We are very excited to announce the official release of ColdBox 4.0.  Work started a year ago with a very aggressive plan to overhaul the core and refocus the platform for agility, speed, and control.  We carved out tons of legacy support, leaving a slim and  fast MVC shell.  ColdBox 4 has 80% less code and is even faster than before as all the extra libraries and plugins have been externalized into modules. 

Speaking of modules, they have been greatly enhanced and upgraded to first-class citizens of the framework.  All of the tooling that makes the ColdBox Platform standout from other frameworks such as validation, ORM services, storage facades, and debuggers are still available but now a-la carte in the form of pluggable modules.  

Developers are also empowered more than ever before to write reusable modules that can be publicly shared, and plugged into any ColdBox MVC app for instant convention-based functionality that increased productivity and makes code-sharing even easier.  With the advent of CommandBox, our new powerful package manager and CLI as well as our new box.json package conventions, managing these modules as packaged dependencies is easy and  portable.

Don't believe us?  Try out ColdBox 4 right now on any computer.  Download CommandBox to your desktop and double click on it.  Now, type the following simple commands:

CommandBox> mkdir mySite
CommandBox> cd mySite
CommandBox> coldbox create app myApp --installColdBox
CommandBox> start

That's it!  In a few seconds, the embedded server will spring to life and a browser window will open with your new ColdBox 4.0 site.  Want to use the awesome validation features of ColdBox?  Just type this in your command line window:

CommandBox> install cbvalidation
CommandBox> restart

Welcome to the new age of CFML developers who are no longer held back by old tools, crusty processes, the lack of automation, and frameworks that don't work FOR them!  

ColdBox Manual

We are also announcing the availability of our new documentation in book format we handsomely call: The ColdBox Manual.  We have been listening to all the feedback about the docs and organization and we have made great progress to migrate all our documentation in many formats: HTML, ePub, mobi, PDF and more.  Anybody can also contribute to our documentation as it is available via GitHub with an awesome markdown editor from Gitbook.io.  You can also subscribe to get notified of changes and updates of the documentation, so go ahead and subscribe.

Roll Excitement

We are so excited for the future we can barely hold it in.  Don't take our word for it though.  Dig into the What's New guide to see what you're missing!

Official ColdBox download page

CommandBox Getting Started Guide