Railo
| Developer(s) | Railo Technologies |
|---|---|
| Initial release | April 2006 |
| Stable release | 3.3.1 / 3 October 2011 |
| Operating system | Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Application server |
| License | LGPL v2.1 |
| Website | Railo Homepage |
Railo is Open Source software which implements the general-purpose CFML server-side scripting language, often used to create dynamic websites, web applications and intranet systems. CFML is a dynamic language supporting multiple programming paradigms and runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).
Railo was created by the Swiss company Railo Technologies GmbH, intended as a high performance alternative to Adobe ColdFusion. In 2008, Railo switched to an Open Source community-driven model, and became a JBoss project. The Railo Open Source project is led by Railo Technologies, with development work funded by consulting and support contracts, but anyone may contribute code for consideration.
Contents |
[edit] History
Railo began in 2002 as a student project to compile CFML code into PHP, a choice made due to the ubiquity of PHP, however it was found that this did not give the desired performance and stability, and the decision was made to switch to the Java platform instead.[1]
The project was successful enough that it was decided to continue to develop into a full product. Several alpha and beta releases were made before the official 1.0 release in April 2006. Railo continued to be developed but was relatively unknown to many CFML developers, until June 2008 at the Scotch on the Rocks conference in Edinburgh, when Railo Technologies used the Day 2 keynote to announce a partnership with JBoss and a switch to Open Source.[2]
Railo was named after an alien dog in Star Trek Enterprise. The dog is actually named Rhylo[3], but written phonetically in German it is Railo.[4] Thus, Railo can be pronounced either as rhy-lo or as rai-lo - both are acceptable.
Railo major releases have a codename of notable and loyal dogs from history.
[edit] Release history
| Major version (Codename) |
Minor version | Release date | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Alpha 1 | 2004-04-10 | The first official release of the Railo CFML engine.[5] |
| Alpha 2 | 2004-05-18 | ||
| Alpha 3 | 2004-08-03 | ||
| Alpha 4 | 2004-10-21 | ||
| Beta 1 | 2005-01-16 | The first beta release of Railo. | |
| Beta 2 | 2005 | ||
| Beta 3 | 2005 | ||
| RC1 | 2005-09-23 | The first release candidate of Railo was presented to the German CFUG in Munich.[6] | |
| 1.0 | 1.0.0.000 | 2006-04 | |
| 2.0 | 2.0.0.000 | 2007-09-10 | |
| 2.0.1.000 | |||
| 2.0.2.000 | |||
| 3.0 | 3.0.0.000 | 2008-09-09 | |
| 3.0.1.000 | |||
| 3.0.2.000 | |||
| 3.0.3.000 | |||
| 3.1
(Barry) |
3.1.0.000 | 2009-08-12 | First Open Source release of Railo.[7] |
| 3.1.1.000 | 2009-08-11 | ||
| 3.1.2.000 | 2010-11-26 | ||
| 3.2 | 3.2.1.000 | 2011-12-24 | |
| 3.2.2.000 | 2011-03-18 | ||
| 3.2.3.000 | 2011-06-10 | ||
| 3.3
(Hachiko) |
3.3.1.000 | 2011-11-03 | The current stable version of Railo, added built-in support for ORM and many other features.[8] |
| 4.0
(Appollo) |
4.0.0.000 | Alpha version, not yet released, but can be built from source via GitHub[9] |
[edit] Platforms and license
Railo runs on the JVM as a servlet, and will work with any servlet container (e.g. Apache Tomcat, Eclipse Jetty) or application server (e.g JBoss AS, GlassFish). It is possible to connect a web server (e.g. Apache, IIS, nginx, Cherokee) in front, using connectors such as mod jk, mod proxy, or equivalent, but this is not required by Railo.
Railo has an installer for Linux, Mac OS, and Windows, which bundles Apache Tomcat. There is also a pre-configured Railo Express download using Jetty.
From v4.0 onwards, Railo will have a command line version, enabling CFML to be used as a general-purpose language, outside of the servlet environment.[10]
Railo since v3.1 is licensed as LGPL v2.1[11], with the source code available on GitHub[12]
[edit] Philosophy
A primary aim of Railo was to provide the functionality of ColdFusion using less resources and giving better performance, and the Railo Technologies team continue to "treat slowness as a bug" as a core development philosophy. Many performance tests have shown Railo to perform faster than other CFML engines.
In addition to this, Railo attempts to resolve many inconsistencies found in traditional CFML. These are either forced changes in behaviour, or configurable options in the Railo Administrator.
The Railo Technologies team have always been open to feedback and active at CFML community events, and are keen to remind people that Railo is a community project.
Railo Technologies also creates strong technology partnerships with CFML software companies, including Blue River Interactive Group (developers of Mura CMS), CONTENS Software GmbH (developers of CONTENS CMS), and Intergral GmbH (developers of FusionReactor and FusionDebug), to help ensure their software works well with Railo. In addition, Railo Technologies offer formal "Partner Programs" for Solutions (development), Hosting, and Training.[13]
[edit] Usage
Railo is used by a number of companies, notably including:
- Amtrak california (Californian rail company) [14]
- Apple Inc. (consumer electronics and software company) [15]
- IDG Germany (publisher of Computer World, GameStar, PCWorld magazines) [16]
- The List (UK entertainment magazine) [17]
- RTL Group (Europe's second largest TV, radio, and production company)[18]
- STV Player (Scottish video on-demand service) [19]
[edit] Features
- Supports object-oriented programming with inheritance, mixins and metaclasses
- Dynamic typing and Duck typing
- Literal notation for arrays and structs
- Embedding variables in strings (interpolation)
- Named arguments, Optional arguments, and Default arguments
- Three levels of object variable scope: This (object public), Variables (object private), Local (function private)
- Multiple global variable scope: Request, Session, Client, Application, Server, Cluster
- Distinct user-provided variable scopes: Form (post), Url (get), Cookie, CGI
- Automatic garbage collection, (via JVM)
- Global and local exception handling, (via
onErrorandtry/catch) - Custom dispatch behaviour (through
onMissingMethodand implicit getters and setters) - Implicit object conversion (through
_toString,_toNumeric,_toBoolean,_toDate) [20] - Native threads
- Support for Unicode, multiple character encodings, and i18n
- Large standard library, covering common web development needs
- Railo Extension Store[21] and Extension Manager[22] for easy installation of additional software and extensions
- Native plug-in API in CFML or Java[23]
- Native handling for easily creating and consuming webservices
- Separate GUI Administrators for individual web contexts, plus a global server administrator
- All admin settings configurable programmatically, or via editing XML config files
- Native Resources for all built-in filesystem tags and functions.[24]
- Clustering and Synchronization for both traditional and cloud servers
- Task Manager for scheduling repeated actions, or re-trying failed events[25]
- Native support for Hibernate ORM
- Large number of image manipulation functions
- Event Gateways for asynchronous code execution[26]
- Native support for a variety of different caching mechanisms[27]
- Native session management (CFML sessions or J2EE sessions) with
onSessionStartandonSessionEndtriggers. - Built-in user authentication and roles functionality.
[edit] Security
CFML has built-in functionality for preventing code injection, via the cfqueryparam tag, and functions such as HtmlEditFormat, XmlFormat, JsStringFormat. There are also third-party CFML implementations of the OWASP Enterprise Security API[28], and the AntiSamy project[29].
One of the key architecture decisions with Railo was to follow the JEE servlet model, with support for multiple independent web contexts on a single server. This is a key security factor, as it prevents unrelated applications from interfering with each other, as may happen on a shared ColdFusion server (which only has a single web context).
[edit] Syntax
Railo implements the CFML language - see the CFML syntax section for examples.
[edit] Differences
[edit] Differences from other languages
CFML has a tag-based syntax which is visually different from most other languages, though aside from this it is similar to other dynamic languages, with the following exceptions:
- CFML contains two syntaxes, a tag-based syntax (not XML compliant) and a C-style syntax called cfscript.
- Arrays in CFML are indexed from one, not from zero.
- CFML supports both ordered and named function arguments, or a combination.
- CFML does not have static variables.
[edit] Differences from Adobe ColdFusion
Whilst Railo implements CFML, and is generally compatible with Adobe ColdFusion (ACF), the original CFML engine, there are some notable differences between the two:
- Railo is Open Source LGPL v2.1 software. ACF is proprietary technology.
- Railo uses a multi web context architecture, compared to ACF's single web context.
- Railo allows you create "built-in" user-defined functions, using standard CFML.
- Railo is unable to decrypt (or execute) templates that have been encrypted with ACF's encryption mechanism.
- Railo has a significantly faster release cycle for major, minor, and patch releases.
- In Railo, scopes always take priority. In ACF, creating a variable named "Url" may block access to the Url scope. In Railo, the variable can only be accessed as "Variables.Url".
- Railo does not search for CFCs inside the custom tag path (it has a distinct CFC path instead).
[edit] See also
- Adobe ColdFusion - the original CFML engine.
- Open BlueDragon - another Open Source CFML engine.
- CFML - the language Railo uses.
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.getrailo.org/index.cfm/about-railo/
- ^ http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/06/railo_jboss
- ^ http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Rhylo
- ^ http://www.getrailo.org/index.cfm/about-railo/
- ^ http://web.archive.org/web/20051031204526/http://www.railo.ch/en/index.cfm
- ^ http://web.archive.org/web/20051031204526/http://www.railo.ch/en/index.cfm
- ^ http://www.getrailo.com/index.cfm/about-us/news/railo-31-released/
- ^ http://wiki.getrailo.org/wiki/What%27s_New
- ^ https://github.com/getrailo/railo/tree/develop
- ^ http://www.getrailo.org/index.cfm/documentation/railo-roadmap/
- ^ http://wiki.getrailo.org/wiki/RailoLicense
- ^ https://github.com/getrailo/railo
- ^ http://www.getrailo.com/index.cfm/partnerprograms/
- ^ Uses Railo-powered Mura CMS on http://www.amtrakcalifornia.com
- ^ Uses Railo-powered Mura CMS internally.
- ^ Railo powers IDG's German websites, e.g. http://www.computerwoche.de
- ^ Railo powers public website http://www.list.co.uk
- ^ Uses Railo internally, also uses Railo-powered CONTENS CMS to generate public websites.
- ^ Railo powers http://player.stv.tv service.
- ^ http://wiki.getrailo.org/wiki/TIPS:Implicit_Conversions/wiki/TIPS:Magic_Functions
- ^ http://blog.getrailo.com/post.cfm/railo-extension-store-has-opened
- ^ http://blog.getrailo.com/post.cfm/extension-manager
- ^ http://blog.getrailo.com/post.cfm/railo-3-1-building-your-own-built-in-function
- ^ http://classic.railo.ch/en/index.cfm?treeID=339
- ^ http://blog.getrailo.com/post.cfm/railo-3-0-released-features-part-iv-task-manager-remote-synchronization
- ^ http://wiki.getrailo.org/wiki/3-2:Event_gateways
- ^ http://blog.getrailo.com/post.cfm/cache-advanced-part-2
- ^ http://code.google.com/p/owasp-esapi-coldfusion/
- ^ http://www.petefreitag.com/item/760.cfm
[edit] External links
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