CodFusion

Well, I've been fairly busy lately with this project called Thor, which is my version of a server-side CFC based data validator. This is the validator I demo at the last Atlanta CF user group meeting. It can be downloaded from http://labs.fusionlink.com/katapult/index.cfm?page=projects/thor

Data validation is important one of the most important processes of any application because it prevents malformed or bad data from getting into the system. The problem is it can be a pain to manage and maintain. Thor is designed to make this process easier.

For those who missed the meeting or didn't know about the project, Thor is a ColdFusion component (CFC) based validator that has  a variety of features that is not found in other validators:

- Explicit / Implicit Validations
- Global Validation
- Specific and general error codes and flexibility to do internationalization
- Field name mapping
- Validator/mapping/error code importing by CFC or XML
- Validator list reporting
- Fields not required option
- On-the-fly validation
- Logging

The zip contains the core Thor component, several validator libraries, documentation and several examples. This is the first public release so feel free to send me comments or questions at mason |at| fusionlink.com. The idea of Thor is to make server side validation stronger and yet easier to manage and maintain. As an example, there is included with the project a pretty extensive library for postal codes and phone numbers which takes a lot of the guess work out of those items.

An important note is that Thor doesn't directly deal with SQL injection or XSS attacks, there is another project I maintain that does help with those attack vectors called Portcullis and it's at http://labs.fusionlink.com/katapult/index.cfm?page=projects/portcullis