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ColdBox Platform

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ColdBox Platform
Original author(s)Ortus Solutions, Corp
Developer(s)[1]
Initial releaseJune 15, 2006 (2006-06-15)
Stable release
4.2.0 / April 1, 2015 (2015-04-01)[1]
Written inCFML, Java
Operating systemCross-platform
TypeWeb application framework
LicenseApache License v2
Website[2]

ColdBox is an open source, conventions based modular web application framework intended for building enterprise applications with CFML. ColdBox uses Convention over configuration and aims for simplicity, rapid development. It makes use of Model-view-controller, Dependency injection, Unit testing, Aspect-oriented programming architectural patterns. ColdBox allows for development of stand-alone modules which can be shared across apps. ColdBox is an active and heavily documented CFML framework.[2]

History

  • ColdBox was developed by Luis Majano and open sourced for the first time in 2006.
  • Since 2006 there have been over 30 releases.
  • ColdBox became a professional open source project in 2008, when professional services were offered by the parent company Ortus Solutions, Corp.
  • The latest generation version is 4.2.0 released in April 1, 2016[3]
  • In 2012, ColdBox Platform joined the Open CFML Foundation[4] (http://www.opencfmlfoundation.org/projects/coldbox/) in an effort to support and maintain open source CFML projects.

Platforms

Coldbox is supported on Lucee, Railo (Two popular open source CFML engines) and Adobe's Coldfusion application servers.

It has supported IDE plugins for, Sublime Text, Eclipse IDE, Adobe ColdFusion Builder.

Usage

Below is a list of some notable users of the Coldbox Platform.[5]

Overview

High-level attributes of ColdBox:

  • An MVC web framework for the ColdFusion platform.
  • Modular development platform
  • Conventions over configurations (No XML)
  • Integrates with Hibernate ColdFusion ORM.
  • Offers a consistent framework aiming to reduce confusion and be easy to learn.
  • Persistence abstraction layers (caching).
  • Built-in logging library.
  • Built-in dependency injection and AOP capabilities.
  • Internal Domain Specific Languages to define caching, DI/AOP, logging and mocking.
  • Ability to do unit and integration testing.
  • Ajax support which is easy to extend and customize.
  • RESTful and SOAP web service support[6]
  • Adobe Flex/Air integration and monitoring.
  • Provides multi-development environment capabilities
  • Has over 700 pages of documentation


Internal Frameworks

The ColdBox Platform comprises three independent frameworks:

  • LogBox - Logging Library
  • WireBox - Dependency Injection and AOP library
  • CacheBox - Caching Engine and Aggregator
  • ColdBox MVC - MVC conventions based web framework

Controllers

ColdBox is conventions-based framework that is programmed in CFML, differing from other CFML MVC frameworks that use XML declarative logic for their controllers.

Below is an example of a controller: 

component{

	// Use Dependency injection for hibernate based virtual services
	property name="userService" inject="entityservice:User";
	
	/**
	* Return immediate HTML
	*/
	function sayHello(event){
	 	return "hello";
	}

	/**
	* Return immediate JSON
	*/
	function sayHello(event){
	 	return serializeJSON( userService.get( rc.id ).getMemento() );
	}
	
	/**
	* Return content in multiple formats
	*/
	function list(event){
		prc.data = userService.list();
	 	// render out all users in json format
		event.renderData( data=prc.data, formats="json,xml,pdf,html" );
	}
}

URL Mappings

ColdBox supports URL mappings and routing Rails style but adapted for ColdFusion. It also supports the creation of RESTful routing: 

addRoute(
	pattern="api/user/:username",
	handler="user",
	action={
		get='list', 
		post='create', 
		put='update', 
		delete='remove'
	}
);

RESTful URLs

ColdBox allows for easy creation of RESTful URLs via URL mappings and extension detection. Natively ColdBox can detect any extension when supplied to an URI resource: 

http://api.coldbox.org/rest/user/lui.json
http://api.coldbox.org/rest/user/lui.xml

It allows for the detection of such extensions, security around them and the ability to customize the extensions.

Ajax support

ColdBox supports all JavaScript frameworks that provide Ajax capabilities. It also provides an auto-marshalling function to render any object to the following formats natively: XML, WDDX, JSON, JSONP, TEXT, PDF, CUSTOM.

SOAP-Adobe Flex/Air Support

ColdBox offers support for creating, monitoring and developing SOAP web services and Flex/Air remote components. It allows for having one development paradigm for multiple GUI interfaces.

References

  1. ^ https://www.ortussolutions.com/blog/coldbox-420-released
  2. ^ ColdFusion MVC Framework
  3. ^ https://www.ortussolutions.com/blog/coldbox-420-released
  4. ^ http://www.opencfmlfoundation.org/projects/coldbox/
  5. ^ http://www.ortussolutions.com/products/coldbox#overview
  6. ^ How do you build a RESTful service in ColdFusion
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