"localURL" attribute added to cfdocument in ColdFusion 8

I was debugging a legacy app today which I’d just migrated to a new server running ColdFusion 8. A part of this application generates a PDF using . As usual it was working fine on my development and staging environments…but not on production! Damn.

After a bit of fiddling I found a related post by Rupesh Kumar where he mentions that you may have problems if ColdFusion is behind a firewall.

CF server needs to send an HTTP request for the images. If the firewall prevents any outgoing connection from the server, CF will not be able to retrieve them

Now I already had outbound HTTP access, but I couldn’t call a site which was setup on the production machine from where I was browsing. Bugger, I was about to make a the necessary firewall changes when I looked at the updated docs for CF8 and noticed a new attribute called “localURL” which;

Specifies whether to retrieve image files directly from the local drive:

• yes: ColdFusion retrieves image files directly from the local drive rather than by using HTTP, HTTPS, or proxy.

• no: ColdFusion uses HTTP, HTTPS, or proxy to retrieve image files even if the files are stored locally.

Nice!

Now can simply call images from a local (relative) path instead of a full HTTP request as it did before.

I love CF8 :)

There are a few additions to this particular tag and you can view them on the online docs which have had a much needed facelift.