Which web frameworks are available for CFML? [closed]

Question

Which active CFML based frameworks are available for ColdFusion / Lucee?

Please note: This is a community wiki Q&A as it is a question that comes up quite a lot.

Acreage

"This is a community wiki Q&A as it is a question that comes up quite a lot." doesn't make it on topic. – Moonshot

I appreciate that - not trying to bend the rules. It is a valid question that gets asked without opinionated answers so to me that means it is a relevant question. By using the community wiki it can updated as and when required. If there is a better way to handle that please let me know. – Acreage

the tag wiki could be used for this since there will be so few of them, or a blog post. – Moonshot

@KevinB: This question is fine. It can be answered objectively, and it is very useful for the community it's tagged for. Our community moderators ought to remember that "volume of answers" is not a requisite for the validity of a question or an answer. Can I request that the ppl voting to close this simply consider if the removal of this question helps the community concerned? I think you will find it does not. I think the presence of this question represents a net "good". Leave it be. – Tytybald

Answer 1

There are currently two well maintained / active MVC frameworks for CFML, both are convention over configuration based. They are ColdBox and FW/1. There is also CFWheels if you'd prefer a rails-esque approach.

All 3 frameworks run on ColdFusion 10+ and Lucee 4.5+.

FW/1 has support for clojure integration, this requires Lucee 4.5. Clojure integration is optional and not required to run CFML code.

Deciding which one to use will depend on your needs and/or coding style.

ColdBox:

ColdBox is a conventions-based MVC development framework for ColdFusion (CFML). It provides a set of reusable code and tools that can be used to increase your development productivity as well as a development standard for working in team environments. ColdBox is natively based on modular architecture which helps address most infrastructure concerns of typical web applications.

FW/1:

FW/1 - Framework One - is a family of small, lightweight, convention-over-configuration frameworks, primarily for CFML. FW/1 itself provides MVC, DI/1 provides dependency injection (a.k.a. inversion of control), and AOP/1 provides aspect-oriented programming features on top of DI/1.

CFWheels:

CFWheels is an open source CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language) framework inspired by Ruby on Rails that provides fast application development, a great organization system for your code, and is just plain fun to use. One of our biggest goals is for you to be able to get up and running with CFWheels quickly. We want for you to be able to learn it as rapidly as it is to write applications with it.

Acreage

Answer 2

I think John has mentioned the most popular CFML frameworks already but I have found that Charlie Arehart maintains an extensive list of CFML frameworks on his website. He seems to do a pretty good job of keeping it up to date as well.

CFML Frameworks/Methodologies

All credit to Charlie Arehart for this extensive list. Check is website for the latest information.

Following are the subcategories offered:

• CFML Application Frameworks/Methodologies
• CFML Injection Frameworks
• CFML REST Frameworks
• CFML ORM Frameworks

CFML Application Frameworks/Methodologies

• CFObjects, "object-oriented ColdFusion development framework", from Steve Brownlee and Orbwave
• cfrails, (couldn't find any brief description), from Sammy Larbil (last updated in 2007, as of a check in Apr 2015)
• CFWheels, "ColdFusion on Wheels provides fast application development, a great organization system for your code, and is just plain fun to use", from the CFWheels Team
• ColdBox, "ColdFusion Enterprise Conventions Development Platform", from Luis Majano, et al
• ColdBox Lite (CBL), "A light-weight conventions-based MVC framework" "with a subset of features of the ColdBox Platform that deal with MVC only", from Luis Majano, et al
• ColdMVC, "a convention based MVC framework for ColdFusion 9 loosely based on concepts from Ruby on Rails and Grails.", from Tony Nelson
• COOP, "a framework that separates mark-up from processing logic", from John Farrar, et al (last updated in 2011, as of a check in Apr 2015)
• Edmund, "event-driven model framework and workflow components", from Sean Corfield (last updated in 2011, as of a check in Apr 2015)
• FarCry, "a set of core components that take care of a lot of the programming work that goes into building web applications and other database-driven websites, so you don't have to", from Daemon Consulting
• Framework One (FW/1), "A very lightweight, convention-over-configuration MVC framework", from Sean Corfield
• Fusebox, "the most popular framework for building ColdFusion and PHP web applications", from Team Fusebox
• Gliint, "an implicit invocation MVC framework", from Mitch Rose (last updated in 2009, as of a check in Apr 2015)
• HomePortals, "especially tailored for building portals and other highly modular sites", from Oscar Arevalo (last updated in 2010, as of a check in Apr 2015)
• LightFront, "short for Lightweight Front-controller...a basic MVC framework that will support both new development and legacy applications...conventions based...single 200-line CFC", from Brian Meloche (more here, a page recovered from archive.org )
• Mach-ii, "a powerful, object-oriented, open source MVC framework for ColdFusion that focuses on easing software development and maintenance", from Team Mach-II
• Metro, a framework for working with Transfer and ColdSpring, from Paul Marcotte (last updated in 2009, as of a check in Apr 2015)
• Mockbox, a ColdFusion Mocking/Stubbing Framework, from Luis Majano
• Model-Glue, "a family of frameworks [that] support Web application developers by making the construction of Object-Oriented Web and Rich Internet Applications a straightforward process", from the Model-Glue Team
• onAir, "a 'Smart Connection Framework': Connect backend business logic written in CFCs with different clients (e.g. AJAX, Laszlo) via XML, XML-RPC, JSON, etc.", from Jan Jannek
• OnTap, "shares some similarities with Ruby on Rails", from Isaac Dealey
• Neptune, "ColdFusion Productivity (and MVC) Framework", from Steve Bryant
• Quicksilver, "allows developers to quickly and efficiently create powerful MVC web application", from Brian Carr and Micky Dionisio (last updated in 2009, as of a check in Apr 2015)
• SOS, "Community oriented ColdFusion application framework", from John Farrar (last updated in 2012, as of a check in Apr 2015)
• Switchboard, "MVC framework with built in authentication, redirecting, and URL routing. It's non-OO approach makes it super fast during execution. No XML or Objects are ever used in the framework. No configuration is required to set which files are included, the framework discovers that for you. The URL routing is beneficial for search engine optimization (SEO). And all this can be yours in less than 250 lines of code", from Daniel Slaughter

Contiguity

Answer 3

I built a Micro Framework for ColdFusion which mimics Slim (PHP) or Flask (Python).

https://github.com/Prefinem/MicroCF

Micro CF is a Coldfusion Micro Framework. It essentially provides the C in MVC and acts as a controller for handling requests to your application. On top of being able to create pretty URLs, MicroCF provides a middleware type Framework for easily and cleanly adding pre and post interceptors to the application layer.

Plus it's an easy install with CFPM

Fanfare