CFBuilder tip: Browsing web services--did you know you can? and a bug you may hit

Note: This blog post is from 2009. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

This is another in a series of tips I want to start share for those working with CFBuilder. While oriented mostly to those who had not used (or stuck with) CFEclipse before, this one may surprise even folks who had used it.

How to browse web services in CFBuilder

Just as with the older Adobe Eclipse extensions for CF8, the ability to browse web services in CFBuilder is in the same Services Browser interface that one can use to look at CFCs.

It's easy to miss, even if you do know about the Services Browser (Window>Show View>Services Browser). Look in the top right corner of that view, and there's a pair of icons which when you mouse over them allow you to switch between "Show Web Services" and "Show CFCs on RDS Server". Nifty.

So just as in DW, you can then add the WSDL URL for any web service, either by clicking the red circled plus sign in the top left of the view, or by right-clicking on whitespace in the view and choosing "add wsdl".

It will then retrieve the web service description information and display in a friendly tree view all its services, their methods, and those methods arguments and datatypes, etc. (see the screenshot above).

This really can make it so much easier to work with web services, especially ones you don't know or are having trouble with.

But wait, there's more. Call now and receive .... (sorry) ...

Seriously, though, this is nice if you didn't know about it. The tool can even build code for you to call the web service. As with Dreamweaver, you can right-click on a method and have the editor build for you your choice of either CFINVOKE or creatobject code to call the web service and that method. It will even populate a placeholder for the required arguments for you. Talk about service with a smile. :-)

(As a bonus, I'll note that there are also several other tools, free and commercial, some web-based and some downloadable, that can also be used to browse web services. More on that in another entry I've now posted.)

One gotcha, for now: stuck on "contacting server", and easy workaround

I've opened a bug report for the problem of the "hanging" web service feature. If you'd like to vote for it, you can find it as bug id 79321.

More to come, here and in my daylong CFUnited class, "Getting Started with CFBuilder"

If you're looking for more such CFBuilder tips, keep an eye here. More than that, if you'd like to spend a day getting immersed in an introduction to CFBuilder from the perspective of one coming from other editors, that will be the focus of my daylong class being held on-site the day before CFUnited, August 11. It's one of several such daylong classes being organized by (and available for purchase separately from) CFUnited.

More on the class in my previous blog entry or at the class detail page.

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