ColdFusion 11: <cfclient> seems to require /CFIDE to be available

G'day:
This will be a short one... I just want to trot out various observations I make about <cfclient> as I make them. I don't want to waste too much effort on it.

I also feel a bit dirty round about now... I'm about to use a <cfform> tag.

As should everyone, I do not expose /CFIDE to the outside world. This is a terrible vector for security vulnerabilities. One that Adobe seems to be dragging its heels about resolving once and for all ("Isolate the /CFIDE/scripts directory from the rest of /CFIDE" (3732913)).

So when I'm using <cfform> (which is only ever when I am writing example code like this), I need to redirect ColdFusion to look in my isolated directory which just has the script stuff in it:

<cfajaximport scriptsrc="/lib/js/CF/scripts">
<cfform method="post" action="#CGI.script_name#">
    <cfinput type="dateField" name="date">
    <input type="submit" name="submitButton" value="Go">
</cfform>
<cfdump var="#form#">

Note: do not use <cfform> or any of ColdFusion's other UI wizard tags. Just don't. See here: "ColdFusion UI the Right Way", here: "I'm not going to tell you to stop using ColdFusion UI tags anymore...", and here: "Oi! You bloody wankers! Stop using ColdFusion UI controls".

Anyway, back to the code. The poorly-named <cfajaximport> tag allows one to point ColdFusion at a different, isolated directory. That's quite handy.

Now I try it with my <cfclient> code:

<cfajaximport scriptsrc="/lib/js/CF/scripts">
<cfclient>
<cfset message = "G'day World">
<cfoutput>#message#</cfoutput>
</cfclient>

and I get this:

14:46:11.292	GET	http://localhost:8511 /shared/scratch/blogExamples/coldfusion /CF11/cfclient/moveScriptDir.cfm	[HTTP/1.1 200 OK 284ms]
14:46:11.655	GET	http://localhost:8511 /lib/js/CF/scripts/ajax/messages/cfmessage.js	[HTTP/1.1 200 OK 5ms]
14:46:11.655	GET	http://localhost:8511 /lib/js/CF/scripts/ajax/package/cfajax.js	[HTTP/1.1 200 OK 10ms]
14:46:11.656	GET	http://localhost:8511/CFIDE/cfclient/cfclient_main.js	[HTTP/1.1 404 /CFIDE/cfclient/cfclient_main.js 3ms]
14:46:11.656	GET	http://localhost:8511/CFIDE/cfclient/cffunctions.js	[HTTP/1.1 404 /CFIDE/cfclient/cffunctions.js 3ms]
14:46:11.657	GET	http://localhost:8511/CFIDE/cfclient/cfclient_main.js	[HTTP/1.1 404 /CFIDE/cfclient/cfclient_main.js 1ms]
14:46:11.657	GET	http://localhost:8511/CFIDE/cfclient/cffunctions.js	[HTTP/1.1 404 /CFIDE/cfclient/cffunctions.js 0ms]

Groan. Because <cfclient> doesn't put its script files in the scripts dir, does it? No. Of course it doesn't. Muppets.

But this could still be solved if one could specify some other way of pointing it to a different location for its resources, but... no. There's not a way of doing this that I can find. Short of pissing around on the web server and setting up virtual directories pointing to /CFIDE/cfclient. This isn't really a hardship, but still, it just shouldn't be necessary, and I can't help but think this is a bit sloppy on the part of Adobe.

It also demonstrates that for their internal testing they don't test this sort of thing. Which is odd, as it's the second thing I tested: you know, that it even works on a secured server.

That's it. I've nothing else to say on this topic. I'll raise a bug for this shortly, once I have the article published so I can refer back to it: 3750729.

--
Adam