About me

• Gert Franz
  • Involved with Railo since day 1
  • Into CFML for 16 years
  • DBA, System architect
  • CTO Rasia Ltd, CIO Rasia CH
• Rasia is founding Member of the Lucee association

My evolution

 Assembler > Basic > Clipper > Pascal > Delphi > Java > CFML > Lucee      

What is this about?

ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY

DOCUMENT EVERYTHING HE HAS CODED

What does undocumented mean?

• Documentation is improving (docs.lucee.org)
• Some things are either not known to the CFML community
• or just simply not documented

What will we be looking at?

• Administration of Lucee
• Coding gems
• Unknown functionality
• Other gems / uncategorized
• Tips and tricks
  

Lucee Administrators

Tips and tricks around the administration

Configuration XML

• Let's have a look at the XML first
  
• location and structure
  

Reset the Lucee Admin password

• At the top of the Lucee administrator XML's you will find the following entry

<cfLuceeConfiguration 
        default-hspw="23d82bcab39f7cbfc41e2e9f5d539482ae76d86646e58e113166f0f370da06b0"
        hspw="23d82bcab39f7cbfc41e2e9f5d539482ae76d86646e58e113166f0f370da06b0"
        salt="F7323339-8891-474F-B59F0D00CCB8BAB3" version="4.5">
    <cfabort/>
    ...
<cfLuceeConfiguration>

Compiling into RAM

• This can speed up your server's performance

• Can be changed to any resource

<file-system 
    deploy-directory="zip://d:\Gert\Lucee\classes.zip!cfclasses" 
    fld-directory="{lucee-web}/library/fld/" 
    temp-directory="{lucee-web}/temp/" 
    tld-directory="{lucee-web}/library/tld/">
</file-system>

<file-system 
    deploy-directory="ram://cfclasses" 
    fld-directory="{lucee-web}/library/fld/" 
    temp-directory="{lucee-web}/temp/" 
    tld-directory="{lucee-web}/library/tld/">
</file-system>

Lucee constants

• If you have inspected the XML, you probably have noticed these entries

• You can also define your own constants

<!-- 
Path placeholders:
	{lucee-web}: path to the lucee web directory typical "{web-root}/WEB-INF/lucee"
	{lucee-server}: path to the lucee server directory typical where the lucee.jar is located
	{lucee-config}: same as {lucee-server} in server context and same as {lucee-web} in web context}
	{temp-directory}: path to the temp directory of the current user of the system
	{home-directory}: path to the home directory of the current user of the system
	{web-root-directory}: path to the web root
	{system-directory}: path to the system directory
	{web-context-hash}: hash of the web context
-->

<constants>
    <constant name="log-file-dir" value="/storage/logfiles/myWeb" />
</constants>

Copy the XML file to maintain settings

• at startup the configuration is read from XML
  
• This means you can "export" it
  
• Copy the file to any new context
  
• Settings are maintained
  

Using the DEPLOY folder

• located in the Lucee server directory
• can be used to install extensions
• can also be used for upgrading Lucee

While we are at it

• drivers and templates for Lucee are located in

/lucee-server/context/context/admin

• In there you will find all different kind of drivers
  • Database Drivers (configure your own)
  • Event gateway drivers
  • Cache drivers
  • log drivers
• Also the global debugging templates are located there. You can edit them (but be aware, that they might be overwritten in case of an update)
• Server admin plugins are stored there as well

Compile mappings - Lucee archives

• You are all familiar with mappings
• In Lucee there are tons of more possibilities
• Compile mappings is very useful when
  • When converting from ACF to Lucee
  • Trying to reduce the performance hit for the first page request
  • Check for Lucee errors
• Create an archive for source protection and performance

Debugging

• Use a different debugging template
• much more information to find
• especially about unscoped variables
• scope-checker at 100% hit ratio
• but be careful, it consumes 30% of performance

Lucee Quarantine mode

• Lets you run Lucee in a READONLY way
  
• This means that Lucee will NOT compile any CFM files anymore
  
• Protects you from exploits (happened several times)
  
• Only code you trust will be actually executed on your server
  
• Additional RSA encryption possible
  
• Deploying an application with the CFDEPLOY tool
  

Other mapping tricks

• Map to a resource
• Resources usable are:
  • RAM
  • ZIP
  • FTP
  • HTTP
  • Database
  • S3
  • SFTP

Coding Gems

Lots of unknown or hidden stuff regarding coding with Lucee

cfapplication action="update"

• Have you ever
  • wanted to load mappings from a database
  • store configuration in a separate file
  • add mappings to existing ones
  • configure other application settings at a later time?
• Let's have a look

sleeping and other nice additions

• Sometimes it is necessary to pause the code
• I mostly use it in event gateways or to visualize an effect (eg. long running query)
• Look at the following code. It contains some nice additions in Lucee

<cfscript>
	myArr = "1,2,3,4,5".listToArray();
	myArr.append(6).append(7).append(8).append(9).append(10);
	myArr.each( function(iValue) {
		sleep(1000);
		echo(iValue & "<br>");
		flush;
		}, true, 2);
</cfscript>

how about loops

• Looping is possible in many ways
• index and item confusion
• key and value introduced
• looping over dates possible
• for in works with all kinds of types
• let's have a look

other nice coding additions

• Cached functions
• Handling the page cache
• Closures for filters

Unknown functionality

Functions or tags few people know or use

Query functions

• querySlice(), querySort()
• queryColumnData()
  • useful when query columns are dynamic
  • when columns contain complex data
• While we are at queries...
  • cfquery returntype

Documentation functions

• getFunctionList()
• getFunctionData()
• getTagList()
• getTagData()

Other functions

• getCurrentContext()
• pagePoolList()
• pagePoolClear()
• _internalRequest()
• fileInfo() - similar to CFFILE action="info"
• isEmpty()
• contractPath()
• htmlParse()
  

Trial and error

• CFRETRY tag
  • allows you to retry a failed action
  • Have a look at the following code

• Planned for Lucee 5.2
  • cftimeout time="10"
  • expects the surrounded code block to execute within 10s, otherwise an exception is thrown

<cftry>
    <cffile action= "write" file="D:\test\myFile.txt">
    Some content for the file.
    </cffile>
    <cfcatch>
        <cfif !directoryExists("D:\test")>
            <cfdirectory action="create" directory="D:\test">
            <cfretry>
        </cfif>
    </cfcatch>
</cftry>

Gems in CFScript

• You can use <> in cfscript
• or all other boolean JS operators
• === checks for same instance
• general usage of tags in cfscript
• assigning results to new variables

Miscelaneous

• All pathes (except include) can be absolute or relative
• cachedWithin accepts the value "request"
• cachedWithin can also be a number

Extending Lucee

• Do you have a library you use in your company?
• You would like to extend the functionality of Lucee tags?
• Write them yourself
  • Either for one Context or global
  • Just by writing one single file
  • Caution: overwrites existing functions

One of my favorite gems

• CFAdmin action="surveillance"
  • Allows you to see what runs on your server
  • Returns an array with all running requests
  • contains very interesting information
    • all debugging information
    • all variables
    • CGI scope
    • Request scope
    • and a lot more

How about another CFAdmin gem

• CFAdmin action="reload"
  • You know now that the complete configuration is stored in the lucee-web.xml.cfm and lucee-server.xml
  • these are loaded when the server starts and whenever a change is made in the admin
  • if you change the admin file directly (or copy it) reload it with the above code

Using CFDump

• first of all there are some nice attributes
  • eval
  • output = "debug"
  • format = "simple" (for email & Outlook)
  • showUDFs = "false"
• Just hover over any part and you'll see where the dump comes from
• Check out all the attributes under:
  /lucee-server/context/library/tag/dump.cfc
• Define the default attribute value like this:
  • this.tag.cfdump.format="simple";

Lazy queries

• Normally when you pull a query, Lucee:
  • Opens a connection to the database
  • Executes the query on the DB
  • Returns the data
  • Converts the Java resultset into a Lucee Query
• Welcome Lazy queries. Now Lucee
  • Opens a connection to the database
  • Executes the SQL on the DB
  • only returns the number of records (invisible for the user)
  • Keeps the connection open while you browse through the records

Parallel threads in the each functions

• Usable with any each function
• Very useful when every operation is more time consuming
• Finishes when all threads are done
• by default uses 10 threads
• Not adviseable for fast operations (<5ms)

Using the class files

• Nice little gem regarding the class files
• can be used instead of the actual CFM file
• just needs to be named exactly as the original
• can be used to protect single files
• let's try it out

coding tips and tricks

• cfthread type task
• dynamic function calls
• getMetaData
• onRequest call even without the file existing
• tag default attributes
• trace action="follow"
• using returnvalues from functions as variables somefunction()[3]