Now, what if you want to distinguish between a normal request and a proxy request? Well, the request context object, most commonly known as the event object has a method called:

• isProxyRequest : This boolean method determines what type of request is being executed.

The event handlers that you will produce for remote interaction are exactly the same as your other handlers, with the exception that they have a return type and return data back to the caller; our proxies. Then our proxies can strong type the return data elements:

Handler:

function getCacheKeys(event,rc,prc){
    return getCache( rc.cacheProvider ).getKeys();
}

function listUsers(event,rc,prc){
    prc.data = userService.list();

    if( event.isProxyRequest() ){
        return prc.data;
    }

    event.setView("users/listUsers");
}

Hint The request context has a method called isProxyRequest() which tells the application if the request is coming from a ColdBox proxy.

Proxy:

array function getCachekEys(string cacheProvider='default'){
    arguments.event = "proxy.getCacheKeys";
    return process(argumentCollection=arguments);
}

string function getUsersJSON(){
    arguments.event = "proxy.listUsers";
    return serializeJSON( process(argumentCollection=arguments) );
}

The ColdBox Proxy also has the ability to use the request context's renderData() method. So you can build a system that just uses this functionality to transform data into multiple requests. Even have the ability for the same handler to respond to REST/SOAP and MVC all in one method:

Event Handler:

function list(event,rc,prc){
    prc.users = userService.list();
    event.renderData( data=prc.users, formats="xml,json,html" );
}

Proxy:

string function getUsers(string format="json"){
    arguments.event = "users.list";
    return process(argumentCollection=arguments);
}

This handler can now respond to HTML requests, SOAP requests, Flex/Air Requests and even RESTFul requests. How about that!