Railo is an open source CFML server that can replace Adobe (or Macromedia) ColdFusion. I ported several CFML-based apps from an old instance of Macromedia ColdFusion MX 6 to Railo 3.2.1 about two years ago, and it’s been relatively trouble-free since the change.
However, the change itself was fraught with difficulties. That was due, not to problems with Railo, but to the forgiving nature of ColdFusion (CF). If the CFML wasn’t written exactly right, CF would parse it fine, but Railo wouldn’t take it. An example of this is the following code:
Before:
<option value="A" < cfif #Sec_Level# eq 'A'>selected
</cfif>>Administrator
<option value="D" <cfif #Sec_Level# eq 'D'>selected
</cfif>>Data Entry/General User
After:
<option value="A" <cfif #Sec_Level# eq 'A'>selected="selected"</cfif>>Administrator</option>
<option value="D" <cfif #Sec_Level# eq 'D'>selected="selected"</cfif>>Data Entry/General User</option>
The “Before” code gave the error: “no matching start tag for end tag [cfif]”.
The key change that was required wasn’t the closing option tag or the change to the selected attribute; that was just good form. It was the space between the “<” and the “cfif” in the opening cfif statements that caused the error. Simply removing that space fixed the problem.
Seemingly small problems like this will cause Railo (at least version 3.2.1) to throw errors. If the code is written properly to begin with, this will likely not happen.