We are excited you are taking this development journey with us. Before we get started with ColdBox let's install CommandBox CLI, which will allow you to install/uninstall dependencies, start servers, have a REPL tool and much more.
The first step in our journey is to install CommandBox. CommandBox is a ColdFusion (CFML) Command Line Interface (CLI), REPL, Package Manager and Embedded Server. We will be using CommandBox for almost every excercise in this book and it will also allow you to get up and running with ColdFusion and ColdBox in a much speedier manner.
Note : However, you can use your own ColdFusion server setup as you see fit. We use CommandBox as everything is scriptable and fast!
Once you download and expand CommandBox you will have the box.exe or box binary, which you can place in your Windows Path or *Unix /usr/bin folder to have it available system wide. Then just open the binary and CommandBox will unpack itself your user's directory: {User}/.CommandBox. This happens only once and the next thing you know, you are in the CommandBox interactive shell!
CommandBox Shell
We will be able to execute a-la-carte commands from our command line or go into the interactive shell for multiple commands. We recommend the interactive shell as it is faster and can remain open in your project root.
All examples in this book are based on the fact of having an interactive shell open.
Installing ColdBox
To get started open the CommandBox binary or enter the shell by typing box in your terminal or console. Then let's create a new folder and install ColdBox into a directory.
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mkdir60-minute-quickstart --cd
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install coldbox
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CommandBox will resolve coldbox from ForgeBox (www.forgebox.io), use the latest version available, download and install it in this folder alongside a box.json file which represents your application package.
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Dir 0 Jan 25,2021 11:04:05 coldbox
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File 112 Jan 25,2021 11:04:05 box.json
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You can also install the latest bleeding edge version by using the [email protected] slug instead, or any previous version.
That's it. CommandBox can now track this version of ColdBox for you in this directory. In the next section we will scaffold a ColdBox application using an application template.