Using Multiple server.json Files

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With the advent of Multi-server functionality, you may want to regularly start up the same web site with different settings (such as different CF engine's). To help with this, you can have more than one JSON file.
Create anything.json
The default server configuration file is server.json, but you can actually call the file anything you want as long as you use the file's path (or unique name) when starting the server.
Let's say we want to test our app in Lucee 4, Lucee 5 and Adobe 2016. Let's start 3 servers. Note we give each server a unique name. This will come in handy when we want to start/stop the servers by name later.
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start cfengine=[email protected] name=lucee4
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start cfengine=[email protected] name=lucee5
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start cfengine=[email protected] name=adobe2016
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Info It's important to always use a name when starting more than one server. Otherwise, the settings will override each other and only the last server will be saved. Also, you will only be able to stop the last server via the stop command.
You can have full control over the name of the JSON files by using the serverConfigFile parameter, but when CommandBox sees us use the name parameter, it will automatically create a file called server-{name}.json. In this case, we'll have 3 new files:
server-lucee4.json
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{
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    "app":{
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        "cfengine":"[email protected]"
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    },
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    "name":"lucee4"
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}
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server-lucee5.json
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{
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    "app":{
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        "cfengine":"[email protected]"
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    },
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    "name":"lucee5"
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}
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server-adobe2016.json
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{
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    "app":{
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        "cfengine":"[email protected]"
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    },
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    "name":"adobe2016"
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}
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Interacting with non-standard JSON file names
If you run the server show command, you'll see it returns {}. This is because it looks for a file called server.json by default. Not to worry, you can still programmatically manipulate your JSON files like so:
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# Show all properties
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server show server-lucee5.json
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​
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# Show one property
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server show server-lucee5.json name
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​
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# named args are required to set properties
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server set serverConfigFile=server-lucee5.json jvm.heapSize=1024 
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​
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# Clear properties
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server clear server-lucee5.json jvm
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Info The property name and server config file path are interchangeable for the server show and server clear commands for your convenience.
Use server JSON files to control servers
Now that you have 3 JSON files-- one for each server, you can use the path to the JSON file (absolute or relative to your CWD) to control each server.
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start serverConfigFile=server-lucee4.json
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For your convenience, if you pass in a path to an existing JSON for the server name, we'll use it as the serverConfigFile parameter.
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start server-lucee4.json
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stop server-lucee4.json
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start server-adobe2016.json
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This trick works on any server commands
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# Open your Lucee 5 site in the browser
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server log server-lucee5.json
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​
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# cd into the web root for your Adobe 2016 web
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server cd /path/to/server-adobe2016.json
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Use server names to control servers
After you've started a server at least once, you can use its server name to control it as well which is a great shortcut. CommandBox will recognize the server name and remember where the server JSON for that server name is stored. Then it will pull the correct web root from the JSON file.
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start lucee4
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start lucee5
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start adobe2106
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​
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restart adobe2016
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stop lucee4
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Contents
Create anything.json
Interacting with non-standard JSON file names
Use server JSON files to control servers
Use server names to control servers