At CFcamp 2012, me and Mark Drew did a presentation about Railo extensions, and the Railo Extension Builder. Right there, we released the first public version of Railo Extension Builder.
In case you weren't there, this blog post is a short recap of the presentation. The original slides can be found on slideshare.
Railo extensions are software installers, which can be found in, and installed with the Railo Administrator.
They are the easiest and fastest way to install CFML software for Railo users.
The only thing you have to do, is choosing an extension, click the install button, optionally some install steps, and you're done!
For all software publishers, both commercial and opensource, and both companies and individual programmers, Railo extensions can give your software a lot of extra attention, and makes it installable within seconds. This will dramatically lower the barrier for anyone who ever thought of checking out your software.
When you publish your extension to the Railo extension store, it will be shown in every Railo administrator around the world. Also, it will be shown and downloadable (for free extensions) from www.getrailo.org/store.
Untill now, creating a Railo extension wasn't that easy. There is documentation available online, but you still needed to manually create the extension, which could take quite a while. That is where the Railo Extension Builder comes into play!
The Extension Builder is a free and opensource web application, invented by Mark Drew, and created by Mark Drew and Paul Klinkenberg. It takes away all the complexity of creating an extension, and it allows you to publish your extension to the Extension Store with one single click.
Some features and facts about the Railo extension Builder:
- It is installable as an extension
- Built on FW/1 and Bootstrap
- Installs jars, admin plugins, applications, Built-in Functions, and Built-in Tags
- Can download your code from anywhere during install, for example from github. This makes sure that a user always installs the latest version of your software.
- Contains an ExtensionProvider cfc, which you can use for local testing, but also for your production environment.
Publishing and hosting your extension at the Extension Store is off course 100% free. For paid extensions, you'll need to contact us first.
You can download the Railo Extension Builder from github, or simply install the extension from within your Railo administrator.
Have fun with creating your own Railo extensions!
#1 by Peter Boughton - October 19, 2012 at 3:44 PM
Fortunately it was a mostly empty instance, otherwise it seems it might have overwritten existing files? :/
Shouldn't it provide an option for which directory during installation, and default to using a subdirectory?
#2 by Paul Klinkenberg - October 20, 2012 at 12:40 PM
You are right about the extension installing into the webroot. For now I will add a warning in the extension installer, since the Builder is programmed to function from the webroot. Will change that in the near future.
Thanks for the feedback :)
#3 by Peter Boughton - October 22, 2012 at 5:56 PM
Only had a quick look so far, but one thing that would be useful that it doesn't appear to have is a way to add to custom arbitrary directories in WEB-INF/railo (e.g. for putting files into components dir)?
Also, are there any hooks available for doing things on creation of new WEB-INF directories?
#4 by Paul Klinkenberg - October 22, 2012 at 11:34 PM
"any hooks available for doing things on creation of new WEB-INF directories" > No, there aren't at the moment. I know that a discussion occurred about adding events to Railo. If that will be pushed through, then I assume a "onNewWebContext" event will be available as well...