Changing of the Guards at CFWheels
Hello everyone,
I was waiting to have more of my thoughts and plans ironed out before posting this message, but due to the intense interest from the community I’ve decided to post what I have, however premature.
As many of you know we have had some changes in the CFWheels core team. Several of the core team members, have decided to reduce their level of administrative involvement in the project and have stepped down from the core team. I have volunteered to take the reins of the project and we are in the middle of passing the baton as it were.
So what does this mean for the CFWheels project?
Well, the fact that there is a transition in place at all, means the project will continue to live on. The CFWheels project has been around since 2005 and during that time different individuals have held the reins and guided the project along. This time is no different. I hope to be as worthy of a steward as those that have come before me.
So what are my thoughts for the future of the project?
From an administrative perspective I want to see what structure to adopt. Whether it is the core team structure we have had in the past or perhaps a more advisory committee structure would be better. We need to take stock of all the code in flight at the moment and try to get a roadmap sketched out. Setting up a funding structure for the project vis-á-vis Patreon.com, IssueHunt.io, BountySource.com, or OpenCollective.com. And finally looking at the legal structure of the project and if there is a need to formalize that by creating a LLC or 501.C corporation.
At this point I have more questions than answers but I welcome your feedback and look forward to your support.
Thanks for taking over the reins of cfwheels. I am sorry to see Tom go, because in the past year he has helped me. A coding community is only as good as people who contribute.
I agree that a roadmap should be put forth. However, I would like to see minor version 2.x strengthened, vs a new version 3. I would also like the documentation and CLI strengthened for new users to get started quickly.
As a person who does not fully understand the cfwheels core code, and can’t help in that effort, I would like to see more tutorials of the “getting-started” variety. We had a potential new user (notyour mitch) , who could not get cfwheels working — if we dont have new users, our user base will decrease. Even with my coldfusion experience, I had problems getting a simple cfwheels project up and running a year ago.
I am glad to see the effort Peter put into the “New CLI commands”, especially “wheels generate app-wizard”.
In today’s web world, single-page-apps (SPA) and other RESTful web front ends, using Angualr/ReactJs/Vue are gaining popularity. I would like to see a the “wheels generate app-wizard” CLI command to have an option to create different types of out-of-the-box apps; A) cfml only cfhwheels app B) json ONLY RESTful cfhwheels app C) Both cfml & Json RESTful cfhwheels app.
I would like to see a “wheels generate db-wizard” CLI command to A) read a database (using DSN & Table name), B) create the MVC files to access the database and all fields out-of-the-box.
I would also like a detailed line-by-line doc page explaining the file structure, and code from “https://github.com/cfwheels/cfwheels-example-app/”. This would also be a good option (providing it still works) for the “wheels generate app-wizard” CLI command
I would like to see find*() commands have a “returnAs=json” option that could be passed to a “renderJson( json=authors) ” built-in function.
I would also like a doc page explaining json processing in more detail – use a real world “hello json” result:
‘{“data”:{“mytesttable”:[{“id”:1,”mytextfield”:”Hello world”}]},”successflag”:true,”errormessagesArr”: []}’
In summary, most of these are just getting-started “templates” or explained examples for a newer user to learn cfwheels easier.
Dan thank you for your comments. I’m also fully onboard that we need make a user’s initial experience with the framework a positive one. Here are some of the things that have been done in that regard. As you mentioned the CLI has gotten some attention. I’ve so far looked at the `wheels generate app` and `wheels generate app-wizard` commands. I’ve also used a handful of the others but haven’t gotten to polish them up yet. There is tremendous potential with this tool and what it can do to modernize our work flow. I’ve also made some changes to the CFWheels drivers for the H2 imbedded database to make it easier to get working applications up and running quickly without messing with an external database. There has been some work done on creating a template structure to allow for easier sharing of CFWheels applications and extracting the `wheels` core code out of the code. This should make it easier to share code and perhaps easier to update the core code in the future. I’ve posted a sample app this morning showing how to build modern UI with HTMX. Something else to take note is how easily that code can be installed and run locally, using the CLI, ForgBox modules, and CommandBox capabilities. Oh, the Getting Started tutorial has also been updated to fix the issue a few users have run into when trying to run through that tutorial.
@Peter
Thanks for taking the helm. I’m a long time user (and fan) of CFWheels. I would love to give back by getting involved. I imagine the best way to do that is to cruise the issues and submit PRs, which I’ve historically not been great at doing. So don’t hesitate to reach out if there’s anything more specific you’d like my help with.
Thank you Chris. As I formulate my plans a little better I’ll be sure to reach out for help. Thanks for your support of the project.