http://www.mycfml.com/ myCFML Developer Blog - Articles en-us Sun, 26 Jul 2026 09:02:28 GMT Copyright 2026, myCFML Developer Blog http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss SunStar Media - https://www.sunstarmedia.com/ james@sunstarmedia.com james@sunstarmedia.com 60 https://www.mycfml.com/articles/building-word-documents-from-cfml-with-cf-word/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/building-word-documents-from-cfml-with-cf-word/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Every couple of years I hit the same wall. A client needs a real .docx, not HTML pretending to be one, and CFML has never had a good answer for it. You end up shelling out to a COM object on Windows, or hand-writing OOXML, or gluing Apache POI together wi https://www.mycfml.com/articles/expose-local-commandbox-servers-to-the-internet-using-netbird/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/expose-local-commandbox-servers-to-the-internet-using-netbird/ Sat, 18 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT I use Netbird to show work-in-progress CFML sites to clients and to point webhooks at a local Adobe ColdFusion or Lucee server without deploying anything. It also does tcp/udp/tls for things like database tunnels, and the http side supports a PIN or SSO group restrictions instead of a password if that fits better. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/reading-old-wddx-files-in-2026/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/reading-old-wddx-files-in-2026/ Tue, 14 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Old WDDX files you can't open anymore? I built a set of Windows tools that reads WDDX and converts to CSV, JSON, SQL, XLSX and more, plus a Total Commander lister plugin that opens .wddx as a grid. https://www.mycfml.com/js-screensaver-a-privacy-curtain-for-admin-apps/ https://www.mycfml.com/js-screensaver-a-privacy-curtain-for-admin-apps/ Tue, 07 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Beyond nostalgia: web apps for admin or back-office users often sit open with sensitive data (PII, financials) on screen while someone steps away. JS-Screensaver is a small, zero-dependency JavaScript framework for full-screen browser screensavers to provide shoulder-surfing protection. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/free-on-device-text-to-speech-in-the-browser/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/free-on-device-text-to-speech-in-the-browser/ Wed, 01 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT I've written CFML-based AI chatbots using an older perpetual licensed version of ColdFusion and wanted to integrate text-to-speech that I would not have to pay a cloud vendor for. It turns out that is now possible, and the whole thing runs client-side. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/backporting-coldfusion-2025s-password-hashing-api-to-cf2016-lucee-boxlang/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/backporting-coldfusion-2025s-password-hashing-api-to-cf2016-lucee-boxlang/ Sun, 28 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT I built a backport, a single shaded JAR plus a thin ColdFusion CFC, that gives you the identical function signatures and identical hash output of ColdFusion 2025u8's passwordHashGenerate and passwordHashVerify (plus PBKDF2). https://www.mycfml.com/articles/tags-a-six-song-love-letter-to-coldfusion-and-the-soundtrack-to-my/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/tags-a-six-song-love-letter-to-coldfusion-and-the-soundtrack-to-my/ Thu, 11 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Tags is a six-song love letter to ColdFusion, the web platform declared dead in 2002 that never got around to dying. Spanning Americana, heartland rock, blues, electro-funk, synthwave, and pop-punk, it tells thirty years of history - two brothers in a Minnesota basement, three corporate names on the door, and a faithful community that still gathers in the Vegas desert every year. It's an album about outliving your own obituary, written in the only language that could: the one they buried running. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/the-cfexec-cfc-library-is-now-on-github/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/the-cfexec-cfc-library-is-now-on-github/ Sun, 07 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT I've been running cfExec.com for a while now, and it's up and running today. It's a reference site for command-line tools you can drive from ColdFusion: what each one does, live "try it" demos, the arguments spelled out. The one thing it never did was hand you the code in one place. Now it does. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/a-cross-engine-cfml-client-for-the-iplogs-com-ip-reputation-api/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/a-cross-engine-cfml-client-for-the-iplogs-com-ip-reputation-api/ Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Released a new open-source CFC: iplogs, a cross-engine client for the ipLogs.com IP reputation / VPN-detection API. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/cfglobalping-ping-dig-and-curl-your-site-from-anywhere-on-earth-in/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/cfglobalping-ping-dig-and-curl-your-site-from-anywhere-on-earth-in/ Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Can my web application be accessed "out there"? Not from my server. Not from my laptop on the Central Coast. From Frankfurt. From Tokyo. Globalping (free) solves the vantage-point problem. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/cf-scrimage-a-cfml-wrapper-for-scrimage-with-webp-filters-and-a-dual-api/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/cf-scrimage-a-cfml-wrapper-for-scrimage-with-webp-filters-and-a-dual-api/ Thu, 28 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT CF 2025 added native WebP support and Lucee has had it for a bit, but most of us are still running CF 2021 or 2023 in production. If you wanted WebP from CFML before now, your options were ImageMagick shell-outs, a Photoshop step, or "use a different format." It does more than WebP. Scrimage's full surface is 46 named filters, 21 composite blend modes, two dominant-color transforms, plus the usual sizing and geometry work. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/a-cfml-wrapper-for-thumbnailator/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/a-cfml-wrapper-for-thumbnailator/ Thu, 21 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT Thumbnailator is a single JAR with no transitive dependencies, MIT-licensed, compiled to Java 8 bytecode, and the API is well thought through - feature-complete for what most CFML projects need: resize, scale, crop, rotate, watermark, format conversion, batch processing, EXIF orientation, and a real fluent builder. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/cftoml-a-pure-cfml-parser-and-emitter-for-toml-1-0-and-1-1/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/cftoml-a-pure-cfml-parser-and-emitter-for-toml-1-0-and-1-1/ Thu, 14 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT cfTOML parses and emits TOML, runs on Adobe CF 2016 through 2025, Lucee 5+, and BoxLang 1+. One CFC. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/ashid-for-cfml-time-sortable-prefixed-ids-without-a-jar/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/ashid-for-cfml-time-sortable-prefixed-ids-without-a-jar/ Thu, 07 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT Self-documenting prefix, embedded millisecond timestamp, lexicographically sortable, double-click-selectable as a single token, case-insensitive on decode. (Inspired by Stripe's IDs, ULID, and TypeID. Crockford Base32 keeps the alphabet to 32 lowercase characters with no I/L/O/U ambiguity.) https://www.mycfml.com/articles/cf-jemoji-a-cfml-emoji-wrapper-for-the-post-emoji-java-era/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/cf-jemoji-a-cfml-emoji-wrapper-for-the-post-emoji-java-era/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT This CFML wrapper provides support for newer emojis using the JEmoji Java library (and Java 17). https://www.mycfml.com/articles/cf-badwords-aka-verbal-morality-statute-enforcement-cfml-edition/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/cf-badwords-aka-verbal-morality-statute-enforcement-cfml-edition/ Tue, 21 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT cf-badWords is a CFML profanity detection and filtering CFC for ColdFusion 2016+ that normalizes input through AnyAscii to defeat Unicode pseudo-letters, homoglyph attacks, Punycode, zero-width-space smuggling, leetspeak, and emoji-as-letters before matching. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/cfmlfiddle-compare-coldfusion-lucee-and-boxlang-side-by-side/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/cfmlfiddle-compare-coldfusion-lucee-and-boxlang-side-by-side/ Thu, 16 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT cfmlFiddle is a self-hosted CFML playground. It runs on your machine through CommandBox. You write code in an Ace Editor, pick an engine (or all of them), click Run, and see the output. If you picked multiple engines, you see all the results stacked, side by side, or tabbed. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/parsing-pdfs-into-structured-data-with-cfml-and-opendataloader/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/parsing-pdfs-into-structured-data-with-cfml-and-opendataloader/ Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT OpenDataLoader is an open source Java library that actually handles this well. It runs locally, no GPU needed, and it parses PDFs into JSON, text, HTML, annotated PDF, and three flavors of Markdown. Since it's a Java JAR, it works with Adobe ColdFusion 2016+, Lucee & BoxLang. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/jsonata-comes-to-coldfusion-query-and-transform-json-like-a-pro/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/jsonata-comes-to-coldfusion-query-and-transform-json-like-a-pro/ Wed, 01 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT If you've ever wrestled with deeply nested JSON structures in CFML - writing loop after loop, checking for key existence, and manually building transformed output - there's now a better way. cfJSONata is a new open-source CFC that brings JSONata expression support to Adobe ColdFusion 2016+ and Lucee 5-7. Think of JSONata as XPath for JSON - a declarative query and transformation language that lets you extract, filter, aggregate, and reshape JSON data with compact expressions instead of procedural code. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/parseable-json-is-not-always-valid-or-consistent-json/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/parseable-json-is-not-always-valid-or-consistent-json/ Thu, 12 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT The JSON specification (RFC 8259) says that object keys SHOULD be unique, but it doesn't strictly forbid duplicates-meaning duplicate keys produce valid JSON that will parse, but the behavior is undefined and implementation-dependent. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/token-oriented-object-notation-toon-for-coldfusion-cfml/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/token-oriented-object-notation-toon-for-coldfusion-cfml/ Thu, 06 Nov 2025 12:00:00 GMT After generating a ColdFusion function for MessagePack encoding and decoding, I started seeing articles regarding optimizing data for use with LLMs called "TOON". TOON stands for "Token-Oriented Object Notation" and is lightweight data format optimized fo https://www.mycfml.com/articles/messagepack-support-for-coldfusion-cfml/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/messagepack-support-for-coldfusion-cfml/ Wed, 29 Oct 2025 12:00:00 GMT MessagePack is an efficient binary serialization format. It lets you exchange data among multiple languages like JSON. But it's faster and smaller. It's supported by over 50 programming languages and environments, but not ColdFusion... until now. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/coldfusion-csv-processing-speed-test-results-october-2025/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/coldfusion-csv-processing-speed-test-results-october-2025/ Thu, 23 Oct 2025 12:00:00 GMT DuckDB dominates with the lowest mean (362 ms) and high consistency (low std relative to scale). OctoSQL follows closely (542 ms mean), making these ideal for low-latency CSV processing. CSVRead_2025 and CSVProcess_2025 (~51166–299 ms) are moderately slow with decent consistency. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/coldfusion-csv-processing-speed-test/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/coldfusion-csv-processing-speed-test/ Thu, 16 Oct 2025 12:00:00 GMT While in the process of developing "real world" unit tests to compare purist ColdFusion/CFML-only approaches against alternatives available using the command line (via CFExecute), I came across staggering performance issues that kinda suprised me. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/customtag-cfscript-nuance/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/customtag-cfscript-nuance/ Mon, 06 Oct 2025 12:00:00 GMT When calling a ColdFusion custom tag using CFScript syntax (cf_customTagName()), it executes twice-once in start mode and once in end mode-unlike the single execution with tag-based syntax (<cf_customTagName>). This subtle behavior can cause unexpected results. To handle this, I use thisTag.executionMode to ensure logic only runs once. This nuance isn't well-documented, so I wanted to share it to help others avoid confusion. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/whos-who-survey-status-update/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/whos-who-survey-status-update/ Mon, 15 Sep 2025 12:00:00 GMT I've identified many developers through the archived articles and code samples that I've accrued over the last 28 years. I could use some assistance locating some developers from the past. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/whos-who-survey/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/whos-who-survey/ Thu, 28 Aug 2025 12:00:00 GMT I've recently started re-reading the original Steven Levy's "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" book from 1984 and I like how the author paid homage to the pioneers with a dedicated "Who's Who" section. In my opinion, the past & current CFML plat https://www.mycfml.com/articles/convert-unicode-to-ascii7-using-anyascii-java-library/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/convert-unicode-to-ascii7-using-anyascii-java-library/ Thu, 03 Jul 2025 12:00:00 GMT "Sanitizing inputs" is critical and it goes beyond checking for SQLi and XSS. For example, some filename naming conventions that work on one OS may not work on another. (Don't name your file "NUL.txt" on Windows or you won't be able to delete it.) As a pr https://www.mycfml.com/articles/coldfusion-wrapper-for-zint-barcode-generator/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/coldfusion-wrapper-for-zint-barcode-generator/ Thu, 26 Jun 2025 12:00:00 GMT Zint is able to generate 93 different barcode formats using the command line on multiple platforms. I haven't found any java library that is capable of supporting the same formats or outputting files as BMP, EPS, GIF, PCX, TIF, EMF, PNG or SVG. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/coldfusion-pseudolocalization-for-generating-fake-translations/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/coldfusion-pseudolocalization-for-generating-fake-translations/ Thu, 19 Jun 2025 12:00:00 GMT About 10 years ago, I wrote a ColdFusion User Defined Function (UDF) named pseudolocalize for transforming a given string by replacing its Roman (Latin) characters with similar-looking characters that have simple diacritical marks (accents, tildes, etc.). https://www.mycfml.com/articles/coldfusion-gemini-vibes-gone-wrong/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/coldfusion-gemini-vibes-gone-wrong/ Wed, 11 Jun 2025 12:00:00 GMT I like creating custom tag wrappers for command line executable that match built-in ColdFusion functions and utilize the same parameters. I do my best to match the same output when it matters. I thought that this would be a simple task to test AI LLM sinc https://www.mycfml.com/articles/namefaker-a-cfml-based-function-to-generate-fake-identity-data/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/namefaker-a-cfml-based-function-to-generate-fake-identity-data/ Wed, 04 Jun 2025 12:00:00 GMT A project I'm working on needs to be able to generate lots of fictitious/fake identities for testing purposes. I wanted a mock library that works with CF2016+, not have any dependencies (java JAR, EXE, API, etc) and offers both granularity & customization when it comes to results and name lists. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/using-coldfusion-and-xpdf-to-extract-pdf-metadata/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/using-coldfusion-and-xpdf-to-extract-pdf-metadata/ Thu, 29 May 2025 12:00:00 GMT A quick dive into the powerful combination of ColdFusion and Xpdf for extracting PDF metadata. Xpdf, an open-source project, provides a robust set of command-line tools, including pdfinfo.exe, which excels at metadata extraction. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/isipv6-what-does-this-built-in-function-do-for-your-application/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/isipv6-what-does-this-built-in-function-do-for-your-application/ Mon, 12 May 2025 12:00:00 GMT isIPv6 has been around since 2009. Are you using it? Is it beneficial? Does it perform a connection to a host? Does it test an IP string for validity? Are the results consistent in Adobe ColdFusion, Lucee and BoxLang? https://www.mycfml.com/articles/support-unlimited-forwarded-email-messages-via-api-and-coldfusion/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/support-unlimited-forwarded-email-messages-via-api-and-coldfusion/ Thu, 08 May 2025 12:00:00 GMT In tackling the challenge of processing email attachments from dedicated email addresses, we initially built a system to process EML using javax.mail. We sought out a more efficient approach and are exploring Forward Email's service, which offers unlimited domains and webhook-supported email forwarding. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/cf-timer-revisited/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/cf-timer-revisited/ Thu, 01 May 2025 12:00:00 GMT The CF_Timer custom ColdFusion tag measures the execution time of the code block it encloses. Upon encountering the CF_Timer start tag, it records a timestamp with nanosecond or millisecond precision. When the corresponding end tag is reached, it calculates the elapsed time. This duration can then be displayed in various formats (inline, outline, or as a comment), assigned to a specified variable, or suppressed based on allowed IP addresses. The tag also offers flexibility in the time unit for output, including nanoseconds, microseconds, milliseconds, or seconds. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/ben-and-ryan-show-guest-appearance-coldfusion-custom-udfs/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/ben-and-ryan-show-guest-appearance-coldfusion-custom-udfs/ Wed, 23 Apr 2025 12:00:00 GMT I was invited to be a guest on the Ben & Ryan Show (hosted by xByte Solutions and Ben Nadel) to share some custom ColdFusion user-defined functions (UDFs). UDFs are custom code blocks that you can create to perform specific tasks in your web applications, https://www.mycfml.com/articles/maskcc-udf/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/maskcc-udf/ Sat, 19 Apr 2025 12:00:00 GMT The maskCC user-defined function (UDF) takes a text string as input, searches for patterns that resemble credit card numbers, attempts to validate these potential numbers using ColdFusion's built-in credit card validation, and then masks the validated numbers by replacing all but the last four digits with asterisks. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/jreescape-udf/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/jreescape-udf/ Sat, 19 Apr 2025 12:00:00 GMT The jreEscape user-defined function (UDF) ensures strings can be safely used in regex patterns by preventing special characters from being interpreted as regex metacharacters. The reescape function exists in Adobe ColdFusion, but not Lucee. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/tempcache-udf/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/tempcache-udf/ Sat, 19 Apr 2025 12:00:00 GMT The tempCache user-defined function (UDF) allows you to temporarily store data in the ColdFusion cache and retrieve it using a generated UUID. This is particularly useful for preserving data across HTTP redirects, with options for automatic expiration and single-use retrieval. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/enablewkhtmltopdfforms-udf/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/enablewkhtmltopdfforms-udf/ Sat, 19 Apr 2025 12:00:00 GMT This enableWKHTMLTOPDFForms user-defined function (UDF) modifies the binary of a non-Adobe-generated PDF file to enable the editing of form fields in Adobe Acrobat. The function works by finding specific patterns within the PDF's data related to annotation parents and replacing the word "Parent" with "Papent" in those patterns. This seemingly small change addresses an incompatibility issue that prevents Acrobat from recognizing and allowing editing of form fields created by WKHTMLTOPDF. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/generateemailhashcode-udf/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/generateemailhashcode-udf/ Sat, 19 Apr 2025 12:00:00 GMT The generateEmailHashCode user-defined function (UDF) processes an email address by extracting the domain, sanitizing the username by removing periods (dots) and any part after the first "+", converting both parts to lowercase, and then returning a consistent Java-generated integer hash code of the resulting string. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/streamfindnocase-udf/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/streamfindnocase-udf/ Sat, 19 Apr 2025 12:00:00 GMT The streamFindNoCase user-defined function (UDF) searches the currently accumulated output buffer for the presence of a given string, performing a case-insensitive comparison. It utilizes different methods for accessing and searching the output buffer dep https://www.mycfml.com/articles/createshadowhtml-udf/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/createshadowhtml-udf/ Sat, 19 Apr 2025 12:00:00 GMT The createShadowHtml CFML user-defined function (UDF) generates HTML and inline JavaScript to create a dynamic, client-side preview of a given HTML document within a shadow DOM. It optionally disables links within the preview and uses a placeholder text before the HTML is loaded. This allows for isolated rendering of HTML and CSS without interference from the main document's styles or scripts. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/udf-hashid-ishashidvalid/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/udf-hashid-ishashidvalid/ Sat, 19 Apr 2025 12:00:00 GMT The hashid and ishashidValid CFML user-defined functions (UDFs) provide a simple mechanism for generating and validating hash-based identifiers. https://www.mycfml.com/articles/cffrankenstein-choosing-to-use-exes-instead-of-cfml-bifs/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/cffrankenstein-choosing-to-use-exes-instead-of-cfml-bifs/ Sun, 30 Mar 2025 12:00:00 GMT I **choose** to use a lot of third-party Windows command line programs as part of our ColdFusion/CFML stack. Much of the functionality could be considered duplicated since official built-in functions (BIFs) already exist, but I perceive it as a "customer-controlled functions that always return reliable results regardless of CFML platform and/or version". https://www.mycfml.com/articles/using-coldfusion-to-generate-pre-signed-wasabi-url/ https://www.mycfml.com/articles/using-coldfusion-to-generate-pre-signed-wasabi-url/ Thu, 20 Mar 2025 12:00:00 GMT There was an internal decision to use Wasabi Cloud Storage instead of Amazon S3 and I needed to use ColdFusion to generate a pre-signed URL to allow access to AI-generated content for a limited time. I had used the Sv4Util.cfc and aws-cfml libraries before with Amazon and thought it was just as simple, but I got confused somewhere along the way and it just wasn't working.