Railo

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Railo is a ColdFusion compiler for translating and executing of CFML-based websites. The compiler translates the ColdFusion code into Java classes which can be executed on a Java server. Railo also comes with a runtime engine, which contains all necessary libraries for the translated code. Railo automatically detects when to translate a CFM file or when to use the runtime engine. Railo compares best with JSP. JSP uses different syntax but the main functionality is almost the same. Because Railo implements most of the JSP interfaces, it is highly compatible with JSP.


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[edit] Railo Flavours

Railo comes in three main product editions:

  • Railo Express (aka Railix) is the Live version of Railo, which utilises Jetty to run on a host machine without requiring installation. Railix is ideal for quickly trying out Railo, or for development away from one's main development machine, but it is not recommended for production use.
  • Railo Server is the main version of Railo which can be integrated into a standard web server, and is suitable for production use.
  • Railo WAR is the Web Archive version, suitable for use on any standardized J2EE server.
  • There is also Railo Custom allowing you to customise Railo to your specific needs.


Railo is available in four different versions, depending on what you need it for:

  • Railo Developer is the default and for development use only.
  • Railo Community is a free version for low budget business applications, and is limited only by having no cfsearch/cfcollection/cfindex tags, no CFX support and the ability to create only one datasource.
  • Railo Professional is the main/unrestricted version and costs €200, but is limited to a single webroot. (Additional webroots cost €100 each)
  • Railo Enterprise is the same as professional, but without a limit on the number of webroots allowed. It is priced at €1600. In addition, it contains the full server administrator for configuring all web security and default settings for each single web.

[edit] CFML Compatibility

The current release, Railo 1.0, is mostly compatible with CFMX 6.1, but has a small number of discrepancies. (Notably it does not support implicit parsing of date values from strings, requiring the ParseDateTime function to be used.) There are also several additions/extensions to CFML provided by Railo, including the ability to quickly define Arrays, Structs and Querys in a single function. Performance is what makes Railo so interesting. Even with debugging turned on, Railo seems to be the fastest CFML-engine available.

[edit] Framework Compatibility

Any CFML framework compatible CFMX 6.1 is likely to work on Railo. The following is a list of popular frameworks known to run on Railo:

[edit] CFML Resources

For a list of useful resources for developers, see the ColdFusion Development aides section.

[edit] External links