ColdBox Platform

ColdBox is a professional open source enterprise, conventions based web application framework designed for applications written in ColdFusion Markup Language. ColdBox was the first ColdFusion framework to leverage conventions over configurations and it aims for simplicity, rapid development, and makes use of the Model-view-controller, Dependency_injection, Unit_testing, Aspect-oriented_programming architectural pattern. ColdBox is comprehensive and modular, which helps address most infrastructure concerns of typical ColdFusion applications

History

• ColdBox was developed by Luis Majano and open sourced for the first time in 2006.
• Since 2006 there have been over 25 releases.
• ColdBox became a professional open source project when professional services where created by the parent company Ortus Solutions, Corp in 2008.
• The latest generation version is 3.5.0 Beta released in November 2011

Overview

ColdBox has been developed with a number of goals in mind:

• Provide a high-productivity web framework for the ColdFusion platform.
• Integrate with hibernate ColdFusion ORM to allow for faster development of relational applications
• Offer a consistent framework which reduces confusion and is easy to learn.
• Offer documentation for those parts of the framework which matter for its users. It has over 700 pages of documentation in the online wiki
• Provide what users expect in areas which are often complex and inconsistent:
  • Powerful and consistent persistence abstraction layers.
  • Powerful and consistent conventions over configurations (No XML)
  • Internal Domain Specific Languages to define caching, DI/AOP, logging and mocking.
  • Ability to do unit and integration testing
  • Good Ajax support which is easy to extend and customize.
  • Powerful RESTful and SOAP web service support
  • Powerful and Consistent Adobe Flex/Air integration and monitoring
• Provide 25 sample applications which demonstrate the power of the framework.
• Provide multi-development environment capabilities

Internal Frameworks

The ColdBox Platform is unique in that it aggregates 5 different frameworks into one ColdFusion development platform:

• LogBox - Enterprise Logging Library
• WireBox - Enterprise Dependency Injection and AOP library
• CacheBox - Enterprise Caching Engine and Aggregator
• MockBox - Testing, Mocking and Stubbing library
• ColdBox - MVC conventions based web framework

External links

• Official site
• Documentation
• GitHub code repository
• Online API
• ForgeBox - community based code sharing
• Official blog
• Google Group

High productivity

ColdBox has seven properties which attempt to increase productivity when compared to traditional web frameworks:

• No XML configuration
• Built in enterprise logging
• Built in enterprise caching
• Built in dependency injection and AOP capabilities
• Ready-to-use application templates
• Functionality available through mixins and conventions
• Built in RESTful and SOAP web service capabilities

Documentation

ColdBox's documentation is what sets it apart with over 700 pages worth of documentation online, professional training and books.

Custom Conventions

Conventions over configurations is the standard in ColdBox development. It does not rely on the verbosity of xml logic and uses ColdFusion and a set of conventions for development. Conventions are also used for registering events, interceptors, plugins and much more.

Coldfusion Controllers instead of XML Controllers

ColdBox doesn't rely on XML declarative logic where you have to define an event, what it does and where does it go. ColdBox is a conventions based framework that will let you program in ColdFusion to get things done.

Below is an example of a controller:

component{
 
  // Use DI for hibernate virtual services
  property name="userService" inject="entityservice:User"; 
 
   function sayHello(event){
     return "hello";
  }
 
   function list(event){
     // render out all users in json format
     event.renderData(type="json", data = userService.list() );
  }
}

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
• 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.

Companies providing ColdBox development services

• Ortus Solutions provides consulting services being the main developer of the platform.
• Computer Know How provides ColdBox services as being a ColdBox Alliance Partner