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<cfcontent type="text/xml" reset="Yes"><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"

    xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">

<channel>

  <atom:link href="http://www.YourSite.com/index.cfm/feed"

    rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />

  <title>YourSite.com</title>

  <link>http://www.YourSite.com</link>

  <description>Your Description Goes Here</description>

  <cfoutput>

    <pubDate>#HTMLEditFormat(DateFormat(now(), 'ddd, dd mmm yyyy'))#

      #HTMLEditFormat(TimeFormat(now(), 'HH:mm:ss'))# EST</pubDate>

  <language>en-us</language>

  <ttl>40</ttl>

  <s:find slug="blog">

  <s:children-each order="publishedAt desc" where="status='published'">

    <item>

      <cfset thisChild = request.tags.currentChild>

      <title>#HTMLEditFormat(thisChild.title)#</title>

      <description><![CDATA[<s:content part="body" page="#thisChild#"/>]]></description>

      <pubDate>#HTMLEditFormat(DateFormat(thisChild.publishedAt, 'ddd, dd mmm yyyy'))#

         #HTMLEditFormat(TimeFormat(thisChild.publishedAt, 'HH:mm:ss'))# EST</pubDate>

      <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.yoursite.com/index.cfm/#thisChild.slug#</guid>

      <link>http://www.yoursite.com/index.cfm/#thisChild.slug#</link>

    </item>

  </s:children-each>

  </s:find>

</channel></cfoutput>

</rss></cfcontent><cfabort>

Most of this code is the required RSS XML. Just drop in your site-specific domain name, description, etc.

The <s:find slug=”blog> tag finds the blog, and then <s:children-each> loops over all the children that are under the blog page. I used thisChild as a convenience variable instead of having to type request.tags.currentChild every time. The <cfabort> at the end keeps Splash from adding extra HTML tags at the end of the file.

You could also create an easy XML site map using a similar approach. Just change out the XML wrapper.

• <s: find>
• <s: children-each>
• <s: children-first >
• <s: children-last >
• <s: ifFirst >
• <s: unlessFirst >
• <s: ifLast >
• <s: unlessLast >

There’s a complete list of tags and documentation over on the GitHub Wiki. But, I’ll give you an overview and show you how to use these tags for a blog.

<s:find> This tag looks up a page and stores the page object so that subsequent tags can use that page object.

<s: children-each> The tag finds all the children of a page and loops over them.

<s: children-first > and <s: children-last > finds the first or last child page.

The rest of the tags are all used inside of a <s: children-each> tag. They check to see if the current child page is the first one, last one, or whatever.

Making a Blog page with Splash Tags

Let’s say you have a page named Blog, that has several posts that are child pages of Blog. Then, in the body for the blog page, put something like this:

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<h3>Articles</h3>

<s:find slug="blog">

  <s:children-each

   order="publishedAt desc"

   where="status='published'">

    <cfset thisChild = request.tags.currentChild>

    <cfoutput>

      <dt class="blogList">

         <a href="#thisChild.slug#">#thisChild.title#</a>

            | #DateFormat(thisChild.publishedAt, 'long')#</dt>

      <dd class="blogDesc">#thisChild.description#</dd>

    </cfoutput>

  </s:children-each>

</s:find>

<s:find slug=”blog”> finds the blog page, and then <s:children-each> loops over all the pages. By the way, <s:children-each> uses the CFWheels findAll model method, so all of the cool CFWheels parameters are available in <s:children-each>!

If you want to see an example of what this looks like, visit the DonorUp blog page.

All in all, that’s a lot of output for very little programming effort. That’s what I call the secret to programmer happiness!

CFWheels is an open source ColdFusion framework that is inspired by Ruby on Rails. Besides being easy to use and learn, using CFWheels lets you adapt great ideas from Ruby on Rails (RoR) applications. RoR has the Radiant CMS, and Splash is the ColdFusion/CFWheels adaptation!

You can easily download Splash from http://wiki.github.com/russjohnson/SplashCMS/. The documentation for Splash is still kind of sparse, but the Radiant documentation is mostly applicable, and you can easily see how most things are supposed to work. Then, if you get stuck, email the Google Group.

Splash Layouts, Snippets, and Pages

Splash uses Layouts, Snippets, and Pages to build a website.

A layout, as you might imagine, is like a skin for an entire website. You can have multiple layouts and use different layouts for different pages.

Pages are specific URLs on a Splash site, and each page has a specific layout specified. A page can have multiple “page parts.” Most pages will have a “Body” part, but some might also have a “Sidebar” or other parts.

Snippets are reusable content chunks. You might have a navigation snippet that displays the main navigation for your site. Headers and Footers are other common snippets.

Splash Tags

There is one other very powerful component to Splash — Splash Tags. These are ColdFusion custom tags that extend ColdFusion and HTML to work with Splash. Here’s a simple example: the <s:title /> tag. This tag just retrieves the page’s title from the page object and inserts it in place of the tag. So, in your layout, you would typically have something like:

<title><s:title /></title>

The pages title information from the database is then easily inserted into the HTML title tag!

There are a lot more tags, so see the Wiki.

Splash in Action

I recently completed the DonorUp.com website using Splash. I was really pleased with how easily I was able to get many thing to come together. So, try Splash and leave a comment to let me know how you like it!

For the DonorUp website, I used CFWheels and the Splash CMS. Once I knew the tricks, it turned out to be really easy to make this work. So, I decided to write a post to explain what you need to know.

Typically, in ColdFusion, you add an onError() method to your Application.cfc file. Wheels gives you various hooks into Application.cfc, but Wheels already has an onError() method. So, you can’t add another one! Fortunately, Wheels has an easy way to handle most errors.

How to send error messages from CFWheels

All you have to do to get Wheels to send error message emails  is add the following into your /config/settings.cfm file:

<cfset set(sendEmailOnError = true)>
<cfset set(errorEmailAddress = “you@yourServer.com”)>

Now, whenever there’s an error, you’ll get a really nice email with all the troubleshooting info you’ll need. Easy!

How to setup a custom error page in CFWheels or Splash

As part of its built-in error handling, Wheels runs the file at /events/onerror.cfm. Just put a redirect to your error page at the top of onerror.cfm and you’re done:

<cfset redirectTo(route=”viewer”, slug=”error-page”)>

In my case, I went into the Splash CMS admin and added a page called Error Page. This way, the page is automatically styled to match the rest of the site. The error page apologizes to the user for the error, and let’s them know I am going to fix it!

When Wheels does its error handling, it will run /events/onerror.cfm, and the redirectTo() will send them to my error page! If you aren’t running Splash, you could just use the other arguments of redirectTo() to send them to any controller and action.

You can also put your own HTML or CFML code in onerror.cfm, but I like doing it this way better as it uses all the layouts and styling of my site!

Please leave me a comment if you like this approach or have other ideas!