63 articles published
Ported my forum app (DismalThreads) from ColdBox/CBWIRE to BoxLang/boxlang-express as bxThreads — swapping CBWIRE's component reactivity for hand-rolled fetch()/websockets. Porting a real app with existing opinions (auth, rate limiting, realtime fan-out) is a better BoxLang stress test than starting fresh, since a blank project lets you dodge every hard problem by never hitting it.
Robert Zehnder
Spines/Fire is one of Homecoming's premier farming Brutes. Spines delivers relentless AoE via Quills, Spine Burst, and Throw Spines, while Fiery Aura brings strong resists, Healing Flames for sustain, and Fiery Embrace for burst damage. Cap fire defense at 45% (Weave, Maneuvers, Fire/Plasma Shield, set bonuses) and you're nearly untouchable on fire-only farm maps. Fast Fury generation, minimal downtime, and huge influence-per-hour make it the classic "bootstrap" alt to fund your other toons.
Robert Zehnder
BoxExpress adds server-sent events and full WebSocket support for pushing live updates to clients — dashboards, progress bars, chat, notifications. Built from scratch, since BoxExpress skips BoxLang's built-in web layer. Along the way: a concurrency bug in broadcast connections, a header-injection-style hole in SSE metadata, a BoxLang update that broke page rendering, and a STOMP bug letting one client hijack another's subscription. All caught by trying to break it.
Robert Zehnder
bx-graphql brings GraphQL to native BoxLang via graphql-java, wrapping it in a schema-agnostic module with convention-based resolvers and zero framework lock-in. To prove it out beyond source code, Robert built a fully offline demo pairing it with boxlang-express — a JSONPlaceholder-style schema, thin resolvers that mostly fall through to `PropertyDataFetcher`, and a no-build-step query console. Both modules are live on ForgeBox: `box install` and go.
Robert Zehnder
BoxExpress 0.1.15→0.2.1: five patch releases fixed empty-value crashes (query/cookie/multipart), hardened proxy-IP trust for real platforms, fixed session data loss against non-memory stores, added response outcome accessors and opt-out session writes, and closed a trailing-slash bug hitting nearly every request. Then 0.2.0 replaced the JDK's HttpServer with Undertow entirely (breaking), verified at full parity and load-tested. 0.2.1 added live HTTP-layer metrics via getConnectorStatistics().
Robert Zehnder
Reference guide to City of Heroes: Homecoming IO enhancement sets, organized by power type (melee/ranged/AoE damage, defense, resistance, healing, holds, pets, travel, etc.). Explains set bonus mechanics (ED, Law of Fives, attuned/Superior ATOs), highlights ⭐ best-in-slot and 🔴 rare/expensive sets, and lists universal must-have globals (LotG +Recharge, Panacea, Numina's, Steadfast +3% Def) plus per-archetype ATO procs and a quick-reference table of top bonus sources.
Robert Zehnder
This site runs on one 1-vCPU DigitalOcean instance with no APM vendor — just a self-built page reading JVM metrics directly, and the habit of watching it. Covers which numbers actually matter (GC time ÷ uptime, not raw seconds), a real bug caught along the way (the JVM thought it had 8 cores, not 1), load-testing to find the real throughput ceiling, and trimming the Docker image 60% by dropping CommandBox entirely.
Robert Zehnder
Robert replaced a synchronous third-party analytics service (which caused outages when rate-limited) with a custom `RequestLogger.bx` for his site. It uses a bounded in-memory queue, non-blocking middleware, and a background scheduled thread to batch-flush rows to SQL every 5s, with periodic cleanup of old records. Doubles as a boxlang-express middleware tutorial covering closures, Java interop (ConcurrentLinkedQueue, dynamic proxies), and defensive error handling.
Robert Zehnder
Bots/FF Mastermind: ranged robot pets + Force Field shields for team defense. Forgiving, solid solo past lvl 22. Prioritize shields, Leadership/Fighting pools, Mace Mastery epic for soft-capped defense + high recharge via LotG uniques. Slotting favors pet survivability over damage. Incarnates lean recharge/defense; Lore/Judgement are playstyle calls.
Robert Zehnder
I rebuilt this blog on boxlang-express, my own Express.js-style BoxLang framework, moving from a CommandBox droplet to a thin DigitalOcean App container, with static assets on Cloudflare R2 and a homegrown MySQL access log replacing GoatCounter. Also: DismalThreads, my BoxLang/CBWire Reddit-style forum, is getting decommissioned end of month, no real users beyond my own test accounts, though the code may go public on GitHub.
Robert Zehnder
BoxLang Express went from basic routing to a full-featured framework across 10 releases (0.1.1→0.1.14): sessions, CSRF, CORS, rate limiting, security headers, uploads, and a SQL-backed session store. Every fix got verified live before being called done, then locked in as one of 149 passing tests. Along the way, express-test grew from a chat demo into a live documentation site, catching stale docs and gotchas that reading alone would've missed.
Robert Zehnder
BoxExpress brings Express.js-style HTTP endpoints to BoxLang using the JDK's built-in HTTP server. It supports routing, middleware, sub-routers, static files, and view rendering—without requiring a servlet container.
Robert Zehnder