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. Here are the names of the common ones you can find in our Github Organization:

• 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

Scaffolding Our Application

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

coldbox create app Quickstart

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
+ lib // Java Jars to load
+ 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

Default Event

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

Instead of executing pages like in a traditional application, we always execute the same page but distinguish the event we want via URL routing. When no mappings are present we execute the default event by convention.

Hooray, we have scaffolded our first application, started a server and executed the default event. Explore the application template generated, as it contains many useful information about your application.

File/Folder Conventions

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