Configuration and Defaults

We all love the "Convention over Configuration" motto of CFWheels, but what about those two cases that pop into everyone's head? What if I want to develop in my own way? Or, What about an existing application that I need to port into CFWheels? Gladly, that's what configuration and defaults are there for. Let's take a look at exactly how this is performed.
Where Configurations Happen
You will find configuration files in the config folder of your CFWheels application. In general, most of your settings will go in config/settings.cfm.
You can also set values based on what environment you have set. For example, you can have different values for your settings depending on whether you're in development mode or production mode. See the chapter on Switching Environments for more details.
How to Set Configurations
To change a CFWheels application default, you generally use the set() function. With it, you can perform all sorts of tweaks to the framework's default behaviors.
How to Access Configuration Values
Use the get() function to access the value of a CFWheels application setting. Just pass it the name of the setting.
CFScript
if (get("environment") == "production") {
    // Do something for production environment
}
Setting CFML Application Configurations
In CFML's standard Application.cfc, you can normally set values for your application's properties in the thisscope. CFWheels still provides these options to you in the file at config/app.cfm.
Here is an example of what can go in config/app.cfm:
config/app.cfm
this.name = "TheNextSiteToBeatTwitter";
this.sessionManagement = false;
​
this.customTagPaths = ListAppend(
  this.customTagPaths,
  ExpandPath("../customtags")
);
Types of Configurations Available
There are several types of configurations that you can perform in CFWheels to override all those default behaviors. In CFWheels, you can find all these configuration options:
​Environment settings​
​URL rewriting settings​
​Data source settings​
​Function settings​
​Debugging and error settings​
​Caching settings​
​ORM settings​
​Plugin settings​
​Media settings​
​Routing settings​
​View helper settings​
​CSRF protection settings​
​Miscellaneous Settings​
​Migrator settings​
Let's take a closer look at each of these options.
Environment Settings
Not only are the environments useful for separating your production settings from your "under development" settings, but they are also opportunities for you to override settings that will only take effect in a specified environment.
The setting for the current environment can be found in config/environment.cfm and should look something like this:
config/environment.cfm
set(environment="development");
Full Listing of Environment Settings
Name
Type
Default
Description
environment
string
development
Environment to load. Set this value in config/environment.cfm. Valid values are development, testing, maintenance, and production.
reloadPassword
string
[empty string]
Password to require when reloading the CFWheels application from the URL. Leave empty to require no password.
redirectAfterReload
boolean
Enabled in maintenance and production
Whether or not to redirect away from the current URL when it includes a reload request. This hinders accidentally exposing your application's reload URL and password in web analytics software, screenshots of the browser, etc.
ipExceptions
string
[empty string]
IP addresses that CFWheels will ignore when the environment is set to maintenance. That way administrators can test the site while in maintenance mode, while the rest of users will see the message loaded in events/onmaintenance.cfm.
allowEnvironmentSwitchViaUrl
boolean
true
Set to false to disable switching of environment configurations via URL. You can still reload the application, but switching environments themselves will be disabled.
URL Rewriting Settings
Sometimes it is useful for our applications to "force" URL rewriting. By default, CFWheels will try to determinate what type of URL rewriting to perform and set it up for you. But you can force in or out this setting by using the example below:
CFScript
set(urlRewriting="Off");
The code above will tell CFWheels to skip its automatic detection of the URL Rewriting capabilities and just set it as "Off".
You can also set it to "Partial" if you believe that your web server is capable of rewriting the URL as folders after index.cfm.
For more information, read the chapter about URL Rewriting.
Data Source Settings
Probably the most important configuration of them all. What is an application without a database to store all of its precious data?
The data source configuration is what tells CFWheels which database to use for all of its models. (This can be overridden on a per-model basis, but that will be covered later.) To set this up in CFWheels, it's just as easy as the previous example:
CFScript
set(dataSourceName="yourDataSourceName");
set(dataSourceUserName="yourDataSourceUsername");
set(dataSourcePassword="yourDataSourcePassword");
Function Settings
OK, here it's where the fun begins! CFWheels includes a lot of functions to make your life as a CFML developer easier. A lot of those functions have sensible default argument values to minimize the amount of code that you need to write. And yes, you guessed it, CFWheels lets you override those default argument values application-wide.
Let's look at a little of example:
CFScript
set(functionName="findAll", perPage=20);
That little line of code will make all calls to the findAll() method in CFWheels return a maximum number of 20 record per page (if pagination is enabled for that findAll() call). How great is that? You don't need to set the perPage value for every single call to findAll() if you have a different requirement than the CFWheels default of 10 records.
Debugging and Error Settings
You'll generally want to configure how CFWheels handles errors and debugging information based on your environment. For example, you probably won't want to expose CFML errors in your production environment, whereas you would want to see those errors in your development environment.
For example, let's say that we want to enable debugging information in our "development" environment temporarily:
CFScript
// /config/development/settings.cfm
set(showDebugInformation=false);
Full Listing of Debugging and Error Settings
Name
Type
Default
Description
errorEmailServer
string
[empty string]
Server to use to send out error emails. When left blank, this defaults to settings in the ColdFusion Administrator (if set).
errorEmailAddress
string
[empty string]
Comma-delimited list of email address to send error notifications to. Only applies if sendEmailOnError is set to true.
errorEmailSubject
string
Error
Subject of email that gets sent to administrators on errors. Only applies if sendEmailOnError is set to true.
excludeFromErrorEmail
string
[empty string]
List of variables (or entire scopes) to exclude from the scope dumps included in error emails. Use this to keep sensitive information from being sent in plain text over email.
sendEmailOnError
boolean
Enabled in production environments that have a TLD like .com, .org, etc.
When set to true, CFWheels will send an email to administrators whenever CFWheels throws an error.
showDebugInformation
boolean
Enabled in development mode.
When set to true, CFWheels will show debugging information in the footers of your pages.
showErrorInformation
boolean
Enabled in development, maintenance, and testing mode.
When set to false, CFWheels will run and display code stored at events/onerror.cfm instead of revealing CFML errors.
For more information, refer to the chapter about Switching Environments.
Caching Settings
CFWheels does a pretty good job at caching the framework and its output to speed up your application. But if personalization is key in your application, finer control over caching settings will become more important.
Let's say your application generates dynamic routes and you need it to check the routes on each request. This task will be as simple as this line of code:
CFScript
set(cacheRoutes=false);
Full Listing of Caching Settings
Name
Type
Default
Description
cacheActions
boolean
Enabled in maintenance, testing, and production
When set to true, CFWheels will cache output generated by actions when specified (in a caches() call, for example).
cacheControllerConfig
boolean
Enabled in development, maintenace, testing, and production
When set to false, any changes you make to the config() function in the controller file will be picked up immediately.
cacheCullInterval
numeric
5
Number of minutes between each culling action. The reason the cache is not culled during each request is to keep performance as high as possible.
cacheCullPercentage
numeric
10
If you set this value to 10, then at most, 10% of expired items will be deleted from the cache.
cacheDatabaseSchema
boolean
Enabled in development, maintenance, testing, and production
When set to false, you can add a field to the database, and CFWheels will pick that up right away.
cacheFileChecking
boolean
Enabled in development, maintenance, testing, and production
When set to true, CFWheels will cache whether or not controller, helper, and layout files exist
cacheImages
boolean
Enabled in development, maintenance, testing, and production
When set to true, CFWheels will cache general image information used in imageTag() like width and height.
cacheModelConfig
boolean
Enabled in development, maintenance, testing, and production
When set to false, any changes you make to the config() function in the model file will be picked up immediately.
cachePages
boolean
Enabled in maintenance, testing, and production
When set to true, CFWheels will cache output generated by a view page when specified (in a renderView() call, for example).
cachePartials
boolean
Enabled in maintenance, testing, and production
When set to true, CFWheels will cache output generated by partials when specified (in a includePartial() call for example).
cacheQueries
boolean
Enabled in maintenance, testing, and production
When set to true, CFWheels will cache SQL queries when specified (in a findAll() call, for example).
clearQueryCacheOnReload
boolean
true
Set to true to clear any queries that CFWheels has cached on application reload.
cacheRoutes
boolean
Enabled in development, maintenance, testing, and production
When set to true, CFWheels will cache routes across all pageviews.
defaultCacheTime
numeric
60
Number of minutes an item should be cached when it has not been specifically set through one of the functions that perform the caching in CFWheels (i.e., caches(), findAll(), includePartial(), etc.)
maximumItemsToCache
numeric
5000
Maximum number of items to store in CFWheels's cache at one time. When the cache is full, items will be deleted automatically at a regular interval based on the other cache settings.
For more information, refer to the chapter on Caching.
ORM Settings
The CFWheels ORM provides many sensible conventions and defaults, but sometimes your data structure requires different column naming or behavior than what CFWheels expects out of the box. Use these settings to change those naming conventions or behaviors across your entire application.
For example, if we wanted to prefix all of the database table names in our application with blog_ but didn't want to include that at the beginning of model names, we would do this:
CFScript
set(tableNamePrefix="blog_");
Now your post model will map to the blog_posts table, comment model will map to the blog_comments table, etc.
Full Listing of ORM Settings
Name
Type
Default
Description
afterFindCallbackLegacySupport
boolean
true
When this is set to false and you're implementing an afterFind() callback, you need to write the same logic for both the this scope (for objects) and arguments scope (for queries). Setting this to false makes both ways use the arguments scope so you don't need to duplicate logic. Note that the default is true for backwards compatibility.
automaticValidations
boolean
true
Set to false to stop CFWheels from automatically running object validations based on column settings in your database.
setUpdatedAtOnCreate
boolean
true
Set to false to stop CFWheels from populating the updatedAt timestamp with the createdAt timestamp's value.
softDeleteProperty
string
deletedAt
Name of database column that CFWheels will look for in order to enforce soft deletes.
tableNamePrefix
string
[empty string]
String to prefix all database tables with so you don't need to define your model objects including it. Useful in environments that have table naming conventions like starting all table names with tbl
timeStampOnCreateProperty
string
createdAt
Name of database column that CFWheels will look for in order to automatically store a "created at" time stamp when records are created.
timeStampOnUpdateProperty
string
updatedAt
Name of the database column that CFWheels will look for in order to automatically store an "updated at" time stamp when records are updated.
transactionMode
string
commit
Use commit, rollback, or none to set default transaction handling for creates, updates and deletes.
useExpandedColumnAliases
boolean
false
When set to true, CFWheels will always prepend children objects' names to columns included via findAll()'s include argument, even if there are no naming conflicts. For example, model("post").findAll(include="comment") in a fictitious blog application would yield these column names: id, title, authorId, body, createdAt, commentID, commentName, commentBody, commentCreatedAt, commentDeletedAt. When this setting is set to false, the returned column list would look like this: id, title, authorId, body, createdAt, commentID, name, commentBody, commentCreatedAt, deletedAt.
modelRequireConfig
boolean
false
Set to true to have CFWheels throw an error when it can't find a config() method for a model. If you prefer to always use config() methods, this setting could save you some confusion when it appears that your configuration code isn't running due to misspelling "config" for example.
Plugin Settings
There are several settings that make plugin development more convenient. We recommend only changing these settings in development mode so there aren't any deployment issues in production, testing, and maintenancemodes. (At that point, your plugin should be properly packaged in a zip file.)
If you want to keep what's stored in a plugin's zip file from overwriting changes that you made in its expanded folder, set this in config/development/settings.cfm:
CFScript
set(overwritePlugins=false);
See the chapter on Installing and Using Plugins for more information.
Name
Type
Default
Description
deletePluginDirectories
boolean
true
When set to true, CFWheels will remove subdirectories within the plugins folder that do not contain corresponding plugin zip files. Set to false to add convenience to the process for developing your own plugins.
loadIncompatiblePlugins
boolean
true
Set to false to stop CFWheels from loading plugins whose supported versions do not match your current version of CFWheels.
overwritePlugins
boolean
true
When set to true, CFWheels will overwrite plugin files based on their source zip files on application reload. Setting this to false makes plugin development easier because you don't need to keep rezipping your plugin files every time you make a change.
showIncompatiblePlugins
boolean
false
When set to true, an incompatibility warning will be displayed for plugins that do not specify the current CFWheels version.
Media Settings
Configure how CFWheels handles linking to assets through view helpers like imageTag(), styleSheetLinkTag(), and javaScriptIncludeTag().
See the chapter about Date, Media, and Text Helpers for more information.
Full Listing of Asset Settings
Name
Type
Default
Description
assetQueryString
boolean
false in development mode, true in the other modes
Set to true to append a unique query string based on a time stamp to JavaScript, CSS, and image files included with the media view helpers. This helps force local browser caches to refresh when there is an update to your assets. This query string is updated when reloading your CFWheels application. You can also hard code it by passing in a string.
assetPaths
struct
false
Pass false or a struct with up to 2 different keys to autopopulate the domains of your assets: http (required) and https. For example: {http="asset0.domain1.com,asset2.domain1.com,asset3.domain1.com", https="secure.domain1.com"}
Routing Settings
CFWheels includes a powerful routing system. Parts of it are configurable with the following settings.
See the chapters about Using Routes and Obfuscating URLs for more information about how this all works together.
Full Listing of Miscellaneous Settings
Name
Type
Default
Description
loadDefaultRoutes
boolean
true
Set to false to disable CFWheels's default route patterns for controller/action/key, etc.
obfuscateUrls
boolean
false
Set to true to obfuscate primary keys in URLs.
View Helper Settings
CFWheels has a multitude of view helpers for building links, forms, form elements, and more. Use these settings to configure global defaults for their behavior.
Name
Type
Default
Description
booleanAttributes
any
allowfullscreen, async, autofocus, autoplay, checked, compact, controls, declare, default, defaultchecked, defaultmuted, defaultselected, defer, disabled, draggable, enabled, formnovalidate, hidden, indeterminate, inert, ismap, itemscope, loop, multiple, muted, nohref, noresize, noshade, novalidate, nowrap, open, pauseonexit, readonly, required, reversed, scoped, seamless, selected, sortable, spellcheck, translate, truespeed, typemustmatch, visible
A list of HTML attributes that should be allowed to be set as boolean values when added to HTML tags (e.g. disabled instead of disabled="disabled"). You can also pass in true(all attributes will be boolean) or false (no boolean attributes allowed, like in XHTML).
CSRF Protection Settings
CFWheels includes built-in Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) protection for form posts. Part of the CSRF protection involves storing an authenticity token in the session (default) or within an encrypted cookie. Most of the settings below are for when you've chosen to store the authenticity token within a cookie instead of the server's session store.
Name
Type
Default
Description
csrfStore
string
session
Which storage strategy to use for storing the CSRF authenticity token. Valid values are session or cookie.

Choosing session requires no additional configuration.

Choosing cookie for this requires additional configuration listed below.
csrfCookieEncryptionAlgorithm
string
AES
Encryption algorithm to use for encrypting the authenticity token cookie contents. This setting is ignored if you're using session storage. See your CF engine's documentation for the Encrypt()function for more information.
csrfCookieEncryptionSecretKey
string
​
Secret key used to encrypt the authenticity token cookie contents. This value must be configured to a string compatible with the csrfCookieEncryptionAlgorithmsetting if you're using cookie storage. This value is ignored if you're using session storage. See your CF engine's documentation for the Encrypt()function for more information.
csrfCookieEncryptionEncoding
string
Base64
Encoding to use to write the encrypted value to the cookie. This value is ignored if you're using session storage. See your CF engine's documentation for the Encrypt() function for more information.
csrfCookieName
string
_wheels_authenticity
The name of the cookie to be set to store CSRF token data. This value is ignored if you're using session storage.
csrfCookieDomain
string
​
Domain to set the cookie on. See your CF engine's documentation for cfcookie for more information.
csrfCookieEncodeValue
boolean
​
Whether or not to have CF encode the cookie. See your CF engine's documentation for cfcookie for more information.
csrfCookieHttpOnly
boolean
true
Whether or not the have CF set the cookie as HTTPOnly. See your CF engine's documentation for cfcookie for more information.
csrfCookiePath
string
/
Path to set the cookie on. See your CF engine's documentation for cfcookie for more information.
csrfCookiePreserveCase
boolean
​
Whether or not to preserve the case of the cookie's name. See your CF engine's documentation for cfcookie for more information.
csrfCookieSecure
boolean
​
Whether or not to only allow the cookie to be delivered over the HTTPS protocol. See your CF engine's documentation for cfcookie for more information.
CORS Protection Settings
CFWheels includes built-in Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) which allows you to configure which cross-origin requests and methods are allowed. By default, this feature is turned off which will deny cross origin requests at the browser level.
In this first version, the user can enable this feature, which will allow requests from all origins and all methods.
Name
Type
Default
allowCorsRequests
boolean
false
Miscellaneous Settings
Name
Type
Default
Description
disableEngineCheck
boolean
false
Set to true if you don't want CFWheels to block you from using older CFML engines (such as ColdFusion 9, Railo etc).
enableMigratorComponent
boolean
true
Set to false to completely disable the migrator component which will prevent any Database migrations
enablePluginsComponent
boolean
true
Set to false to completely disable the plugins component which will prevent any plugin loading, and not load the entire plugins system
enablePublicComponent
boolean
true
Set to false to completely disable the public component which will disable the GUI even in development mode
Migrator Configuration Settings
Setting
Type
Default
Description
autoMigrateDatabase
Boolean
false
Automatically runs available migration on applicationstart.
migratorTableName
String
migratorversions
The name of the table that stores the versions migrated.
createMigratorTable
Boolean
true
Create the migratorversions database table.
writeMigratorSQLFiles
Boolean
false
Writes the executed SQL to a .sql file in the /migrator/sql directory.
migratorObjectCase
String
lower
Specifies the case of created database object. Options are 'lower', 'upper' and 'none' (which uses the given value unmodified)
allowMigrationDown
Boolean
false (true in development mode)
Prevents 'down' migrations (rollbacks)
Working with CFWheels - Previous
Conventions
Next - Working with CFWheels
Directory Structure
Last modified 1mo ago