon has a cfscript tag option to write your applications using more JavaScript I think focusing more attention on CF wouldn’t be as beneficial as starting to write apps more in the standardised EcmaScript.

I like the idea of using CF to build just about anything, but I just don’t see CF competing in that space with something as awesome as jQuery as the framework of choice.

rcastagno
Dec 02 2010 at 04:38

This can definitely be done.
It’s just what Rhomobile http://rhomobile.com/ do.

Rhomobile is a cross-device framework written in ruby, which allows you to write apps in ruby and generate _native_ applications for the various supported platforms.

Replace ruby with CFML, and you have your framework.

Add your comment

Brian Swartzfager
Nov 09 2010 at 16:31

Sorry, Rick, I’m not seeing exactly how you’d pull this off. CF doesn’t have tags that let you create visual page/window elements, just ones that enhance native HTML elements. PhoneGap works because it uses HTML elements within an Android WebView object (which processes HTML) to do visual layout, and Flex/Flash comes with its own set of visual objects.

I’m not knowledgeable enough about the inner workings of Android to say it’s flat-out impossible, but even if it were possible it’d be a LOT of work and I think the end-result would be pretty ugly.
Rick Osborne
Nov 09 2010 at 18:00

Sure CF has visual tags, hence the ones I used above, as well as cflayout, cfdiv, cfslider, etc. All of the new CF8/9 Ajax tags could be repurposed to compile to their native equivalent. Or, if you don’t like that, mix standard CF tags with the native XML on Android, like was done with CF+HTML.

But I think I may not be communicating exactly what I’m suggesting. I’m saying you could repurpose the language(s) to compile to native code. Don’t reuse the CF-renders-to-HTML model, nor use a dynamic or client-server approach at all. Instead, leverage the existing CF compilers to do what they do well already: generate Java classes and bytecode. So instead of rendering HTML, those AJAX tags now have a direct correlation to the underlying native widget.

So much work has already been done to build Java recordset classes, and XML and JSON de/serializers, etc, etc, etc. Instead of having to dig down into the guts of Android to figure out how MVC works there, leverage existing MVC patterns in CF and have the compiler/platform devs worry about how to wire it together.
Brian Swartzfager
Nov 10 2010 at 08:33

Looking at this with fresh eyes this morning, I think I have a better handle on what you’re suggesting. Still not convinced it’s worth the effort it would take to pull it off.

On the visual side of things, you’d have to either augment the existing CF visual tags with new parameters (or use some sort of CSS class-type hack) so that one tag can be transformed into several different similar Android objects or create new visual CF tags to cover the Android view objects that have no CF equivalent (the Table layout elements, the ListView, etc.).

Even if you solved that issue, I think you would lose too much “fidelity” in the translation of the CFML code into Android-equivalent code as a result of trying to cross the difference gap between the languages.
Marcel
Nov 14 2010 at 18:02

Given that Android apps can be created using JavaScript and JavaScript can be made to create web pages as well and now that OpenBlueDragon has a cfscript tag option to write your applications using more JavaScript I think focusing more attention on CF wouldn’t be as beneficial as starting to write apps more in the standardised EcmaScript.

I like the idea of using CF to build just about anything, but I just don’t see CF competing in that space with something as awesome as jQuery as the framework of choice.
rcastagno
Dec 02 2010 at 04:38

This can definitely be done.
It’s just what Rhomobile http://rhomobile.com/ do.

Rhomobile is a cross-device framework written in ruby, which allows you to write apps in ruby and generate _native_ applications for the various supported platforms.

Replace ruby with CFML, and you have your framework.

No, I am better than that!

Striving to subdue the mediocrity.

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ColdFusion for Android Development