On server processing - coldfusion

Question

I have a web application that will be doing some processing with submitted data. Instead of making the user wait for what will take at least a few seconds, maybe up to a few minutes during heavy load, I would like to know if there is some way to, within coldfusion, have processing that just occurs on the server.
Basically, the data would be passed to the server, and then the user would be redirected back to the main page to allow them to do other things, but not necessarily be able to see the results right away. Meanwhile, the processing of the data would take place on the server, and be entered into the database when complete.
Is this even possible within coldfusion, or would I need to look into using code that would receive the data and process it as a separate program?

Answer 1

ColdFusion 8 introduced the cfthread tag which may assist you.
<cfthread
required
name="thread name"
optional
action="run"
priority="NORMAL|HIGH|LOW"
zero or more application-specific attributes>
Thread code
</cfthread>

Answer 2

To do this reliably, you can use a database table as a job queue. So you when the user submits the data you insert record into the database indicating there is some work to be done. Then you create a scheduled task in the CF Administrator that polls a script that gets the next job from the queue and does the processing you describe. When complete it can update the database and you can then alert your user that there job is complete.
Make sense?

Answer 3

Another option that will possibly work for you is to use AJAX to post the data to the server. This is a pretty easy method to use, since you can use pretty much the exact same CF code that you have now and instead only need to modify the form submitting page (and you could even use some unobtrusive javascript techniques to have this degrade gracefully if javascript isn't present).
Here's an example using jQuery and BlockUI that will work for unobtrusively-submitting any form on your page in a background thread:
<script>
$(function () {
$("form").on("submit", function (e) {
var f = $(this);
e.preventDefault();
$.ajax({
method: f.attr("method"),
url: f.attr("action"),
data: f.serialize(),
beforeSend(jqXHR, settings) {
f.blockUI({message: "Loading..."});
},
complete(jqXHR, textStatus) {
f.unblockUI();
},
success: function (data, textStatus, jqXHR) {
// do something useful with the response
},
error: function(jqXHR, textStatus, errorThrown) {
// report the error
}
});
});
});
</script>

Answer 4

You should combine all three of these answers to give yourself a complete solution.
Use CF Thread to "kick off" the work.
Add a record to the DB to tell you the process is underway.
Use Ajax to check the DB record to see if the work is complete. When
your thread completes update the record - Ajax finds the work
complete and you display some message or indicator on the user's
screen so they can go on to step 2 or whatever. So each of these
answers holds a clue to a complete solution.
Not sure if this should be an answer or a comment (since I'm not adding anything new here).

Answer 5

We use an CF event gateway for this. The user submits a file via a web form and the event gateway monitors that upload directory. Based upon the file name the gateway knows how it should process the file into the database. This way the only real delay the user faces is the time for the file to actually transmit from their machine up to the server. We however have no need to inform the user of any statuses related to the process though could easily see how to work that into things if we did.