CFEclipse Features: Task List

 
May 17, 2006

By: Robert Blackburn

One of my personal favorite features in CFEclipse is the task list. This is one of those very simple but helpful features.

To open the tasks view click "Window" > "Show View" > "Other", then click "Tasks" under "Basic". When you open it initially it will probably be blank. But open a CFML or CFC file and add a few comments that begin with "TODO", like this:

<!--- TODO: Update this method --->

Save the file, and voíla, the task list is updated with a task with the description in your comment. I've added a few comments to a file, and here is what my task list looks like:

The comments that create tasks can be either markup comments (<!--- comment --->) or cfscript comments (// comment) as long as they contain the keyword "TODO" in them.

The task window also has a filter button that lets you look at all the tasks for the entire workspace, the current file, or just about anything in between.

I use this feature all the time. As I am coding, I may notice that there is something I need to do, but I don't want to interrupt my workflow. I just throw in a TODO comment and it is automatically added to the task list. This is also a handy way to keep track of where I have placed debug code; I just place a comment like this before it:

<!--- TODO: Temporary code, to be deleted --->

My task list will remind me to remove it later.

In the next CFEclipse Features article, we will cover code folding, a handy trick for hiding blocks of code.
Robert Blackburn is a developer and team leader of the Internet Application Development team at American Power Conversion Corporation (http://www.apcc.com). He has been using ColdFusion since 1999, and has revived and manages the CFUnit open source project (http://cfunit.sourceforge.net). He currently has a blog at http://www.rbdev.net/devblog for his occasional ramblings.

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