Multi-Engine Support

You can specify the CFML engine via the command line arguments:

CommandBox> start cfengine=adobe@2018

This will start an Adobe ColdFusion 2018 server in your webroot. That's it!

By default, CommandBox uses the cfengine slug to search for the engine on ForgeBox. The format is slug@version where the version is optional. Ortus Solutions maintains the versions of the engines available on ForgeBox.

Supported engines are:

• Adobe ColdFusion 9 **

• Adobe ColdFusion 10

• Adobe ColdFusion 11

• Adobe ColdFusion 2016

• Adobe ColdFusion 2018

• Adobe ColdFusion 2021

• Adobe ColdFusion 2023

• Lucee 5

• Lucee 6 (beta)

• Railo 4.2

• Lucee 4.5

Here are some examples:

# Start the default engine
CommandBox> start

# Start a specific Adobe engine and version
CommandBox> start cfengine=adobe@2021.0.6

# Start the most recent Adobe server that starts with version "2023"
CommandBox> start cfengine=adobe@2023

# Start the most recent adobe engine that matches the range
CommandBox> start cfengine="adobe@>9.0 <=11"

# Start the latest stable Lucee engine
CommandBox> start cfengine=lucee

# Start a specific Lucee engine and version
CommandBox> start cfengine=lucee@5.4

# Start the latest stable Railo engine
CommandBox> start cfengine=railo

Engines are downloaded and stored in your CommandBox artifacts folder. You can view your engines and clear them using the standard artifacts commands:

CommandBox> artifacts list

# Removes all adobe servers currently in the artifacts
# These servers will need to be re-downloaded the next time they are started
CommandBox> artifacts remove adobe

** Note: Adobe ColdFusion 9 does not support the latest Java 8. To run ColdFusion 9 you must use an older version of CommandBox 3.x on Java 7 or run CommandBox 4.x on Java 8 update 92 or earlier. Several people are doing this, but beware your mileage may vary.

Admin password

ColdFusion requires a username and password when CommandBox sets it up. When using the (default) development CommandBox profile, the default username and password for the Adobe ColdFusion servers used are:

• Username: admin

• Password: commandbox

Since Lucee 5.3.4.46, Lucee no longer prompts you to set the admin password the first time running the admin. When using the (default) development CommandBox profile, Lucee offers the option for you creating a password.txt file to set that initial password.

See also options to [control the admin password via CFConfig(https://cfconfig.ortusbooks.com/using-the-cli/commandbox-server-interceptors/server-start#set-individual-settings)].

WAR Support

Additionally, CommandBox can start any WAR given to it using the WARPath argument.

CommandBox> start WARPath=/var/www/myExplodedWAR
CommandBox> start WARPath=/var/www/myWAR.war

If you run a regular start command inside of a folder that has a /WEB-INF/web.xml file, CommandBox will treat that folder as a WAR.

Custom Engines

The cfengine parameter can accept any valid CommandBox endpoint ID. That means it can be an HTTP URL, a Git repo, a local folder path to your company's network share, or a custom ForgeBox entry you've created. As long as that endpoint resolves to a package that contains these files, you're good:

1. box.json

2. Engine.[zip|war] (file name doesn't matter)

CommandBox will download the package, unzip it and use the WAR/zip file as the engine for your app.

Normally, the artifacts cache isn't used for non-ForgeBox packages, but CommandBox will only download the engine once per server and then assume the file hasn't changed. You will need to forget the server to trigger a new download.

Here's an example of starting up a web server using a direct download link to a package containing a WAR file:

CommandBox> start cfengine=http://downloads.ortussolutions.com/adobe/coldfusion/9.0.2/cf-engine-9.0.2.zip

server.json Configuration

You can set the cfengine and other related configuration options in your server.json to use them every time you start your app.

CommandBox> server set app.cfengine=adobe
CommandBox> server set app.WARPath=/var/www/my-app

These commands would create the following server.json

{
    "app":{
        "cfengine":"adobe",
        "WARPath":"/var/www/my-app"
    }
}

Just a reminder that starting a server with any command line arguments will save the arguments to your server.json by default.

CommandBox> start cfengine=adobe@2023

This command would add adobe@2023 to your server.json. If this is not what you want, you can append saveSettings=false or even --!saveSettings when you start your server and CommandBox will not save the arguments you specify to your server.json.