🚀 BoxLang Release Candidate 2 is Here! 🚀

We’re entering the final stretch of our pre-releases, and we couldn’t be more excited to introduce RC2! 🚀 This release marks a major leap in performance and compatibility, the result of over six months of intensive development. Beyond enhanced stability and seamless integration, RC2 delivers game-changing performance optimizations that push the boundaries of efficiency. Get ready for our fastest, most refined release yet!

Feel the Need for Speed 🚀 🔥

RC2 is blazing fast! 🚀 Our latest release delivers unmatched performance in both parsing and runtime execution, outperforming Adobe ColdFusion 2021 and 2023 by 25-37% in many scenarios. These results are backed by rigorous certification testing across TestBox, ColdBox, and over 35 modules, ensuring real-world speed and reliability. You can now check all of our repos and see the performance for yourself.

Adobe ColdFusion / Lucee Drop-In Replacement

This means you can seamlessly migrate your Adobe ColdFusion or Lucee applications to BoxLang with no code changes—and they’ll run faster, smoother, and across multiple runtimes! 🚀

But that’s not all—our subscription-based licensing can save you over 70% compared to Adobe ColdFusion, with no restrictions on cores or limitations on SaaS and multi-tenant applications. No restrictions. Just pure freedom to scale. 🔥

Ray Camden BoxLang Evangelist

We’re excited to welcome Raymond Camden, a renowned leader in the CFML community, as a BoxLang Advocate! 🎉

Raymond, currently collaborating with us as a contractor, brings deep expertise in web development and a passion for making complex technologies more accessible. His insights and experience make him the perfect advocate to explore and champion BoxLang—our modern, CFML-compatible programming language. 🚀

Read More

Premium Modules Have Landed

We have now our first premium module for BoxLang +/++ subscribers: BX-REDIS. Our bx-redismodule is now available for you to use if you have a subscription. You can also try it out free of charge by installing it today:

# OS
install-bx-module bx-redis

# CommandBox
box install bx-redis

Giving you great capabilities for caching, distributed sessions, pub-subscribe and much more. You can find out about this initial release here (https://forgebox.io/view/bx-redis)

{% embed url="https://forgebox.io/view/bx-redis" %}

Licenses Available!

{% embed url="https://www.boxlang.io/plans" %} www.boxlang.io/plans {% endembed %}

Remember that our support license subscriptions (https://www.boxlang.io/plans) for BoxLang +/++ are available now. Offering enterprise-grade support, priority fixes, premium modules, and exclusive benefits. As an introductory offer, all licenses are available at 25% off for March.

Production Tips

We encourage you to pre-compile your applications using our BoxLang compiler for incredibly safe and high-performance deployments since no parsing is involved. Combined with our new trusted cache settings, your applications will fly and be highly performant.

What is BoxLang?

BoxLang is a modern dynamic JVM language that can be deployed on multiple runtimes: operating system (Windows/Mac/*nix/Embedded), web server, lambda, iOS, android, web assembly, and more. BoxLang combines many features from different programming languages, including Java, CFML, Python, Ruby, Go, and PHP, to provide developers with a modern and expressive syntax.

It is also a drop-in replacement for Adobe ColdFusion and Lucee Engines.

How to get started?

Visit our docs at https://boxlang.ortusbooks.com and get coding today. If you want to try it out on the web then go to our online REPL at https://try.boxlang.io. You can also checkout our YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNE-ZbNnndB-40LvAbeSeT2Oi3V2gm_B8

Release Notes

Here are the latest release notes: https://boxlang.ortusbooks.com/readme/release-history/1.0.0-rc.2

🔧 Improvements

BL-1021 Explore speed improvements to parser

BL-1084 Support CF syntax of space inside elvis operator

BL-1089 allow getSystemSetting() to default to a non-simple value

BL-1090 bx-compat - Client Scope Listener should not start up or look for cache if client management is disabled

BL-1093 Make miniserver bind to 0.0.0.0 by default

BL-1143 Change order of app shutdown

BL-1147 boxAnnounce() and boxAnnounceAsync() get a poolname so you can announce globally or to the request pools

BL-1148 missing bif: BoxRegisterInterceptionPoints() to register interception points for global or request pools

BL-1149 In BL files, only default output=false in tag-based UDFs

BL-1153 Setup the hikari defaults for connection pooling to modern standards

BL-1155 Update query object to return array of structs into a consolidated method: toArrayOfStructs()

BL-1158 Attempts needed remail of left over isSimplevalue evaluations

BL-1159 Rename bx:module to be bx:component

---

🐛 Bug Fixes

BL-1018 esapiEncode does not allow an zero length input string

BL-1024 BX-ORM: Datasource with name [defaultDatasource] not found in the application or globally

BL-1026 `try`/`finally` doesn't always run `finally`

BL-1036 ASM regression - break exiting out of more than just the loop

BL-1056 LinkedHashMap right-hand assignments are always null.

BL-1063 ReEscape result doesn't match ACF

BL-1064 Classes getting cleared in debug mode

BL-1077 Simplify CLI to install modules

BL-1078 cgi items not being found until you access them

BL-1079 encrypt not working with AES and UU

BL-1080 Encrypt Fails when salt is below 16 bytes in length

BL-1082 bx-mail not reading mail configurations

BL-1085 HTTP - Ensure all exceptions are caught and handled

BL-1086 Mail Module not Loading root-level boxlang.json Mail Server Settings

BL-1087 StructUtil.deepMerge wraps arrays in nested array if left hand side contains the same array

BL-1088 Can't set cookies using a struct

BL-1092 Mail: Classloader issues when sending MultiPart email in Servlet Context

BL-1094 `.duplicate()` Member Method Not Available on Struct,DateTime objects, Queries and Arrays

BL-1095 DirectoryCopy Does not Allow Closure for Filter Arg

BL-1096 QueryNew Does not accept array of Columns as only first arg

BL-1097 Compat: CachePut does not allow numeric decimal number of days for timeSpan or idleTime

BL-1099 String Hash Result Different Between Text and Byte Array

BL-1100 Compat: HTTP result.statusCode Does not Include the status text.

BL-1101 HTTP Request for Binary Object casts fileContent to String

BL-1102 Integer caster not always consistent

BL-1103 HTTP Component getAsBinary attribute does not support `true` and `false` boolean arguments

BL-1104 HTTP Component throws an error when `Host` is explicitly passed as a header

BL-1105 HTTP Component Throws Error when sending Binary Content

BL-1106 HTTP getAsBinary should be treated as an explicit request for binary content unless `never` is passed.

BL-1109 HTTP: Query Params Are Being Double Encoded Even When Encode=false

BL-1110 Within a cfmodule, the variables scope is not available within a .each() loop if the .each loop is called in a function within the module.

BL-1111 When a form is submitted but none of the inputs have names and the form scope is dumped, an error is thrown

BL-1112 Type coercion of an numeric argument passed to java constructor is not being done

BL-1113 Function NOT not found

BL-1114 bx-orm - 'Datasource with name [defaultDatasource] not found ...'

BL-1115 bx-orm - Unable to call generated methods from within class

BL-1116 bx-orm - Generated method hasX() is missing support for value comparison

BL-1117 bx-orm - AddX() method fails on many-to-many relationship properties with "bag is null" error

BL-1118 HMAC Method not supporting binary keys

BL-1120 HTTP `file` attribute not implemented

BL-1121 Math Operations Leave trailing zeros after operation when result is whole number

BL-1122 HTTP ACF and Lucee Treat all Unknown or malformed `Content-Type` Headers as a string response

BL-1124 Compat: Default throw error not a type of `Application`

BL-1125 Error compiling - 'in' was unexpected expecting one of ...

BL-1126 this.customtagpaths not respected - Could not find custom tag

BL-1128 Common Text Cert/Key extensions are being read as Binary data

BL-1129 for loop using var and in throws parsing error

BL-1130 Custom Error Thrown Is Being Wrapped in "Error invoking Supplier" exception

BL-1132 FileRead should only ever return strings

BL-1133 DateTime Comparison equals/isEqual discrepancies

BL-1134 DateCompare Issues when Time units are specified

BL-1135 DateAdd No Longer Allowing Decimals

BL-1137 Allow customTagPaths to be relative

BL-1138 EqualsEquals operator should use `equalTo` method of DateTime in compat mode

BL-1139 Cannot pass BoxLang Functions into ScheduledTask

BL-1140 Nested config values for modules do not get replaced by environment variables

BL-1142 thread safety issue in feature audit

BL-1144 Custom setter that assigns to this scope causes stack overflow with implicit accessor invocation

BL-1146 return type of function not always parsing

BL-1150 Invalid stack height when using a ternary in a context that doesn't expect a return value

BL-1151 semicolon not allowed after pre annotation

BL-1152 `variablename` is not supported as a type

BL-1156 Compat: Date Comparisons in Compat should only be precise to the second

BL-1157 len() BIF needs to treat byte arrays as an array, not a string

BL-1160 return not expr parsing error