ColdBox was developed and created by Luis F. Majano in 2006, and it has become the most widely used and maintained MVC framework. Given its speed and scalability, ColdBox evolved into a performant and simple framework that empowered developers. It became a professional open source project in 2008 when professional services were offered by the parent company Ortus Solutions, Corp. Later, in 2011, the Hierarchical Model View Controller was set as its core foundation design pattern. In the last few years, it introduced tight integration to Java's CompletableFuture API to support Futures and Promises and asynchronous/parallel programming. The latest release is version 6.8.1 (August 11, 2022).

• A HMVC web framework for the ColdFusion platform.
• Modular development platform to provide HMVC architectural patterns
• Conventions over configurations (No XML)
• Integrates with Hibernate ColdFusion ORM
• Offers a consistent framework aiming to reduce confusion and be easy to learn
• Persistence abstraction layers (caching)
• Built-in logging library
• Built-in dependency injection and AOP capabilities
• Internal Domain Specific Languages to define caching, DI/AOP, logging, and mocking
• Ability to do unit and integration testing
• Ajax support which is easy to extend and customize
• RESTful and SOAP web service support
• Adobe Flex/Air integration and monitoring
• Provides multi-development environment capabilities
• Prolific Documentation
• Integrates natively with Java's CompletableFuture API to support futures and promises.

ColdBox is supported on Lucee (A popular open-source CFML engine) and Adobe's ColdFusion application servers. It has supported IDE plugins for Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text, Eclipse IDE, and Adobe ColdFusion Builder.

The ColdBox Platform comprises several internal standalone libraries that can be used with any CFML Framework or none at all. Its library includes:

• LogBox - Logging Library
• WireBox - Dependency Injection and AOP library
• CacheBox - Caching Engine and Aggregator
• TestBox - Testing framework for ColdFusion

Below is a list of some notable users of the Coldbox Platform.^[2]

• Adobe
• Esri
• FAA
• GE
• Kennedy Space Center
• NASA JPL
• Railo
• Lucee
• L'Oréal
• US Airforce
• US Navy
• Success Academy Charter Schools
• American Youth Soccer Organization
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Getting started is easy with ColdBox, WireBox, CacheBox, or LogBox in any ColdFusion (CFML) application since just CommandBox, the CLI, and the package manager should be leveraged. These commands run from the CommandBox interactive shell.

Controllers edit

ColdBox is a conventions-based framework programmed in CFML, differing from other CFML MVC frameworks that use XML declarative logic for their controllers.

Below is an example of a controller:

component{

	// Use Dependency injection for hibernate-based virtual services
	property name="userService" inject="entityservice:User";
	
	/**
	* Return immediate HTML
	*/
	function sayHello(event){
	 	return "hello";
	}

	/**
	* Return immediate JSON from an ORM object's memento
	*/
	function sayHello(event){
	 	return userService.get( rc.id ).getMemento();
	}
	
	/**
	* Return content in multiple formats
	*/
	function list(event){
		prc.data = userService.list();
	 	// render out all users in json format
		event.renderData( data=prc.data, formats="json,xml,pdf,html" );
	}
}

URL mappings edit

ColdBox supports URL mappings and routing in Rails style but is adapted for ColdFusion. It also supports the creation of RESTful routing:

// Resources 
resource( "photos" );

// Nested Resources
resources(
	resource 	= "agents",
	pattern 	= "/sites/:id/agents"
);

// Redirects
route( "/oldRoute" )
	.toRedirect( "/main/redirectTest" );

// Direct Routing
route( "/render/:format" ).to( "actionRendering.index" );

// With Regex
route( "post/:postID-regex:([a-zA-Z]+?)/:userID-alpha/regex:(xml|json)" )
	.to( "ehGeneral.dumpRC" );

// subdomain routing
route( "/" )
	.withDomain( ":username.forgebox.dev" )
	.to( "subdomain.show" );

// Responses + Conditions
route( "/ff" )
	.withCondition( function(){
		return ( findnocase( "Firefox", cgi.HTTP_USER_AGENT ) ? true : false );
	} )
	.toResponse( "Hello FireFox" );
route( "/luis/:lname" )
	.toResponse( "<h1>Hi Luis {lname}, how are {you}</h1>", 200, "What up dude!" );

// Inline Closure Responses
route( "/luis2/:lname" )
	.toResponse( function( event, rc, prc ){
		return "<h1>Hello from closure land: #arguments.rc.lname#</h1>";
	} );

// Views No Events
route( "contactus" )
	.as( "contactUs")
	.toView( "simpleView" );

// Named routes
route( pattern="/routeRunner/:id/:name", name="routeRunner" )
	.to( "main.returnTest" );

// Grouped Routing
group( { pattern="/runAWNsync", handler="utilities.AWNsync" }, function( options ){
	route( '/:user_id' )
		.withAction( { get = "runAWNsync", options = "returnOptions" } )
		.end();
} );

// RESTFul Actions
route( "/health_check" )
	.withAction( { get = "runCheck", options = "returnOptions" } )
	.to( "utilities.HealthCheck" );

RESTful URLs edit

ColdBox allows for the easy creation of RESTful URLs via URL mappings and extension detection. Natively ColdBox can detect any extension when supplied to a URI resource:

http://api.coldbox.org/rest/user/luis.json
http://api.coldbox.org/rest/user/luis.xml
http://api.coldbox.org/rest/user/luis.pdf
http://api.coldbox.org/rest/user/luis.yml

It allows for detecting such extensions, security around them, and the ability to customize them.

Ajax support edit

ColdBox supports all JavaScript frameworks that provide Ajax capabilities. It also offers an auto-marshaling function for natively rendering objects to the following formats: XML, WDDX, JSON, JSONP, TEXT, PDF, and CUSTOM.

SOAP-Adobe Flex/Air support edit

ColdBox supports creating, monitoring, and developing SOAP web services and Flex/Air remote components. It allows for having one development paradigm for multiple GUI interfaces.

• ColdBox MVC
• WireBox Dependency Injection
• CacheBox
• LogBox

• Official site
• GitHub code repository
• Online API
• ForgeBox - community based code sharing
• Community Forums