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cfCalais – A Coldfusion tag to easily create semantic data

Jon Dowdle — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:33:23 +0000

Something that I've been interested in for a while now is the semantic web. I don't claim to be any kind of expert on it and have barely scratched the surface.

After finding about the Open Calais service from Thompson Reuters I was pretty excited. I've created a custom tag that sends data to the service which in turn returns the resulting semantic data.

The tag is pretty easy to use. Just surround the text you want to parse with the tags and off you go. The default variable returned is cfcalais. You can override this by setting the "name" attribute.

Introduction to OpenCalais

If you are unfamiliar with the OpenCalais service, here is a short description:

We want to make all the world's content more accessible, interoperable and valuable. Some call it Web 2.0, Web 3.0, the Semantic Web or the Giant Global Graph - we call our piece of it Calais.

Calais is a rapidly growing toolkit of capabilities that allow you to readily incorporate state-of-the-art semantic functionality within your blog, content management system, website or application.

Taken from OpenCalais website

Tag Use

Obtain a license key at http://www.opencalais.com/
Place in a directory where your CFML engine can find it
Wrap your content like this:
```
Some content here
```
Use the returned data

Return Variable

A structure is returned which contains various keys depending on the content that was parsed. A full list of returned metadata returned can be found here: http://www.opencalais.com/documentation/calais-web-service-api/api-metadata/entity-index-and-definitions

For the example content (taken from tagTest.cfm):

Amazon's Kindle e-book reader is going on sale in more than 100 countries around the world, including the UK. The reader has been confined to the US since its launch in November 2007; Amazon expects to have sold a million of the devices by the end of the year. The global version will run on the 3G network, although Amazon has not specified the networks that will provide connectivity for the devices. The Kindle store will offer over 200,000 English-language titles. Hundreds of publishers are signed up including Penguin, Faber and Faber, and HarperCollins. It will also carry more than 85 US and international newspapers and magazines. "We have millions of customers in countries all over the world who read English-language books. Kindle enables these customers to think of a book and download it in less than 60 seconds," said Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Penguin chief executive John Makinson hopes it will kickstart digital book sales in Europe. "The publishing industry is experiencing explosive growth in digital book sales in the US," he said. KINDLE IN EUROPE Amazon Kindle 0.36 inches thick with 6in e-ink display 2GB of internal memory QWERTY keyboard to add notes to text Battery life "weeks on a single charge" USB synching for people out of coverage area The look and feel of the device will be the same as the US version with the exception of network access. Following difficulties making the Kindle's Whispernet wireless download system work in the Europe, Amazon has decided to make downloads available via the 3G network. This means that people wishing to download a book outside of a 3G coverage area will have to transfer content over USB. In May of this year, Amazon unveiled a new version of its e-reader aimed at reading magazines, newspapers and documents. The Kindle DX is currently available only in the US. The European version of the Kindle will begin shipping on October 19 with a $279 (£175) price tag.

Returns a structure that would have the following keys and values:

Technology : 3G
socialTag : Technology_Internet,Printing,Ur,Mass media,E-book,Amazon Kindle,Amazon.com,Media technology,Publishing,Linux based devices,Electronic publishing,E Ink,3G
Country : United Kingdom,United States
Person : John Makinson,Jeff Bezos
Position : chief executive
Company : Amazon,Penguin
Facility : Kindle store
Currency : GBP,USD
Product : Kindle
Continent : Europe
IndustryTerm : e-reader,e-ink,e-book,wireless download system work,3G network

Download the tag and code here: http://github.com/jonDowdle/cfCalais

I hope you find this tag useful and let's make Coldfusion an integral part of building Web 3.0!

Bundle of Coldfusion Feeds

Jon Dowdle — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:22:11 +0000

Since Coldfusion isn't dead, I've combined the Coldfusion feeds that I'm subscribed to into a bundle (using Google Reader's newest feature).

You can subscribe to or view the feed bundle here: CF Feed Bundle

StackOverflow.com : View Unanswered CF Questions

Jon Dowdle — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:00:20 +0000

I'm a bit new to StackOverflow.com, so pardon me if there is a better way to view the unanswered CF questions (please share in the comments if you know a better way). Today after clicking back and forth between "Unanswered" and "Coldfusion" I thought I'd fiddle with the URL just a little. It turns out that by combining 'unanswered' and 'tags/coldfusion' in the URL you get to see all of the unanswered Coldfusion questions!

Here are a few of the tags that I'm interested in helping answer questions for:

MySQL Concat() and Mixed Types

Jon Dowdle — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:54:46 +0000

While in the process of upgrading our connector/J to version 5.1 we started seeing the following error:

ComplexByteArrayException: ByteArray objects cannot be converted to strings.

After doing a little homework we found that the root cause was in the way that CONCAT() processed numbers. CONCAT() was returning a binary string due to having both numbers and strings as arguments.

Our fix was to CAST() all numbers to CHAR, which results in a normal string being returned. Another option is to call toString() on all of your affected columns when referencing them in the query object.

For example the SQL fix is demonstrated below:

Select Concat('a string', 1)

would return a binary string where as

Select Concat('a string', Cast(1 as char))

would return a "normal" string.

Resources:

What do you use Coldfusion for? (poll)

Jon Dowdle — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:45:17 +0000

Florida’s SunPass Uses Coldfusion

Jon Dowdle — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 02:48:47 +0000

I always find myself surprised at how many sites, that I use on a regular basis, depend on Coldfusion. Florida's Sunpass site uses Coldfusion and they are so proud they even wanted to show it with the favicon!

Site: https://www.sunpasssecure.com/

Keep Current with Coldfusion Talk Around the World

Jon Dowdle — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:55:03 +0000

Looking for a way to keep up with the global Coldfusion community on Twitter? Its quite simple. You only need 1 thing for this to work in its entirety: A Google Reader account.

Create a search feed for the terms you want to follow here. I simply used "Coldfusion" but you might want to play with some hash tags such as #maxmilan.
On the search results page, grab the feed for the query.
Add the feed to your Google Reader account
Under feed settings, select "Translate into my language"
Enjoy reading multilanguage tweets!

Coldfusion Development Tools

Jon Dowdle — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:20:18 +0000

Just watched a great presentation by Brian Kotek on the tools he uses while developing with Coldfusion. I really enjoy these types of presentations as they give me a chance to see how some of the more prominent names in the CF world work. Another great thing about these presentations are that they show tools that may have not been known about. I picked up at least 2 new tools to check out.

In the presentation, Brian goes through:

MxUnit
CfMock (new to me)
FormUtilities (new to me)
ColdSpring

The presentation can be seen here:
http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/p58908414/

I originally found out about this presentation here.