Blog

Coldbox Legacy App Demo

Brad Wood January 18, 2016

Spread the word

Brad Wood

January 18, 2016

Spread the word


Share your thoughts

There are a lot of people out there in the CFML world managing legacy codebases.  Some of them use frameworks that are no longer maintained, and many  use no framework at all.  A common question that I get is whether an app can be slowly converted over to  ColdBox without having to rewrite everything at once.  The answer is YES!  ColdBox will comfortably live alongside your legacy code, giving you the chance to slowly convert it over as you get the chance.  

Since this has come up at conferences and in the CFML Slack team so often I created a demo app that shows legacy pages living alongside MVC as well as some tricks to even keep you old files in the URL even though the requests are being routed through a modern MVC framework.  This can be important for companies dealing with a lot of bookmarked pages out there.

The code is on GitHub here:

https://github.com/bdw429s/coldbox-legacy-app-demo

 To get this working sample app  up and running literally in seconds, even on a computer with no server installed, just grab CommandBox and run the following commands from the interactive shell:

mkdir coldbox-legacy-app-demo --cd
install bdw429s/coldbox-legacy-app-demo
server start

In a few seconds a browser window will open and you can click around through the menu items, reading the descriptions on each page that details how it works.  Then peruse through the small codebase to see how everything is set up.

There's many ways to set up ColdBox MVC inside your legacy application, and hopefully this sample app will give you some ideas and understanding to get underway.

 

Add Your Comment

Recent Entries

MatchBox and WebAssembly: Running BoxLang in the Browser and at the Edge

MatchBox and WebAssembly: Running BoxLang in the Browser and at the Edge

The MatchBox open beta is live at https://boxlang.ortusbooks.com/boxlang-framework/matchbox, and it brings something genuinely new to the BoxLang ecosystem: a path into WebAssembly.

That means BoxLang code can now move into browser applications, static-site deployments, edge runtimes, and WASI-style containers - without requiring a JVM. The feature is still beta, but the core direction is already useful: write BoxLang, compile it with MatchBox, and ship the generated WASM artifact to wherever a small portable runtime makes sense.

Jacob Beers
Jacob Beers
June 04, 2026