We are pleased to announce the release of BoxLang 1.0.0-Beta 8! This is our eigth beta marker and we are excited to report that we are 100% tag compatible with Adobe/Lucee and 99% BIF compatible. We can estimate that in the next 2 betas we will be 100% compatible with both Adobe/Lucee CFML engines when running BoxLang in compatibility mode. We will then begin our iterations on performance tuning, tooling updates, and innovation runs for an upcoming fall stable release.

What is BoxLang?

BoxLang is a modern dynamic JVM language that can be deployed on multiple runtimes: operating system (Windows/Mac/*nix/Embedded), web server, lambda, iOS, android, web assembly, and more. BoxLang combines many features from different programming languages, including Java, ColdFusion, Python, Ruby, Go, and PHP, to provide developers with a modern and expressive syntax.

It is also a drop-in replacement for Adobe ColdFusion and Lucee Engines.

How to get started?

Visit our docs at https://boxlang.ortusbooks.com and get coding today. If you want to try it out on the web then go to our online REPL at https://try.boxlang.io. You can also checkout our YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNE-ZbNnndB-40LvAbeSeT2Oi3V2gm_B8

Release Notes

Here are the latest release notes: https://boxlang.ortusbooks.com/readme/release-history/1.0.0-beta-8

New Features

BL-394 contractPath() BIF

This allows you to get a relative path or mapping path from a fully expanded path in your system. This is useful, to understand where a full absolute path comes from:

expandedPath = expandPath( "/brad" );  // /absolute/path/to/brad
contractPath( expandedPath ); // /brad

BL-395 Add loop times=n

We have added a new construct for looping by using the keyword times in your loop statements:

loop times=5 {
    result &= "*";
}

You can also use times and the index

loop times=5 index="i" {
    result &= i;
}

Or the item alias can be used as well as the index

loop times=5 item="i" {
    result &= i;
}

BL-396 Implement GetBaseTagList() and getBaseTagData()

These two methods are to bring us closer to finalizing the creation of custom templating language constructs.

• getBaseTagList( [caller] ) : Gets a comma-delimited list of uppercase ancestor tag names, as a string. The first list element is the current tag. If the current tag is nested, the next element is the parent tag. If the function is called for a top-level tag, it returns an empty string.
• getBaseTagData( tagName, [level=1] ) : Used within a custom tag. Finds calling (ancestor) tag by name and accesses its data.

BL-397 Improve parser error messages for unpopped parser modes

For code like

<--- I never end

or

foo = "trumcated...

instead of our default “unpopped modes”, detect what specific mode is on the stack (comment_mode, quotesMode, etc), find the start token (comment_start, OPEN_QUOTE, etc) and report the line number that the unclosed construct started, which could be hundreds of lines from the end of the file when parsing finally stopped.

BL-408 Transaction events

The BoxLang JDBC Transactions framework is now complete and incredibly robust. More than the other CFML engines or even Spring-based transaction demarcations. It is fully documented here:
https://boxlang.ortusbooks.com/boxlang-framework/transactions

We have also added several events that you can listen to during the transaction processes:

• onTransactionBegin
• onTransactionEnd
• onTransactionCommit
• onTransactionRollback
• onTransactionSetSavepoint
• onTransactionAcquire*
• onTransactionRelease*

Note that all these events (with the exception of onTransactionAcquire and onTransactionRelease) have the potential to be acting upon a no-op transaction, with a null connection parameter since no connection was ever obtained.

Improvements

BL-402 Allow for circular references in structs and arrays

BL-406 Java 21 update to URL creation as new URL is deprecated

BL-407 add getMimeType method in FileSystemUtil to make it easier to get mime types of remote files ( e.g. PDF creation )

Bugs

BL-398 <bx:loop query="query"> doesn't iterate over each item in the query, stays on the first item

BL-404 session scope can be null in onSessionEnd, causing errors

Tasks

BL-372 Create tests for all valid and invalid dot and array access expressions