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I just took a web contract to fix up an existing site written in ColdFusion. I haven't had a chance to peak at the code yet, but the site itself is riddled with problems. Anyway, I've never used ColdFusion before, and barely know anything about it. Tutorials shouldn't be too hard to find, but what about an IDE? Is there a nice Visual Studio plugin? Or do I even need one?

mpen
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  • More answers to this on the duplicate question here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2208882/best-ide-editor-for-coldfusion – BlackICE Oct 15 '10 at 01:24

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The official ColdFusion IDE from Adobe is ColdFusion Builder (in beta 3 right now, 1.0 final later this year).

It is Eclipse based (same as CFEclipse), and it will not be free (unlike CFEclipse).

If you already have Dreamweaver, you can install an extension and make it an IDE for CF as well.

Henry
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    Totally agree with this answer, however I'll add that Coldfusion was designed to be easy enough to edit from any HTML editor. The IDEs basically help you remember the tag syntax. – Dan Sorensen Jan 27 '10 at 00:42
  • You don't need to install an extension for DW, it already comes shipped with CF8 support. The (buggy) extension provides tool tips for the new tags, that's all. Having support for CF does not make DW a CF IDE. http://forta.com/blog/index.cfm/2009/7/24/On-Eclipse-ColdFusion-Builder-And-IDEs – genericHCU Jan 29 '10 at 16:50
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    Sublime Text 2 with package additions work well. Our company develops everything in CF, the programmers here seem to like it well. We have moved off of Dreamweaver and Eclipse. Notepadd++ also has some ok plugins. – user2506891 Feb 11 '15 at 22:31
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If anyone is still looking for a good free IDE for Cold Fusion and you don't like eclipse, you now have Visual Studio Code! A free lightweight IDE from Microsoft with a couple of Cold Fusion extensions available (also free). The project is still in BETA but it's very solid. Installation of the plugin is fast and easy. I was up and editing CF tags within minutes of downloading the installer. It's a great alternative, highly recommended. https://code.visualstudio.com/

Necromancer
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I'm a few years into a similar project. I'm migrating the app to ASP.NET MVS / Silverlight. I tried Dreamweaver - got sick of it inserting random crap at random times into my code. Also sick of it crashing.

I tried Eclipse - just find it frustrating. The search functionality sucks compared to VS. It's also a pain to switch between IDEs when you have .NET code interacting with CF pages.

I recently started using Visual Studio 2010. You don't get some of the intellisense that DW and Eclipse provide - but that intellisense is highly flawed anyway. Might as well have none.

You can go to Tools -> Options -> Text Editor -> File Extension and map .cfm and .cfml and .cfc (or whatever your apps file extensions are) to HTML Editor OR XML (text) Editor. Neither option is perfect. The HTML will underline a lot of stuff - but you do get some kind of color scheme and tag closing. The XML (text) editor is all black and white and is basically notepad. I use the HTML Editor.

What I'd like to do is create a new editor plugin for VS. Don't know how hard this would be. Can't seem to find any examples. But I'm stuck with 1000+ CF pages that aren't going away anytime soon. Good luck.

GeorgeBarker
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  • I've been looking into the same thing. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4283072 and http://dotneteers.net/blogs/divedeeper/archive/2008/11/04/LearnVSXNowPart38.aspx It doesn't look like it should be too hard to add some basic text coloring... the tricky part will be parsing the input language I think. – mpen Dec 16 '10 at 20:35
  • Good info on the use of mapping common cf file types. Thanks! – jarhed Aug 23 '13 at 13:40
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There is an eclipse plugin called cfeclipse, which is fairly nice. I like it. Adobe has a ton of great online documentation for CF syntax and coding examples. Coldfusion is fairly fast to get up and running, but it does take a while to get really good and know some of the hidden potentials of the language.

Jay
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Since it is from Adobe, ColdFusion Builder is a repackaging of a free program (much like ColdFusion with FCKeditor, YUI, etc). Most of the CF coders I work with use a combination of the following, which is a free stack:

Be sure to install the CFEclipse plugin before any others; there have been many reports of wonky installs if you install version control plugins before CFEclipse's views. Good luck!

FlipperPA
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If you are just making a few little adjustments to the CF app, you can edit the code like any other text file. But if you are going to spend more than a couple days on it, don't waste your time using VS because you will be spending a lot of time looking up commands, fiddling with backup version of code, testing your mods, and using CFDump to inspect data.

You really should be using ColdFusion Builder if you are working with ColdFusion 10 or later because it has several important features you cant get using the other tools, such as Step-debugging, variable inspection, console custom tag introspection, server restart, server log viewer, refactoring features, and last but not least, the ability to view/query data from the data sources available on the CF server, which could be very handy if you are working on a remote location and dont have all the ports open.

Eccountable
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  • More than half the CF community don't use builder... there's a good reason why... it's crap. I've been coding CF since 3.x... just use the docs and dreamweaver and you'll save yourself a terrible headache. – Dawesi Dec 05 '15 at 12:42
  • I disagree. How do you debug your code? If you are relying on CFDump, then you are doing yourself and your clients a great disservice. I have been a developer for over 30 years and also have worked in CF from v3-10. I value (yes, pay for) tools that improve my productivity and reduce my errors. I am also a big fan of CF Eclipse - CF Builder isn't the only option. It sports many of the same features but is a bit more quirky to set up. – Eccountable Dec 15 '15 at 15:55