Comments on MXUnit Blog: What would your CFML look like with closures?

You know that you can already pass functions aroun...

2010-06-21T19:36:42.840-04:00

You know that you can already pass functions around as arguments?

If decimalFormatter is a UDF (or method of a CFC), you can just say formatter = decimalFormatter in your argument list and pass the function, and call it exactly like you want.

True, it's not a closure, it's 'just' a function. But functions are first class objects in CFML and can be passed around and assigned to variables just like other 'values'.

http://cfclosures.riaforge.org/ Just throwin it ou...

2010-01-08T15:40:45.555-05:00

http://cfclosures.riaforge.org/
Just throwin it out there! ;)

Ah! I've been doing this in Javascript but I ...

2010-01-07T19:49:15.200-05:00

Ah! I've been doing this in Javascript but I didn't know that it had a name. Thanks, now I is smarter today!

+1 for closures in CF.

Marc, great stuff here! I would love closures in C...

2010-01-07T15:03:28.374-05:00

Marc, great stuff here! I would love closures in CF!

Great post Marc! Very engaging :) I didn't kn...

2010-01-07T13:27:10.191-05:00

Great post Marc! Very engaging :)

I didn't know the definition or meaning of "Closure" even though I used it all the time in Action Script and JavaScript.

Now I will remember "literal + Party invite"!

It sure will be a good addition to the language.

Great post Marc and that helps me understand what ...

2010-01-07T12:24:07.125-05:00

Great post Marc and that helps me understand what is going on with closueres. I don't really know enough to say if they should be in CF 10 or not but I'd lean towards yes.

Also I just wanted to point out that I read the whole thing! ;) (Nod to your tweet).

Great stuff, Marc. Love the "party invites&qu...

2010-01-07T11:33:40.635-05:00

Great stuff, Marc. Love the "party invites" analogy :) Ya, having worked with Groovy and jQuery more lately, it's hard not to long for closures in CF! Folks new to closures and looking to learn more might do well to simply check out more closure examples/tutorials in Groovy and/or JavaScript/jQuery.

Glen, Thank you for the comment. Tony and Steve: ...

2010-01-07T10:30:08.027-05:00

Glen, Thank you for the comment.

Tony and Steve: I'm happy this clarified closures. That was a real lightbulb moment for me, realizing that their power wasn't just in the function literal part, but in carrying along the variables.

In java, you have anonymous inner classes, which are nice, but in order to use variables from outside of itself, you have to declare them as final, which becomes a real PITA. That's partly why Java programmers have been so up in arms about closures over the past few years and why they're so damn excited about getting them in Java 7.

Thanks for the good explanation of closures. I had...

2010-01-07T09:26:33.522-05:00

Thanks for the good explanation of closures. I had always just seen them as unnamed functions, but the party invites aspect does seem really useful.

Hi Marc, Thanks for posting this. I've never r...

2010-01-07T09:12:13.435-05:00

Hi Marc,
Thanks for posting this. I've never really "gotten" closures before, but your nuts-and-bolts explanation finally made something click in my head (I haven't read Ben's post yet).
Cheers,
Tony Garcia

I personally would not be looking at defining a cl...

2010-01-07T07:56:32.620-05:00

I personally would not be looking at defining a closure with

something="function"

In groovy it is best done with something like

something = {}

Which means you could do this to pass in an argument.

something = { arg1 -> print something }

ColdFusion will have a hard enough time deciphering from a string literal and a closure if you use quotes as the definition of the begining and ending of a closure.