Question

I’ve been doing ColdFusion for 2 years, and I’ve always used ColdSpring for injecting dependency. I want to try to see if I can survive without them. What’re the alternatives?

For singleton:

onApplicationStart() and inject services to Application scope?

For transient:

Factory pattern? XXXFactory.createXXX()? or… XXXService.createXXX()?

Please comment, and share your alternative.

Answer 1

Henry,

I would write a ‘DIManager’ CFC to manage my own dependencies and persist the ‘DIManager’ in the Application scope using onApplicationStart() so it would be available for the life of the application.

Each service would be responsible for creating the transients it services as you recommended within your question.

I would opt for using ColdFusion 9s cache methods within my ‘DIManager’ to manage the persistence of the singletons as I expect even greater support for machine storage mechanisms as ColdFusion evolves, and, you could define profiles for each singleton so that some expire after a period of time while others live for the life of the application. This would provide greater control than using the Application scope. However, the profile could place an object in a clustered scope, server scope, etc…, depending on what your specific challenge is.

I almost went this route for a project I am about to complete, but, decided to not reinvent the wheel and simply went with ColdBox since it has fantastic caching abilities. I should also add, the ColdBox team has almost completed their goal of breaking the framework into separate units. The final separate piece is WireBox which should be released soon–so, if you have limitations on using a framework, dont like MVC or AOP, you can write your application in your own way and still use WireBox or the other great IoC frameworks that already exist (like the one you have been using :).

Hope that helps.

I look forward to other answers as well.