1.0.0-Beta8

August 2, 2024

BoxLang Betas are released weekly. This is our eigth beta marker and we are excited to report that we are 100% tag compatible with Adobe/Lucee and 99% BIF compatible. We can estimate that in the next 2 betas we will be 100% compatible with both Adobe/Lucee CFML engines when running BoxLang in compatibility mode.

Please note that this is our core competency definition. You can see our lists here:

• BIFS: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SVr9NTYU51n9VyPrKVUjfF3EeEkEnkZOkrNmj1TE120/edit?pli=1&gid=0#gid=0&fvid=1144231850

• Tags/Components https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XkCQ8CPXslQWGCr8LHaQcDHZOMiwxST2nzX63_CSzvI/edit?gid=0#gid=0

New Features

BL-394 contractPath() BIF

This allows you to get a relative path or mapping path from a fully expanded path in your system. This is useful, to understand where a full absolute path comes from:

expandedPath = expandPath( "/brad" );  // /absolute/path/to/brad
contractPath( expandedPath ); // /brad

BL-395 Add loop times=n

We have added a new construct for looping by using the keyword times in your loop statements:

loop times=5 {
    result &= "*";
}

You can also use times and the index

loop times=5 index="i" {
    result &= i;
}

Or the item alias can be used as well as the index

loop times=5 item="i" {
    result &= i;
}

BL-396 Implement GetBaseTagList() and getBaseTagData()

These two methods are to bring us closer to finalizing the creation of custom templating language constructs.

• getBaseTagList( [caller] ) : Gets a comma-delimited list of uppercase ancestor tag names, as a string. The first list element is the current tag. If the current tag is nested, the next element is the parent tag. If the function is called for a top-level tag, it returns an empty string.

• getBaseTagData( tagName, [level=1] ) : Used within a custom tag. Finds calling (ancestor) tag by name and accesses its data.

BL-397 Improve parser error messages for unpopped parser modes

For code like

<--- I never end

or

foo = "trumcated...

instead of our default “unpopped modes”, detect what specific mode is on the stack (comment_mode, quotesMode, etc), find the start token (comment_start, OPEN_QUOTE, etc) and report the line number that the unclosed construct started, which could be hundreds of lines from the end of the file when parsing finally stopped.

BL-408 Transaction events

The BoxLang JDBC Transactions framework is now complete and incredibly robust. More than the other CFML engines or even Spring-based transaction demarcations. It is fully documented here: https://boxlang.ortusbooks.com/boxlang-framework/transactions

We have also added several events that you can listen to during the transaction processes:

• onTransactionBegin

• onTransactionEnd

• onTransactionCommit

• onTransactionRollback

• onTransactionSetSavepoint

• onTransactionAcquire*

• onTransactionRelease*

Note that all these events (with the exception of onTransactionAcquire and onTransactionRelease) have the potential to be acting upon a no-op transaction, with a null connection parameter since no connection was ever obtained.

Improvements

BL-402 Allow for circular references in structs and arrays

BL-406 Java 21 update to URL creation as new URL is deprecated

BL-407 add getMimeType method in FileSystemUtil to make it easier to get mime types of remote files ( e.g. PDF creation )

Bugs

BL-398 <bx:loop query="query"> doesn't iterate over each item in the query, stays on the first item

BL-404 session scope can be null in onSessionEnd, causing errors

Tasks

BL-372 Create tests for all valid and invalid dot and array access expressions