With Coldfusion, how do you handle dynamicaly generated URLs? - coldfusion

(Update: I converted this question to a community wiki as the answer appears more subjective than I thought it would. There are multiple answers depending on one's needs.)
If I have a folder that only includes application.cfc and index.cfm, what is a fast, reliable method to handle dynamically generated URLs? i.e. URLs that do not have a corresponding physical .cfm file.
This example url generates a 404, but it should lookup a page in a db and return it via index.cfm:
http://www.myserver.com/cfdemo/mynewpage.cfm
Should I use onMissingTemplate() in the application.cfc to handle the missing file? Since this method doesn't process onRequestStart(), onRequest() and onRequestEnd(), I wonder if it should be avoided.
Alternately, I could setup an ISAPIRewrite rule since I'm using IIS (or mod_rewrite on Apache)
# IF the request is not /index.cfm, doesn't exist and ends in cfm or html,
# rewrite it. Pass the requested filename $1.$2 as the 1st param: cgi.page
# append the remaining url params $4 ($3 is the ?)
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_NAME} ^(?!/index.cfm)(.*)$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^\/(.*)\.(cfm|html)(\??)(.*)$ /index.cfm?page=$1.$2&$4 [I,L]
Are these methods appropriate, or am I missing a better way of accomplishing this goal? It seems that Coldfusion should have this type of feature built into the application.cfc. Maybe I'm just missing it.

nothing wrong with url rewrite on web server level. I'd vote for that.

Because CF by default handles only cfm/cfc requests, you can do in the beginning of Application.cfc something like this:
<cfif Right(cgi.SCRIPT_NAME, 9) NEQ "index.cfm">
<!--- analyze the SCRIPT_NAME and start processing --->
</cfif>
For other filetypes using web-server configuration is the only way I can see. But instead of creating rewriting rules you can try to use custom 404 handlers. At least when using IIS you'll be able to get the context in cgi.QUERY_STRING, if set up the dummy page, say 404.cfm (it does not need to exist) and putting following check before previous example:
<!--- trap 404 requests triggered by IIS --->
<cfif right(cgi.SCRIPT_NAME, 7) EQ "404.cfm">
<cflog file="mylogfile" text="404 error triggered by IIS. Context: #cgi.QUERY_STRING#">
</cfif>
For Apache it is possible to use following handler, but I'm not sure if you can extract the context in this case:
ErrorDocument 404 /404.cfm

If you are doing this for SES URLs, I'd offer two pieces of advice.
The first is that they matter less and less as time goes on. Google, for example, recognizes that URLs need to include query data.
Second: CF can natively handle SES URLs in the form hostname/file.cfm/param1/param2. Ray Camden's BlogCFC, for example, works that way. It is on by default in CF8, but needs to be enabled in CF7. I don't have a lot of information handy on this, but it should be easy to Google (or Bing, or whatever).

If you can allow it, I'd try to convert URLs like:
http://www.myserver.com/cfdemo/mynewpage.cfm
to:
http://www.myserver.com/cfdemo/mynewpage OR
http://www.myserver.com/index.cfm/cfdemo/mynewpage
so that you don't lose the onRequest methods. The first one can be done only at the webserver level, so in Apache or IIS. The second one can be done in just ColdFusion. See this: http://www.cfcdeveloper.com/index.cfm/2007/4/7/Coldfusion-SES-URL.
Otherwise, if you must have the .cfm at the end, you can use a URL rewrite package in Apache or IIS to strip it out and then forward the request to a cfm page or do what you're doing with onMissingTemplate. I'd try to opt for a solution that doesn't involve losing the onRequest methods, but up to you.

I'd definitely go for URL rewriting. Not only will it be a more predictable, yet generalized approach, but it reduces a significant amount of string parsing load from the CF server. Further, it results in CF handling a request to a real file thereby getting you the benefit of onapplicationstart, onrequeststart, and other events.
As an aside, I've personally always found URLs like /index.cfm/foo/bar/ to look unpro and hackish. Additionally, URLs (like /foo/bar) that don't end in either a file extension or trailing slash are technically incorrect (per old-school static site conventions at the very least) and ought to probably be avoided as well. I'd also be curious where Ben Doom gets his assertion that "The first is that they matter less and less as time goes on. Google, for example, recognizes that URLs need to include query data." In my experience I've actually found the exact opposite to be true.

Related

Rewriting RewriteRule to include back one particular php file in the path

I inherited a large WordPress site: I was looking at the Wordfence live logs when I found users not loading a particular PHP page. I investigated and through an FTP client I found the file was where it was supposed to be. I used some network tool (in Chrome, Opera and Firefox) and, again, I found that file was returning a 404.
So, I found in the root of the website a short htaccess file containing this line:
RewriteRule ^wp-content/(.*)\.php$ [R=404,L]
I commented this out and reloaded the website: no error anymore. I must say, the error apparently doesn't cause anything strange to the website. But I would like to eliminate it.
I suppose this rule is meant to avoid someone can make a direct HTTP request to this and any other PHP file in that directory: in this case I suppose this file I'm talking about is called from an include, not directly, because in WordFence what I see is an error coming after a user accesses directly other pages, not this one in particular.
Anyway, I would like to rewrite this rule so that it stays the same as now, except for that php page. The PHP page is in the path of the theme:
wp-content/themes/themeName/core/css/customized.css.php
Is this possible? Any help is appreciated
If you want to exclude that specific php file from the RewriteRule, you can add a negative lookahead to the regex, like so:
RewriteRule ^wp-content/(?!themes/.*/core/css/customized\.css\.php$)(.*)\.php$ [R=404,L]

How do i change the base url of my application from : http://test.something.com/ to http://test.something.com/abc.cfm

The url : http://test.something.com/ is the login page of the application. By default it calls a page 'login.cfm'. But it doesnt shows in the url. May be it is defined in the server file as a default page.
What I want is, when i access this url [http://test.something.com/], the url should also show the called page i.e. the url should look like : http://test.something.com/login.cfm everytime.
I dumped the cgi variables and below is the stack for the same. I was wondering whether i have to change the cgi.http_referer or cgi.http_host.
Or do I need to change some file on the server side? I am using Apache.
EDITED:
what you are asking might be a browser dependent issue. In the Browser there is option to trim the URL from the address bar, which might be the case for you.
Please check this link and get it confirmed.
http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-show-the-full-url-in-firefox/
Still if you want to change your application's URL to look something else then you can try "URL rewrite"
You can check this link for URL rewrite.
http://www.iis.net/learn/extensions/url-rewrite-module/user-friendly-url-rule-template
(You forgot to show the cgi scope dump, fyi)
Are you certain that Application.cfc/Application.cfm isn't just showinng the login page? Also look in any header files. That's the likely scenario always showing the login page.
Anyway, you can use .htaccess to do just this but it's not clear whether you want each subdirectory to its index.cfm, or if you want to redirect to the root.
If you want the redirect to the index page of the current directory (/something/ redirects to /something/index.cfm)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\..*$
RewriteRule ^((.*)$) /$1/index.cfm [L,R=301]
If, instead, you want it to redirect to the root folder, that's a pretty simple change
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\..*$
RewriteRule ^((.*)$) /index.cfm [L,R=301]
The L in both examples stops processing of rules after that, so if you have other rules in .htaccess, that may be a concern.
The R flag (R=301) is important to cause the URL to visibly change, creating the effect you want.

Is there a "clean URL" (mod_rewrite) equivalent for iPlanet?

I'm working with Coldfusion (because I have to) and we use iPlanet 7 (because we have to), and I would like to pass clean URL's instead of the query-param junk (for numerous reasons). My problem is I don't have access to the overall obj.conf file, and was wondering if there were .htaccess equivalents I could pass on the fly per directory. Currently I am using Application.cfc to force the server to look at index.cfm in root before loading the requested page, but this requires a .cfm file is passed, so it just 404's out if the user provides /path/to/file but no extension. Ultimately, I would like to allow the user to pass domain.com/path/to/file but serve domain.com/index.cfm?q1=path&q2=to&q3=file. Any ideas?
You can mod_dir with the DirectoryIndex directive to set which page is served on /directory/ requests.
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_dir.html
I'm not sure what exists for iPlanet, haven't had to work with it before. But it would be possible to use a url like index.cfm/path/to/file, and pull the extra path information via the cgi.path_info variable. Not exactly what you're looking for, but cleaner that query-params.

What does this URL mean?

http://localhost/students/index.cfm/register?action=studentreg
I did not understand the use of 'register' after index.cfm. Can anyone please help me understand what it could mean? There is a index.cfm file in students folder. Could register be a folder name?
They might be using special commands within their .htaccess files to modify the URL to point to something else.
Things like pointing home.html -> index.php?p=home
ColdFusion will execute index.cfm. It is up to the script to decide what to do with the /register that comes after.
This trick is used to build SEO friendly URL's. For example http://www.ohnuts.com/buy.cfm/bulk-nuts-seeds/almonds/roasted-salted - buy.com uses the /bulk-nuts-seeds/almonds/roasted-salted to determine which page to show.
Whats nice about this is it avoids custom 404 error handlers and URL rewrites. This makes it easier for your application to directly manage the URL's used.
I don't know if it works on all platforms, as I've only used it on IIS.
You want to look into the cgi.PATH_INFO variable, it is populated automatically by CF server when such URL format used.
Better real-life example would look something like this.
I have an URL which I want to make prettier:
http://mybikesite/index.cfm?category=bicycles&manufacturer=cannondale&model=trail-sl-4
I can rewrite it this way:
http://mybikesite/index.cfm/category/bicycles/manufacturer/cannondale/model/trail-sl-4
Our cgi.PATH_INFO value is: /category/bicycles/manufacturer/cannondale/model/trail-sl-4
We can parse it using list functions to get the same data as original URL gives us automatically.
Second part of your URL is plain GET variable, it is pushed into URL scope as usually.
Both formats can be mixed, GET vars may be used for paging or any other secondary stuff.
index.cfm is using either a CFIF IsDefind("register") or a CFIF #cgi.Path_Info# CONTAINS statements to execute a function or perform a logic step.

Must one use an MVC FrameW to produce clean URL's?

The host that I want to host with does not support server side url rewriting, thus no third party tools can be installed to rewrite the url's.
This is Coldfusion 8, on windows, IIS.
The other alternative that I know of is to use a framework, but I do not feel like taking that route (time), for the application works well as it is (but the URL).
Can clean urls be generated by purely CF?
I do not need the clean url's for seo, rather it will be for the user's easy reference to their page. E.g. youtube.com/userpage
Any sugessions?
If the only choice is to use a framework, then which one is most compatible with traditional cfml'', cfm's & CFC's? In that there needs to be minimum changes to the code in the conversion from the none frameworked app to become frameworked.
Thanks for you contributions!
No. you do not need a framework or URL rewriter to get http://domain.com/some/url to work (notice no index.cfm).
In IIS you can set up custom error pages for 404 errors. Make the custom error page execute a ColdFusion page on your server (/urlhandler.cfm, 404.cfm or index.cfm for example). Within that page, you can control your own routes with ColdFusion by using list methods on the cgi.query_string value. IIS will provide you a url that looks something like 404;http://domain.com/the/original/url which you can parse to route the visitor to your desired event.
<!--- Get URL String --->
<cfset CurrentURL = ListGetAt(cgi.query_string, 2, ";")>
<cfset CurrentURL = Replace(CurrentURL, ":80", "")>
<cfset CurrentURL = Replace(CurrentURL, ":443", "")>
<cfset CurrentURL = Replace(CurrentURL, "403;", "")>
<cfset CurrentURL = Replace(CurrentURL, "'", "", "ALL")>
We have a site that receives approx a million visitors a month that is still running SES urls with this method. I was shocked when I was hired and found this existing code at the heart of the site and would not elect to repeat it, but, if you have limitations on installing a rewriter or third party framework (this client placed restrictions on the site) this solution may work for you.
By playing with the above code, you can quickly see how you may use CF to dynamically include the .CFM file you want or execute the right CFC code depending on your set up.
You can use the Framework/1 framework or CFWheels to achieve clean URL's but it will need to include the "/index.cfm/" at the beginning of the URL in order to trigger ColdFusion's application handler code.
EDIT: Please see Aaron Greenlee's work around to prevent the "index.cfm" from appearing in the URL.
i.e. Whichever approach you take, if you cannot add a 3rd party tool to rewrite URLs (and not using Apache), your URL's will be in the form of http://site.com/index.cfm/section/item
eg.
http://site.com/index.cfm/user/login
http://site.cfm/index.cfm/user/signup
FW/1 offers the option of passing in URL variables in a search engine friendly format as well.
Examples:
http://site.com/index.cfm/user/login/email/me#you.com/password/test
is the same as
http://site.com/index.cfm/user/login?email=me#you.com&password=test
is the same as
http://site.com/index.cfm?action=user.login&email=me#you.com&password=test
Go ahead and learn a framework. Most will work for this. However if you just do not want to learn a framework.
www.mysite.com/products/
will run:
www.mysite.com/products/index.cfm
www.mysite.com/products/books
will run:
www.mysite.com/products/books/index.cfm
Framework/1 and CFZen will work for this a they are very simple 1 file frameworks that you can just work around.
CFZen
http://cfzen.riaforge.org
http://cftipsplus.com/blog/?tag=cfzen
Framework/1
http://fw1.riaforge.org
http://corfield.org - the author of Framework/1
Instead of using http://yoursite.com/index.cfm/user, you can do http://yoursite.com/user.cfm and catch the error in the OnMissingTemplate function of application.cfc. This will not require you to set a custom 404 page.