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Before voting to close on "non constructive" I'd like to point out that MS found this information to be important at one time or they wouldn't have created Migrating from ColdFusion to ASP.NET to begin with.

Also, this question has solid answers that are not up for debate.

We are looking into a project where ColdFusion doesn't work for various reasons so we're looking at asp.net mvc as the solution. I've done some preliminary research but a lot of the results are dated so I can't be certain they are accurate. For example "Migrating from ColdFusion to ASP.NET" is from 2003.

Anyway, ColdFusion has some pretty handy built-in features that I know we would be using on this project and I've looked into how these would be done in asp.net but as I've said, the results are a couple years old or older and as often as MS updates MVC / CLR / EF I don't know if those answers are valid anymore. None of us here have much experience with .net so we have no knowledgeable history of features.

My direct question is, are there built in solutions in ASP.net (MVC) for these ColdFusion features? If not, what are the current best 3rd party solutions? Links to docs, websites, etc would be fine. I'm not asking for anyone to write a solution for me. Below are links to ColdFusion docs for the features I need to know how to address. Thanks in advance.

  1. CFDocument / CFPDF - PDF generation using HTML and CSS
  2. CFSpreadsheet - create Excel documents.
  3. CFPresentation - create PowerPoint documents.
  4. CFChart - charting HTML5 / Image / flash
  5. CFImage - image manipulation. (thumbnailing, rotating, converting, etc)
  6. CFExchangeConnection - connect to exchange mailboxes.
genericHCU
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  • You're best off pursuing each of these individually. I don't believe ASP .NET has built-in magic to handle any of these...possibly 5 & 6 although I'm not sure what *"connect to exchange mailboxes"* really means. – Yuck Mar 12 '13 at 15:59
  • @Yuck: Exchange is a Microsoft software/solution for business communication and it includes email management. I don't know drat about ASP.NET, but if you have access to the .NET library from it, all those point can be covered. (maybe except the Flash thing) However, I have the feeling you don't just want access to Microsoft library, right? You want so easy to use API or something? – LightStriker Mar 12 '13 at 16:03
  • Imagine manipulation is definitely built in to .NET, however there's also some way better libraries such as [Piczard](http://piczard.com/). – Mike Christensen Mar 12 '13 at 16:03
  • @LightStriker I know what Exchange is. What I don't understand is how the OP needs to *connect* to it. To send mail? To read contacts and calendars? That part isn't clear from the question. – Yuck Mar 12 '13 at 16:04
  • @Yuck I've researched each individually. Pinging a question doesn't work well and asking a duplicate in SO is blasphemy. I suspect this will get closed anyway judging by the close votes so far, which is unfortunate, others looking at migrating or moving would find it helpful. – genericHCU Mar 12 '13 at 16:06
  • @Yuck sorry CF can connect to exchange and touch tasks, contacts, and calendars. Sending mail is done differently. – genericHCU Mar 12 '13 at 16:09
  • I've done a bit of Exchange programming in .NET. For simply sending email, you can use SMTP or drop files into a directory. If you need to do things like add items to a user's calendar or check their free/busy data, you can do that all via web services. The Exchange SDK makes all this fairly straight forward, though the security on the Exchange side is kinda a hassle especially if you want to *impersonate* a user. – Mike Christensen Mar 12 '13 at 16:13
  • I'm surprised you guys have made it this far with ColdFusion. You might be interested in [this question](http://stackoverflow.com/q/204860/164966) regarding 1. – Roman Mar 12 '13 at 16:20
  • @R0MANARMY that question is 4 years old and is one of the reasons I wrote this post. Is that '08 answer still valid? – genericHCU Mar 12 '13 at 16:23
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    @Travis Not sure, it's also been a couple of years for me since I've had to deal with PDFs. I feel for you though, I've also been in situations where you stare at a technology landscape and wishing someone would at least give you a map drawn on a napkin to get started. – Roman Mar 12 '13 at 16:31
  • @R0MANARMY yeah, it's too bad MS didn't keep up the migration page. They probably don't see enough CF programmers making the jump to dedicate resources to it though. CF does make a lot of stuff easy though which I think is why it's still hanging on. Although, I have to admit, learning MVC / EF has been a lot of fun and it makes a lot of OTHER stuff easy so just like everything else, there's a trade off. Thanks for the input. – genericHCU Mar 12 '13 at 16:43

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There's no built-in support for 1., 2. and 3. Well, actually to be more precise there's support for 2. and 3. for Open XML through the Open XML SDK. There are also many tutorials you could read about using this SDK to build Open XML documents.

4) CFChart - charting HTML5 / Image / flash

There's a bullt-in Chart control.

5) CFImage - image manipulation. (thumbnailing, rotating, converting, etc)

There are many image manipulation techniques in .NET. System.Drawing.Graphics and WIC are one of them but there are also ready to be used solutions such as ImageResizer.

6) CFExchangeConnection - connect to exchange mailboxes.

You could use the Exchange bindings.

Darin Dimitrov
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    Thanks, i'll bookmark your links as it doesn't appear the question will be around for long. only 1 more close vote needed, lol – genericHCU Mar 12 '13 at 16:12
  • @Travis, the question will probably be closed but not deleted. You may as well mark it answered while its still open. – Dave Alperovich Mar 12 '13 at 16:20
  • aaaaaannnndddd CLOSED! lol :( thanks for the answer anyway, good information, and a place to start. Much appreciated. – genericHCU Mar 12 '13 at 17:58