Question

I am looking into some ColdFusion development with the Fusebox framework – I have installed CF10 and downloaded Fusebox 5.5 and their sample skeleton app, but I am left wanting at their setup guide.

I can get a basic app (Hello World style) working by just dropping a directory in my webroot and a basic index.cfm, but when I try to access the skeleton app I get an error saying the Fusebox files cant be found.

Can someone describe common convention/best practice for structuring my applications and FuseBox files in my web server?

I currently have the following structure:

+ wwwroot
    +skeletonapplication (the skeleton application)
    +FBCore (Fusebox core files)

Also, the docs mention that I need to add a line to index.cfm to confirm the directory structure – can anyone shed any more light on this as to what the config line looks like?

And finally, if anyone can chip in on general directory structure best practice for individual applications that would be great.. Im hoping they share something in common with the typical kind of layout as used by Initialize etc

Answer 1

The Fusebox core files should be in the webroot in a folder named /fusebox5 by default. Alternatively (and probably the recommended deployment) is to locate them outside of the webroot and create a mapping in your Application.cfc or ColdFusion Admin called fusebox5 to the directory.

From there in the skeleton, it clearly shows the proper structure of a Fusebox 5 application. There are two implementations for Fusebox Applications and they can be mixed and matched to a degree as well: Implicit and XML (Explicit).

+wwwroot
    +myApp
        +controller
        +model
        +view
        +layouts
+fusebox5

You can customize where the fusebox core files are located by adjusting the line in the application.cfc:

<cfcomponent extends="fusebox5.Application" output="false">

Let’s say you move the core files into the FBCore directory in webroot:

<cfcomponent extends="FBCore.Application" output="false">

Looking at the latest download from Fusebox.org, it isn’t very new-developer friendly out of the box. Try downloading the sample Bookstore application for version 5 and version 4 (if you want to see the xml at work). The framework stagnated for a number of years but there is a new group working on the framework but I’m not sure where that group stands right now.

Sean Corfield, one of Fusebox’s core maintainers in the past has wrote recently he felt that his FW/1 framework is a successor to Fusebox. Fusebox is touted as a “feature-complete” framework, meaning all the big features planned for it were completed, and I think FW/1 is also in a similar state.

The most actively maintained framework is Coldbox. It too supported both xml and now implicit (no-xml) flavors and the group behind it releases a large number of products and features on an almost too-regular basis (it’s hard to keep up!). It does come with ALOT of documentation but the framework does everything under the sun. They have released a Lite version that might make it easier for newer developers to jump in.