Another Blog to Read!
I haven't had a chance to play with the framework, so no comments yet on CF Rails, but whatever you do, check out Sammy Larbi's blog. He's posting on Refactoring, TDD, Selenium and a bunch of other things that any top CF developer should keep an eye on. He's got a foot in non-CF languages as well which means he's a good source of "ideas from outside".
Definitely worth keeping an eye on!
I know what you mean, although I've played with Rails and I don't love it only because everything is based off of DB metadata rather than something more useful (like custom data types). If I REALLY had to jump languages and use an available commercial framework, I'd pick Python and Django respectively.
I should have mentioned Rob Cameron's CF on Wheels which has been about for a while now. I believe proper link is:
http://code.google.com/p/cfwheels/
Thanks for the plug. =) Right now, cfrails certainly doesn't do anything spectacular - in fact, it looks like a wimpy version of Ruby on Rails. Basically, it's a collection of all the little things we do often, like generating a form based on the database, or updating the database based on a form - but I've just collected it all in one place. If you don't like basing it off DB metadata, its certainly not going to be your cup of tea, at least not yet.
I was aware of Rob Cameron's CF on Wheels, but I didn't want to look at it in depth for three reasons:
1) I got the impression one needed Apache from reading the docs, but after looking at the diagram, I realized that is probably the wrong impression.
2) I thought it would be fun and a great learning exercise to push the limits of coldfusion myself.
3) It looks like a complete port of Rails, and I thought I could leverage some of the strengths of coldfusion and just keep it "inspired" by rails, rather than a port.
Overall, as I said, it doesn't do anything spectacular yet. But one of my goals is to keep it synthesizing the code, rather than generating it, because I feel like if I can do that, applications become even easier to maintain, and any time I want to change the behavior or layout of a form, for example, it will be available to all versions, without overwriting any of the custom stuff.
In the end, its really just something I wanted to write to work faster, and I thought I'd share it with anyone who wanted to use it. That said, it will be maturing as I find its limitations using it on projects. Right now, it has just the right amount of "features" to where I could start using it on my application, so I thought it was a good time to release version 0.1.
There is one function you might find interesting to use for your LightWire, which I'll post in the appropriate place.
Anyway, thanks again.
You're right that because I'm not a fan of database reflection for application generation, it probably won't become my primary framework, but every framework is a collection of lots of cool patterns so it is always worth looking through and playing with new frameworks. Luis's ColdBox is top of my list as I've been promising to play with that forever, but then I'll definitely have a play with CF Rails!
FYI, I wanted to mention Robs framework as when RoR and CF comes up, that to me is the clearest attempt at a port (as opposed to using some similar ideas - like MG:Unity), but I don't think there is any reason you should justify not just using that. The world always needs new frameworks and whether they become popular or not, it is always a great learning experience putting them together. Also, I think that other framework authors are the most prolific tinkerers with new frameworks and even if a new framework doesn't become Model-Glue or Mach-II, if it has a really cool idea then that may well end up affecting and improving the direction of one of the major frameworks.
And thanks for the link to the "path resolution" script - will definitely play with it.
Happy Thanksgiving!