What's new in ColdFusion (2018 release)

Last updated on Apr 29, 2024

Adobe ColdFusion Builder is End of Life from Oct 1, 2024

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As Adobe continues to focus on ColdFusion Builder extension for Visual Studio Code as the IDE for Adobe ColdFusion, we have decided to End of Life (EOL) Adobe ColdFusion Builder on Oct 1, 2024.

View the End of Life (EOL) announcement for ColdFusion Builder.

New features & enhancements in Adobe ColdFusion

What's new and changed in ColdFusion (2018 release)

New User Interface for ColdFusion Administrator

ColdFusion Administrator now sports a cleaner, more intuitive User Interface. The interface is arranged in tabs for easy navigation. The search experience is also enhanced in this release. When you enter a search string, you can see recommendations for the search term.

For more information, see New UI for Administrator.

Performance Monitoring Toolset

The 2018 release of Adobe ColdFusion Enterprise and Standard editions now offer you the Performance Monitoring Toolset, an all-new solution that ensures that your applications are as optimized as the high-performing ColdFusion engine.

For more information, see Performance Monitoring Toolset.

Server Auto-Lockdown

Secure your ColdFusion server against vulnerabilities and other malicious attacks. Run the Auto-Lockdown tool and lock down ColdFusion instances.

For more information, see Server Auto-Lockdown.

Core language enhancements

NULL support
Closures in tags
Asynchronous programming using Future
Enhanced Object-Oriented Programming with the following:
Optional semi-colons in a cfscript code
Negative index support for strings
Chaining of member functions

Command Line Interface and REPL

ColdFusion (2018 release) introduces Read-Eval-Print-Loop (REPL). REPL, a shell, is an interactive programming environment that takes single user inputs, evaluates them, and returns the result to the user.

For more information, see REPL.

REST Playground

Try out your ColdFusion REST services in the new REST Playground. Use the REST Playground to test, develop, and document web services.

For more information, see REST enhancements in ColdFusion (2018 release).

New caching engines

Boost performance through caching with the newly added engines:

Memcached
JCS
Redis
Custom cache plugin

For more information, see Caching enhancements.

Changes in ColdFusion Builder

ColdFusion Builder (2018 release) includes the following:

Access codes from remote systems
Import code profiler data
Introduction of Cordova
Eclispse upgrade to Oxygen

For more information, see What's new in ColdFusion Builder.

Other changes

Optional semi-colons

In this release, we have added support for making semicolons optional in cfscript. For example, the snippet below does not use any semicolon at the end of a statement.

<cfscript>
 animals = ['cat','dog','fish','bison']
 lastAnimal=animals.last()
 writeOutput("The last element of the array is: " & lastAnimal)
</cfscript>

A semicolon is not optional in a FOR loop. However, a semicolon is optional in a while loop.

<cfscript>
 for(i=1;i<9;i++){
  for(j=1;j<=i;j++)
   writeoutput("*")
  writeoutput("<br/>")
 }
</cfscript>

A semicolon is optional in generic syntax for ColdFusion tags. For example,

<cfscript>
 cfhttp(url="http://localhost:8500", timeout="60")
</cfscript>

A semicolon is also optional in script-based components. For example,

component{
 function myfunc(){
  writeoutput("Optional Semi Colon Example")
  }
}

In closures in tags,

A semi-colon is also optional while defining the body of closure functions in tags. For example,

<cfset closureFunc1=function(){
  return true
    }>

Negative index support for strings

In the 2018 release of ColdFusion, there is support for negative index for a string’s left and right functions.

<cfscript>
 myString='Welcome to ColdFusion'
 writeoutput( myString.right( -1 ) & "<br>")
 writeoutput( myString.left( -1 ) & "<br>")
 writeoutput( myString.right( -8 ) & "<br>")
 writeoutput( myString.left( -8 ) & "<br>")
</cfscript>

Output

elcome to ColdFusion
Welcome to ColdFusio
to ColdFusion
Welcome to Co

Chaining of member functions

You can chain member functions together to produce a desired output.

<cfscript>
       // Example 1
       myarray=ArrayNew(1);
       new_arr= myarray.clear().Resize(10).set(1,10,"blah");
       writedump(new_arr);
</cfscript>

<cfscript>
     // Example 2
     ordered_struct=["key1":"val1","key2":"val2"]
     unordered_struct={"key3":"val3","key4":"val4"}
       new_struct=unordered_struct.append(ordered_struct).update("key4","updated val4").insert("key5","inserted val5");
     writedump(new_struct);
     writedump(unordered_struct);         
</cfscript>

Apart from adding these functions, the following member functions return appropriate array or struct values, as required when chaining the functions.

Array
- arrayObj.clear()
- arrayObj.deleteAt()
- arrayObj.delete()
- arrayObj.deleteNoCase()
- arrayObj.insertAt()
- arrayObj.prepend()
- arrayObj.resize()
- arrayObj.set()
- arrayObj.sort()
- arrayObj.swap()

Struct
- structObj.delete()
- structObj.insert()
- structObj.update()

Async Member Functions
- then(UDFMethod method)
- then(UDFMethod method, long timeout)
- error(UDFMethod method)
- error(UDFMethod method, long timeout)
- get()
- get(long timeout)
- cancel()
- isCancelled()
- isDone()

New operator

In this release, there is support for new operator/syntax for com, component, CORBA, Java,. Net, webservice. For examples,

obj1 = new java("java.lang.String")
m = new component("employee ")

For examples,

Employee.cfc

component {
 public numeric function getPaid() {
  var salary=40*20;
  return salary;
 }
}

Manager.cfc

component extends="employee"{
 public numeric function getPaid(){
  var salary=1.5*Super.getPaid();
  return salary;
 }
}

President.cfc

component extends="manager"{
 public numeric function getpaid(){
  var salary=1.5*Super.getPaid();
  return salary;
 }
}

Payday.cfm

<cfscript>
    // change the paths as required 
    empObj=new component("path/to/employee.cfc"); 
 manObj=new component("path/to/manager.cfc");
 presObj=new component("path/to/president.cfc");
 writeOutput("Employee earns: " & empObj.getPaid() & "<br/>");
 writeOutput("Manager earns: " & manObj.getPaid() & "<br/>");
 writeOutput("President earns: " & presObj.getPaid() & "<br/>");
</cfscript>

Named parameters in functions

Named parameters enable you to specify an argument for a parameter by associating the argument with the parameter's name rather than with the parameter's position in the parameter list. You can use named parameters in functions and constructors.

In earlier versions of ColdFusion, named parameters were allowed in user-defined functions and in component constructors.

In ColdFusion (2018 release), you can use named parameters for built in functions.

In previous versions of ColdFusion, the order of parameters in a BIF was necessarily fixed, since it was the only way that ColdFusion could identify which value is intended to be used for which purpose. Now with named parameters, the position or order of parameters does not matter; the arguments are evaluated in the order in which they appear in the list.

For parameter names, refer this document.

<cfscript>
 myarray= [4,2,1,3]
 writeoutput(ArrayFind(array=myarray, value="4")) 
 writeoutput(Arrayfind(callback=function(index,item){
  if(index == item)
   return true
   else
    return false
 }, array=myarray))
</cfscript>

ArrayFind can either accept a value to find in an array or a callback that has the searching logic. You can use both value or callback with named parameters as shown in the snippet above.

String literals

In this release of ColdFusion, there is support for string literals. For example,

<cfscript>
 writeOutput("ABCDEFGHIJ".substring(1,7).substring(2,5).lCase().len());
</cfscript>

Hibernate upgrade

ColdFusion (2018 release) uses Hibernate 5.2. The following are the highlights:

Hibernate 5 XML Parser now uses JAXP (Java API for XML Processing). As a result, the way of declaring the class name in hbmxml ORM mapping file has changed, for example, cfc:cfsuite.orm.settings.dialect.invalid_dialect.invalid_dialect to cfc.cfsuite.orm.settings.dialect.invalid_dialect.invalid_dialect.
Hibernate 5 no longer supports seqhilo generator.
Hibernate 5 no longer supports offset queryoptions as it was inefficient and most of the underlying databases have the support for offset. However, this functionality can be enabled by setting the flag hibernate.legacy_limit_handler to true in the hibernate configuration file.
Hibernate 5 Schema Update/Export validates the case sensitivity in table names. If the table name defined in CFC and database are in different cases, it does not work. The previous version of Hibernate allowed tables names defined in CFC and database to be case-insensitive.
You must update an entity inside a transaction.

Changes to wsconfig tool

In the wsconfig tool, there is a new option related to tuning of connectors.

Heartbeat Interval in seconds: The time interval in seconds after which the connector load data is sent to ColdFusion.

New Admin APIs

verifyRedisCacheStorageConnection

Description: Verifies connection to the Redis cache storage.

Syntax:

void verifyRedisCacheStorageConnection (sessionStorageHost, numeric sessionStoragePort, sessionStoragePassword)

Parameter	Req/Opt	Default	Description
sessionStorageHost	Optional	Any	The hostname for Redis cache storage.
sessionStoragePort	Optional	Numeric	The port number for Redis cache storage.
sessionStoragePassword	Optional	Any	The password for the Redis cache storage.

setServerCachingEngine

Description: Changes the caching engine at the server level.

Syntax:

void setServerCachingEngine (required engine)

Parameter	Req/Opt	Default	Description
engine	Required	Any	Ehcache JCS Memcached Redis

setJCSClusterDsnName

Description: Set the data source for JCS cluster.

Syntax:

void setJCSClusterDsnName (required dsn, required boolean createTables)

Parameter	Req/Opt	Default	Description
dsn	Required	Any	Name of the data source.
createTables	Required	Any	Whether to create a table.

setCachingRedisServer

Description: Set the caching engine for Redis.

Syntax:

void setCachingRedisServer (required host, required port, required password, required boolean cluster)

Parameter	Req/Opt	Default	Description
host	Required	any	Host address of the server.
port	Required	any	Port number of the server.
password	Required	any	Password of the server.
cluster	Required	Boolean	Whether a cluster is enabled in Redis.

getMemcachedServer

Description: Gets the details of the Memcached caching engine.

Syntax:

any getMemcachedServer ()

Bugs fixed in ColdFusion (2018 release)

To see the list of bugs fixed, see Bugs fixed.

Known issues in ColdFusion (2018 release)

To see the list of known issues, see Known issues.

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What's new in ColdFusion (2018 release)

Adobe ColdFusion Builder is End of Life from Oct 1, 2024

What's new and changed in ColdFusion (2018 release)

New User Interface for ColdFusion Administrator

Performance Monitoring Toolset

Server Auto-Lockdown

Core language enhancements

Command Line Interface and REPL

REST Playground

New caching engines

Changes in ColdFusion Builder

Other changes

Optional semi-colons

Negative index support for strings

Chaining of member functions

New operator

Named parameters in functions

String literals

Hibernate upgrade

Changes to wsconfig tool

New Admin APIs

Bugs fixed in ColdFusion (2018 release)

Known issues in ColdFusion (2018 release)

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