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Every ColdBox install comes with an instance of the CacheBox cache aggregator ready to go.  There are two caches that have to be defined: default, and template.  The former is the default provider used if you don't specify another one.  The latter provider is used internally for cached events and views.  What's cool about CacheBox as a cache aggregator is that you can configure as many named providers as you like to report and tune separate areas of your...

If you use CacheBox (and if you use ColdBox to any extent, you do) it is important to inspect your cache performance from time to time.  A poorly tuned cache can bring about unexpected performance issues when your application gets under load (such as the dog-pile effect).

 

Since CacheBox is a cache aggregator that means it has the ability to wrap up multiple caches from different sources under one API.  By default, ColdBox c...

If you've used WireBox for autowiring the CFCs in your application, you may have reached a point where you were having trouble figuring out what was going on behind the scenes.  This can be especially true if you've added auutowire metdata to a CFC, but the dependencies still aren't getting injected.

 

WireBox actually has pretty robust debug-level logging built in via LogBox that will tell you everything it is doing, but the ques...

One of the handy things about the ColdBox settings CFC is you can store ad-hoc settings for your application which can be retrieved or injected anywhere in your application.  

 

Remember, since your settings config is just a struct in a CFC, you aren't limited to settings which are strings.  You can store pretty much any kind of setting that will fit into a ColdFusion variable.

 

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ColdBox MVC, Tutorials

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If you've ever wanted to modify any behavior of the core ColdBox controller, you can now do so as of version 3.5.3 with the Controller Decorator feature.  This is accomplished much like the Request Context Decorator.

 

First, add a configuration setting called "ControllerDecorator" in the coldbox struct of your config file.  

 

/config/ColdBox.cfc

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ColdBox MVC, Tutorials

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The request collection is a struct of values which are aggregated from the FORM and URL scopes as well as remote parameters to proxy requests.  The data in your request collection is available via methods in the event object or by referencing the "rc" struct directly.

 

event.getValue('foo')

or

rc.foo

 

One of the most powerful parts of the ColdBox framework are interceptors.  Interception points are events that happen over the life cycle of your application or a user request which are broadcast by the framework.  Examples would be preProcess (when a request first comes in), onException (when an error happens), or preViewRender (before a view is rendered).  If you any code you want to execute at those points, or if you want to override/modify the default...

In the past we've talked about implicit views in ColdBox which mean that if the action in your event handler doesn't call setView() explicitly, ColdBox will use conventions to try and find the view to render.  Well, ColdBox also supports something called Implicit View Dispatch which goes one step further and allows you to dispatch a view to the user without running any event at all.

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Hopefully you are already familiar with the format of a default ColdBox URL when using the SES interceptor.  

 

mysite.com/index.cfm/myHandlerName/myActionName

 

Of course, a simple rewrite rule can simplify that even further to:

 

mysite.com/myHandlerName/myActionName

 <...

In a ColdBox request, form, URL, and remote (proxy request) variables are merged together into the request collection which is accessible via event.getCollection() or as the "rc" struct passed into every action in your handlers.  Data needed to process that request can be added and retrieved from this collection at any time during the request as it is available to any layouts and views as well.  

 

What you may not now howeve...