My First ColdBox Application

CommandBox comes with a coldbox create app command that can enable you to create application skeletons using one of our official skeletons or your own:

• Advanced : A tag based advanced template

• AdvancedScript (default): A script based advanced template

• elixir : A ColdBox Elixir based template

• ElixirBower : A ColdBox Elixir + Bower based template

• ElixirVueJS : A ColdBox Elixir + Vue.js based template

• rest: A RESTFul services template

• rest-hmvc: A RESTFul service built with modules

• Simple : A traditional simple template

• SuperSimple : The bare-bones template

You can find all our template skeletons here: github.com/coldbox-templates

Scaffolding Our Application

So let's create our first app using the default template skeleton AdvancedScript:

coldbox create app MyApp

This will scaffold the application and also install ColdBox for you. The following folders/files are generated for you:

+coldbox // The ColdBox framework library (CommandBox Tracked)
+config // Configuration files
+handlers // Your handlers/controllers
+includes // static assets
+interceptors // global interceptors
+layouts // Your layouts
+models // Your Models
+modules // CommandBox Tracked Modules
+modules_app // Custom modules
+tests // Test harness
+views // Your Views
+Application.cfc // Bootstrap
+box.json // CommandBox package descriptor
+index.cfm // Front controller

Now let's start a server so we can see our application running:

server start --rewritesEnable

This will start up a Lucee 5 open source CFML engine (If you are in CommandBox 4). If you would like an Adobe ColdFusion server then just add to the command: cfengine=adobe@{version} where {version} can be: 2016,11,10,9.

If you are using CommandBox 3 and below, you will be using a Lucee 4.5 Server.

This command will start a server with URL rewrites enabled, open a web browser for you and execute the index.cfmwhich in turn executes the default event by convention in a ColdBox application: main.index.

Tip: ColdBox Events map to handlers (cfc) and appropriate actions (functions)

That's it, you have just created your first application. Hooray, onward!

Tip: Type coldbox create app help to get help on all the options for creating ColdBox applications.

File/Folder Conventions

ColdBox is a conventions based framework. The location of files and functions matter. Since we scaffolded our first application, let's write down in a table below with the different conventions that exist in ColdBox.

File/Folder Convention	Mandatory	Description
config/Coldbox.cfc	false	The application configuration file
config/Router.cfc	false	The application URL router
handlers	false	Event Handlers (controllers)
layouts	false	Layouts
models	false	Model objects
modules	false	CommandBox Tracked Modules
modules_app	false	Custom Modules You Write
views	false	Views

What is the common denominator in all the conventions? That they are all optional.

Re-initializing The Application

There will be times when you make configuration or code changes that are not reflected immediately in the application due to caching. You can tell the framework to _reinit _or restart the application for you via the URL by leveraging the special URL variable fwreinit.

http://localhost:{port}/?fwreinit=1

You can also use CommandBox to reinit the application:

coldbox reinit

Tip: You can add a password to the reinit procedures for further security, please see the configuration section.