Dear CFML (ColdFusion) Developers

Jim Priest — Sun, 13 Oct 2019 17:17:11 +0000

Recently at work we were looking to bring on a new CFML (ColdFusion) developer and I was in charge of the hiring. I did a lot of first interviews and discovered there seem to be three types of CFML developers:

1) Stuck in the Past

If you are still listing Fusebox on your resume in 2019 you need to fix that. I know some people are restricted at work in what they can use but download ColdBox or FW/1 and build a small app with it. Figure out how MVC really works. Learn something new even if you can't use it at work.

2) Stuck in the Present

OK. You know ColdBox, FW/1, MVC and all the latest and greatest CFML. What else do you know? I see a lot of developers who have no experience outside CFML. Go download Python, Go, Node... something and try it out. Try to recreate small snippets of your CFML code in these different languages. What's better? What's worse?

3) Into the Future

The third type of CFML develop I see knows ColdBox or FW/1. They have some experience in other languages. They have a Github account where I can see some of their experiments and what they have worked on recently. They may blog, contribute here to dev.to and participate in the community on Slack and local meetups.

I don't think this takes a great effort either. Hang out on Slack occasionally. Once a month or so for a meeting, and a few hours here and there in the evenings working on something new.

As a hiring manager I'm looking for people in the third group who are improving themselves, learning new things and maybe contributing back some of that knowledge to the community.

Robot Framework Docker Container

Jim Priest — Sat, 12 Oct 2019 00:17:33 +0000

We've been using Robot Framework at work for awhile with great success. When I initially started doing Robot I just setup Python and pip installed everything on Testers workstations. At the time I used Python 2.6. This works but Python 2.6 is EOL soon, and maintaining different libraries, webdriver versions, etc became a huge hassle.

Enter Docker!

After searching around there are quite a few Dockerized Robot setups but they all had issues:

Some were using Xvfb instead of native headless browsers
Some were using Chrome but with --no-sandbox option (bad)
Some were doing a lot more than what I needed - Firefox, Selenium grids, etc.

I decided to take the best bits from all of them and create my own simple Robot Framework container.

It's running Alpine, Python 3, Robot Framework, Chromium (headless!) and that's it.

I'm also giving a presentation in the near future on Robot Framework at a local Meetup so in addition to building a Docker container you can use to run your own Robot tests I also added some basic Robot Framework test examples if you are just getting started with Robot Framework.

Files are available on my Github

Make sure to scan the README.md.

Happy Testing!

./robot.sh --suite a-simple
==============================================================================
Robot                                                                         
==============================================================================
Robot.Tests                                                                   
==============================================================================
Robot.Tests.A-Simple                                                          
==============================================================================
Robot.Tests.A-Simple.Test :: A very simple test suite with a single test      
==============================================================================
Open Site                                                             | PASS |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robot.Tests.A-Simple.Test :: A very simple test suite with a singl... | PASS |
1 critical test, 1 passed, 0 failed
1 test total, 1 passed, 0 failed
==============================================================================
Robot.Tests.A-Simple                                                  | PASS |
1 critical test, 1 passed, 0 failed
1 test total, 1 passed, 0 failed
==============================================================================
Robot.Tests                                                           | PASS |
1 critical test, 1 passed, 0 failed
1 test total, 1 passed, 0 failed
==============================================================================
Robot                                                                 | PASS |
1 critical test, 1 passed, 0 failed
1 test total, 1 passed, 0 failed
==============================================================================
Output:  /robot/results/output.xml
Log:     /robot/results/log.html
Report:  /robot/results/report.html
jim@jim:/mnt/Files/www/robotframework-preso$

DEV Community: Jim Priest

Dear CFML (ColdFusion) Developers

1) Stuck in the Past

2) Stuck in the Present

3) Into the Future

Robot Framework Docker Container