Welcome to the world of ColdBox! We are excited you are taking this development journey with us. This manual will give you all the tools and insights so you can master ColdBox.
The first step in our journey is to install CommandBox. CommandBox is a ColdFusion (CFML) Command Line Interface (CLI), REPL, Package Manager and Embedded Server. We will be using CommandBox for almost every excercise in this manual and it will also allow you to get up and running with ColdFusion and ColdBox in a much speedier manner.
Note : However, you can use your own ColdFusion server setup as you see fit. We use CommandBox as everything is scriptable and fast!
You can download CommandBox from the official site: http://www.ortussolutions.com/products/commandbox#download and install in your preferred Operating System (Windows, Mac, *unix). CommandBox comes in two flavors:
- No Java Runtime (30mb)
- Embedded Runtime (80mb)
So make sure you choose your desired installation path and follow the instructions here: http://commandbox.ortusbooks.com/content/setup/installation.html
Once you download and expand CommandBox you will have the box.exe or box binary, which you can place in your Windows Path or *Unix /usr/bin folder to have it available system wide. Then just open the binary and CommandBox will unpack itself your user's directory: {User}/.CommandBox. This happens only once and the next thing you know, you are in the CommandBox interactive shell!
We will be able to execute a-la-carte commands from our command line or go into the interactive shell for multiple commands. We recommend the interactive shell as it is faster and can remain open in your project root.