Railo Blog - HowTo

Barcode Generation with Railo

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 01:15:00 +0200

In a previous blog post, I mentioned that createObject() has a 3rd / 4th argument negates the need to use Javaloader. Some questions have come up on the Railo mailing list and I thought I'd attach 2 working examples (barcode_samples.zip). One is using the Barbeque library found on Sourceforge, the other is using Google's zxing library. Remember, with a little creativity and expanding these samples, this type of code can be baked into Railo natively (e.g.: <cfbarcode>) today by placing the code in special directories (Functions / Tags).

Special thanks to Leigh's (cfsearching) excellent blog for some example legwork in barcode generation.

Create a scheduled task that runs every minute in Railo

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:51:00 +0200

So, this is probably confusing to some and I thought I'd try to clear this up. It's possible to setup Railo to run a task every x hour, minute and/or even seconds. You'll want to log into your machine and go to the Scheduled Task page ( e.g.: http://{your server}/railo-context/admin/web.cfm?action=services.schedule )

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Creating your own Railo Extension Provider

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:05:00 +0200

It is long overdue, but a tutorial on how to create your own Railo extension provider is now available on the wiki. Why would you ever want to build your own extension provider? Perhaps you are a framework developer and you want to provide your users running Railo a 'one-click' installation / update. Perhaps you are managing several Railo servers and you want your internal servers to update to your the latest application / custom cfc / built-in-tags/functions, etc.

If you're unfamiliar with what Railo extensions are, they're essentially plug-ins that are available via the Railo team or with the help of the tutorial, you can create your own. If you want to see Railo extensions in action, you can log into your own web context ( http://{YOUR SERVER}/railo-context/admin/web.cfm?action=extension.applications ) and Railo will instantly download and install the many available frameworks (ColdBox, Fusebox, Model Glue, ColdSpring, Mach II, cfwheels, etc.) and applications ( Farcry, Mura, Galleon, Mangoblog, etc).

The Railo team also offers paid extensions (Amazon S3, cluster scope, admin sync, cfvideo and more) via the server context ( http://{YOUR SERVER}/railo-context/admin/server.cfm?action=extension.applications ).

Cache (Basic) Part 1

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:48:00 +0200

Since version 3.1.2 Railo supports the possibility of using a cache. This blog entry will go into the details of this feature. The blog is divided into 3 parts, the first part will deal with the base functionality, the second part show how the cache is used in backend and the last part takes care of specialties when using the cache and shows a reference.

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Resetting password for the Railo admin

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:44:00 +0200

A question came up on the mailing list about how to reset passwords if you've forgotten them. This entry will cover both the server context and the local web context.

Server Context (e.g. http://{hostname}/railo-context/admin/server.cfm )

You'll want to open up the railo-server.xml in your {railo installation}/railo-server/context/ directory.
Look for the line that has "<railo-configuration" and blank out the value of password="".
Restart the railo instance and when you reload, you'll be asked for a new password.

Local Web Context (e.g. http://{hostname}/railo-context/admin/web.cfm )

If you've forgotten the password for a local web context, you'll want to make sure you have a default password first.
- Log into http://{hostname}/railo-context/admin/server.cfm?action=security.password - Look for "Set default password" and set it.
Open up {host root}/WEB-INF/railo/railo-web.xml.cfm
Look for the line that has "<railo-configuration" and blank out the value of password="".
Restart the railo instance and when you reload, you can type in the default password.
Once inside the local web admin, you can click on password on the sidebar and change that local web context password.

Update (Dec 8th, 2009)

Heh. Shortly after this post, Micha pinged me as to why I didn't just point people to the password reset option in the server context. Truth be told, I forgot about it. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of http://{hostname}/railo-context/admin/server.cfm?action=security.password and you'll see this:
- That will reset the password back to the default.

Railo and Tomcat installation

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:24:00 +0200

A Railo user just pointed out that we don't have links to my series of blog posts about installing Railo on Tomcat anywhere on the Railo site or blog so I figured I'd rectify that! I started the series in March (before I joined Railo) and continued through June, beginning with the simplest way to get Railo running (Railo Express) and working up through increasingly sophisticated configurations. Here are links to each of the posts:

Part I - Railo Express (w/Jetty)
Part II - Railo Express (w/Jetty) - Windows
Part III - Railo on Tomcat - basic setup
Part IV - Railo on Tomcat with Apache
Part IV - Appendix - Adding mod_rewrite to the mix
Tomcat Tips - Enabling directory listing
Multi-Web Configuration - Railo on Tomcat with automatic deployment of Railo to new web roots
Part V - Enabling SES URLs on Tomcat

Most of the posts are for Mac OS X but the Apache/Tomcat configuration applies on Windows just the same.

[Video] Updating Railo

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:38:00 +0200

Probably one of my favorite features about Railo is the ability to update Railo immediately from the server context. Forget about applying patch after patch. Just update the server. Paul Kukiel recently tweeted a link that included a Jing Flash Video to demonstrate it. Thanks to Paul for letting me grab/host a copy here on the Railo blog.

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CFC Custom Tag Example

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:20:00 +0200

This post was inspired by Raymond Camden recent blog post about Yahoo Query Language (YQL). Back in June 2009, Michael Offner-Streit blogged about how to create CFC Custom Tags. So, I thought I'd do a little experimenting with this idea and convert Ray Camden's custom tag (cfm) over to a custom tag (cfc) that Railo enables you to use.

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Updating Railo behind Proxy / Firewall

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:54:00 +0200

If you're attempting to update your Railo server and you're behind a firewall / proxy with restricted outbound access, you can manually download the patch and install yourself.

The patches can always be found at:
http://www.getrailo.org/railo/remote/download/{full patch number}/{full patch number}.rc

So, for example, 3.1.1 is found at:
http://www.getrailo.org/railo/remote/download/3.1.1.000/3.1.1.000.rc

Now, once you have the .rc file downloaded, what do you do with it?

Depending on how your Railo is setup, you're looking the /railo-server/patches folder. In resin, it can be found {resin install}/lib/railo-server/patches -- So, if you're on a different JEE engine other than Resin, just look around for your /railo-server/patches folder and drop it in place. Once in place, restart the Railo instance in the server context ( http://{hostname}/railo-context/admin/server.cfm ). This will drop your current session and you'll have to re-log in. When you do, you should be patched!

Ubuntu 9.04, Tomcat 6 and Railo

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 03:12:00 +0200

Update: As Jamie Krug pointed out in a comment, I meant 9.04... See my response to him in the comments below!

Today I was asked to try installing Railo on Tomcat 6 on Ubuntu because it doesn't work out of the box. I normally use CentOS for Linux testing so I went ahead and downloaded the Ubuntu 9.04 Server 64-bit ISO and fired up VMWare Fusion to install it on a new VM. It's a pretty slick (if DOS-like) installer and you can install LAMP and Tomcat 6 directly as part of the initial setup which I did. Soon I had a running Ubuntu server with MySQL, PHP and Tomcat 6 all ticking along. [More]

Always something new to find in Railo

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:00:00 +0200

Even for myself this was absolutely stunning. I decided to write a series of tips for Railo and by doing this I stumbled across a problem Andrea Campolonghi had, who writes the Railo AJAX tag extensions we will include very soon. The problem was or is that he needed to read the content of a zip file that is inside another zip archive. Now how to do that without unzipping it into a local folder. [More]

Upgrading the JRE used in Railo

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:02:00 +0200

When you install Railo, the default JRE that comes with it is 1.6.0_01. So you might want to upgrade it some when. [More]

Running Railo 3.1 from a CD

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:09:00 +0200

A while ago on the getRailo.org community mailing list, there was a request to setup a "Resin Express" because Railo Express that we currently package uses Jetty and the Pretty URL support in Jetty is nill. A few days later, Gert put together and provided a download for Railo-Resin Express.

Pierre-Olivier Chassay was recently wanting to put Railo on a CD with a functional database. I pointed him at Gert's post and he gave it a shot. He blogged his experience his effort getting Railo on a CD as well as getting the H2 Database working as well. Thanks Pierre-Olivier for sharing this information!

Railo 3.1: Building your own Built-In-Function

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:19:00 +0200

Ever wish you could just install a frequently used UDF to the server since you use it so much? Take any of the numerous UDFs found at CFLib.org for example. How about... QueryRowToStruct()? That's a pretty useful function. Wonder why they didn't build this in? With Railo 3.1 RC, you can build this in yourself. With this blog post, I'm going to outline two different installation concepts, server wide and local context.

First, server wide:

Click on the "Download" link on QueryRowToStruct and you'll be prompted to download QueryRowToStruct.cfm
For server wide installation, you'll want to put this in the following directory:
```
{railo installation directory}/lib/railo-server/context/library/function/
```
Restart the server (I had to, I'm going to verify if this step is really necessary or if it can be fixed :) )

Once installed, I shouldn't have to cfinclude or copy/paste that function anywhere. I can create a test.cfm in my localhost and run the example code on QueryRowToStruct description page.

Now, you may be in a particular situation where you can't have this server-wide because you share the server with other people or because there's a conflict. You could just install it to your local context. Each virtual host you make should have its own WEB-INF directory, so you have a global admin and a local admin.

You would repeat all of the steps above, except for #2, you'll want to install this here instead:

{your website root directory}/WEB-INF/railo/library/function/

Remember, you don't have to use anything specific from CFLib.org. You can write your own user defined function or install the one that you frequently use. I bet this makes you wonder if Railo 3.1 could give you the ability to create your own Built-In-Tag? ;) You can and there's been some changes, so I plan on investigating and outlining in a new blog post. If you want to see if you can figure it out for yourself, you can use Andrea Campolonghi's <cfajaxproxy> as a great example. This example includes installation directions and will only work on Railo 3.1.020 build or higher.

Update: The resin webserver doesn't need to be restarted, but the Railo servlet engine does. You can do this one of two ways, log into the admin portal and click Restart or via code: <cfadmin action="restart" type="server" password="serverPassword">

Configuring Railo for the application server - Part 2

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:46:00 +0200

I am Continuing my blog related to the config settings in Resin and I would like to complete the explanation about the app-default.xml file and discuss the resin.conf file. [More]