Last updated: December 3, 2002
For the latest release notes, click here.
This document contains additions to the ColdFusion MX documentation.
The following table describes functionality in ColdFusion MX that is not described in the packaged documentation.
Note: cf_root in this section refers to the directory in which you installed ColdFusion MX. By default, this is C:\CFusionMX in Windows and /opt/coldfusionmx on UNIX.
| Product Area | Change |
| IIS configuration | See the Release Notes for an important change in configuring IIS for ColdFusion MX. |
| Installation on HP-UX | The following are the required settings for HP-UX:
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| Web server configuration (general) | If you switch web servers after the initial installation, you must move or map to your old web root directory in order to use your new web server to access the ColdFusion administrator and documentation. Specifically, map to or move the CFIDE and CFDOCS directories in your old web root directory. For example, after running the command to switch from the standalone web server to IIS (assuming that you accepted the default installation paths for both), you can move the CFIDE and CFDOCS directories from C:\CFusionMX\wwwroot to C:\InetPub\wwwroot.CAUTION: Do not touch the WEB-INF folder. |
| Web server configuration (Apache or Netscape) | ColdFusion MX does not set the default document for Apache or Netscape - you must do it manually. Here's how: Netscape: In the obj.conf file, add index.cfm to the list (separate entries with a comma). Example: PathCheck fn=find-index index-names="index.html,home.html,index.cfm" Apache: In the httpd.conf file, add index.cfm to the list (separate entries with a space). Example: <IfModule mod_dir.c> DirectoryIndex index.html home.html index.cfm </IfModule> |
| Web server configuration (Linux SuSE) | You can configure the Zeus web server 4.1 on Linux SuSE to use ColdFusion MX. The Zeus connector uses the following Netscape module: libjrun_nsapi35.so Configuring Zeus 4.1 for ColdFusion MX To configure Zeus 4.1 to use ColdFusion MX on SuSE, run the following command on a single (long) line: cf_root/jre/bin/java -jar /opt/coldfusionmx/runtime/lib/wsconfig.jar -ws zeus -dir /usr/local/zeus/ns-config/https-<your site>/config -v The following is a sample command: /opt/coldfusionmx/jre/bin/java -jar /opt/coldfusionmx/runtime/lib/wsconfig.jar -ws zeus -dir /usr/local/zeus/ns-config/https-surf/config -v Removing the Zeus 4.1 configuration for ColdFusion MX To remove the Zeus 4.1 configuration for ColdFusion MX, run the following command on a single (long) line: cf_root/jre/bin/java -jar /opt/coldfusionmx/runtime/lib/wsconfig.jar -ws zeus -dir /usr/local/zeus/ns-config/https-<your site>/config -v -r The following is a sample command: /opt/coldfusionmx/jre/bin/java -jar /opt/coldfusionmx/runtime/lib/wsconfig.jar -ws zeus -dir /usr/local/zeus/ns-config/https-surf/config -v -r |
| Built-in ColdFusion MX web server | This section describes how to change the web document root for the built-in ColdFusion MX web server in Windows and on UNIX. Windows
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| Dynamic class reloading | Note: The directory paths in this section are written with backslashes (\). For UNIX, replace the backslashes with forward slashes (/). Dynamic class reloading for Java servlets classes and forcfobject Java classes is disabled by default in ColdFusion MX. To enable dynamic class reloading, do the following:
Note: The cf_root\wwwroot\WEB-INF\classes directory must contain class files only, not class archives. Java class archives belong under thecf_root\wwwroot\WEB-INF\lib directory. |
| cfhttp | You can now use cfhttp to post raw XML data, by using a new parameter type called XML. This sends the raw XML data with content-type = text/xml. The following is a samplecfhttp call to post raw XML data: <cfhttp url="..." method="POST"><cfhttpparam name="param1" value="<xml string>" type="XML"></cfhttp> Also, cfhttp allows only one cfhttpparam for a post when posting raw XML data. |
| cfregistry (Windows only) |
To support very large sets of registry data,cfregistry now supports the startRow andmaxRows attributes when used in conjunction withaction="GETALL" and type="KEY". ThestartRow value is the first row of the results to actually include in the result query (default: 1). ThemaxRows value is the number of rows after thestartRow to include in the result query (default: all remaining). These attributes will help you to avoid running out of memory with very large data sets. However, please note that the ColdFusion-related values that are stored in the registry are subject to change; therefore, for best results, store your data in a database. |
| cfset | The cfset tag has a new keyword, var, that specifies that the variable being defined is a function-local variable, a variable that is only available inside the body of a function. The usage is as follows: <cfset var variableName="value"> The cfset tag var keyword is the equivalent of the var statement incfscript. You must place all cfset tags that use the var keyword at the beginning of thecffunction tag body, before any other ColdFusion tags. You can use the var keyword in a cfset tag only if the tag is inside the body of a cffunction tag. If you use the var keyword in acfset tag outside a cffunction tag body, ColdFusion displays an error message. The following example shows how to use the new keyword: <cffunction name="myFunct"><cfset var myVar = "This is a test"><cfreturn myVar &" message."></cffunction><cfoutput>#myFunct()#</cfoutput> In this example, the variable myVar exists only when the function myFunct executes, and it is not available elsewhere on the ColdFusion page. For more information on using the var keyword, see theDocumentation Updates page on the Macromedia website. |
| When you use the cfset tag to call a function, you do not need to assign the function return value to a variable if the function does not return a value or you do not need to use the value returned by the function. For example, the following line is a valid ColdFusion cfset tag: <cfset StructDelete(Application, "MyVariable")> |
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| REFind() | The REFind() function returns subexpressions as follows: it returns one position/length pair for the entire match and subsequent position/length pairs for each parenthesized group within the match. In ColdFusion 5, in some cases this function would not include a position/length pair for each parenthesized group. |
| Session management | In the past, developers have used various methods to clear a user's session. In ColdFusion MX, the best way to programmatically expire J2EE sessions is to simply remove the session variables, as in the following example: <cfset structDelete(session,"loggedIn")><cfset structDelete(session,"username")> You can still use this method successfully in ColdFusion MX. Another method that has been used in the past is to redeclare the Application scope with a zero-length timeout for the session, as in the following example: <cfapplication name="membership" sessionmanagement="yes" sessiontimeout="#CreateTimespan(0,0,0,0)#"> This method relies on the ColdFusion engine to delete the session variables for them. The ColdFusion engine can take up to 20 seconds before the session variables are actually deleted. If you want to clear this type of session directly without waiting for the engine, and the Use J2EE Sessions option is enabled in the ColdFusion Administrator, you can use the following code: <cfset getPageContext().getSession().invalidate()> This code creates a pointer to the servlet page context and calls an internal method to reset the session. Or you can just use the first method (usingstructDelete), since it works in every case. |
| Formatting functions for dates and times | The following functions now support the mask attribute values short, medium, long, and full: DateFormat,TimeFormat, LSDateFormat, andLSTimeFormat. For more information, see CFML Reference. |
| Query of Queries | If you create a Query object with QueryNew() and populate a column with dates that have one-digit months (for example, 4/24/02), the dates are preserved as a string inside the Query object until a Query a Query is applied to the Query object, as in the following example: <cfset queryAddRow(q1,3)><cfset q1['col1'][1] = 1><cfset q1['col2'][1] = "4/24/02"><cfset q1['col1'][2] = 2><cfset q1['col2'][2] = "3/26/04"><cfset q1['col1'][3] = 3><cfset q1['col2'][3] = "2/28/03"><cfquery name="qoq" dbtype="query"> select * from q1</cfquery> Once a Query of Query is applied to the query object, the string representations of the dates are turned into date objects. For example, (row 1, col2) becomes {ts '2002-04-24 00:00:00}. Any subsequent access to these cells is in that format. If you want to retrieve it back in its original format you must use useDateFormat and apply the "mm/dd/yy" mask. |
| Secure LDAP connections | You no longer need a Netscape Cert7 format certificate store file (cert7.db) to make a secure LDAP (SSL v2) connection. You can now omit the second token of the string for the secure attribute of the cfldap tag that was formally used to specify the location of the cert7.db file, and just useSECURE="CFSSL_BASIC" instead. This is becausecfldap SSL support in ColdFusion MX now uses Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE), and JSSE does not accept cert7.db as a keystore. This is how it works: ColdFusion MX uses Java Native Directory Interface (JNDI), the LDAP provider, and an SSL package to create the client side of an SSL communication. The LDAP server provides the server side. The LDAP server that cfldap is connecting to using SSL holds an SSL server certificate. During the initial SSL connection, the LDAP server presents its server certificate to the client. If the client trusts this certificate, the SSL connection is established and secure LDAP communication can begin. The simplest way to establish this trust is to store the server's certificate in the jre/lib/security/cacerts keystore of the JRE used with ColdFusion MX. This certificate is different from cert7.db. This certificate must be in X.509 format to import it. The simplest way to import to the client's keystore is to use the keytool command to import the server's cert into the cacerts store in /jre/lib/security. For example, enter the following (all on one line): keytool -import -keystore cacerts -alias ldap -file ldap.crt (The keytool utility is in the jre/bin directory and the initial password is "changeit"). |
| Access to Component Object Model (COM) objects | ColdFusion MX includes a utility, com2java.exe, that creates Java stub files for COM objects. ColdFusion can use Java stub files to access COM objects more efficiently than when thecfobject tag or CreateObject tag creates the connection to the objects directly. Also, you must generate Java stubs to correctly access complex COM objects that do not properly make all their features available through the COM IDispatcher interface. If you create Java stub files for a COM object, you do not have to change your ColdFusion code. You continue to use thecfobject tag with a type attribute value of COM or the CreateObject function with a first argument of COM, and you access the object properties and methods as you normally do for COM objects in ColdFusion. For instructions on how to create Java stub files for COM objects, see TechNote 18211. |
| Verity searches | The Index Verity Collections page now recognizes the language with which a Verity collection was created and needs to be indexed, and ColdFusion MX automatically indexes a collection using the language with which it was created. |
| Basic security | When upgrading to ColdFusion MX, previous settings for Basic Security, such as restricting tags like cfregistry andcfexecute, are not preserved. By running the migration wizard, the previous basic security settings will be lost. Basic Security does not exist in ColdFusion MX, but the same settings can be manually recreated using Sandbox or resource settings. |
| Sandbox security | You must use absolute paths for security sandbox names. |
| Flash example applications | If you use Netscape 6.2 or an earlier version, you cannot view the Flash example applications installed with ColdFusion MX. Netscape 6.3 will resolve this issue. |
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