Hola amigo! I'm excited that you are interested in contributing to BoxLang. Before submitting your contribution, please make sure to take a moment and read through the following guidelines:

Code Of Conduct

This project is open source, and as such, the maintainers give their free time to build and maintain the source code held within. They make the code freely available in the hope that it will be useful to other developers and/or businesses. Your contributions are crucial in maintaining the integrity of BoxLang. Be considerate towards maintainers when raising issues or presenting pull requests. We all follow the Golden Rule: Do to others as you want them to do to you.

• As contributors and maintainers of this project, we pledge to respect all people who contribute through reporting issues, posting feature requests, updating documentation, submitting pull requests or patches, and other activities.

• Participants will be tolerant of opposing views.

• Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants include the use of sexual language or imagery, derogatory comments or personal attacks, trolling, public or private harassment, insults, or other unprofessional conduct.

• Project maintainers have the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions not aligned with this Code of Conduct. Project maintainers who do not follow the Code of Conduct may be removed from the project team.

• When interpreting the words and actions of others, participants should always assume good intentions. Emotions cannot be derived from textual representations.

• Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be reported by opening an issue or contacting one or more project maintainers.

Bug Reporting

Please link it to the appropriate issue if you submit a pull request.

• https://ortussolutions.atlassian.net/browse/BL

If you file a bug report, your issue should contain a title, a clear description of the issue, a way to replicate the issue, and any support files we might need to replicate your issue. The goal of a bug report is to make it easy for yourself - and others - to replicate the bug and develop a fix for it. Not all issues that do not contain a way to replicate will be addressed.

Support Questions

If you have questions about usage, professional support, or ideas to bounce off the maintainers, please do not create an issue. Leverage our support channels first.

• Ortus Community Discourse: https://community.ortussolutions.com

• Box Slack Team: https://boxteam.ortussolutions.com

• Professional Support: https://www.ortussolutions.com/services/support

Pull Request Guidelines

• The main branch is just a snapshot of the latest stable release. All development should be done in dedicated branches. Do not submit PRs against the main branch. They will be closed.

• All pull requests should be sent against the development branch or the LTS version branch releases/v{version}

• It's OK to have multiple small commits as you work on the PR - GitHub will automatically squash it before merging.

• Make sure all local tests pass before submitting the merge.

• Please make sure all your pull requests have companion tests.

• Please link the Jira issue in your PR title when sending the final PR

Security Vulnerabilities

If you discover a security vulnerability, please email the development team at [email protected]. All security vulnerabilities will be promptly addressed.

JRE Compatibility

Please make sure your code runs on JRE 21+

Financial Contributions

You can support BoxLang and all of our Open Source initiatives at Ortus Solutions by becoming a Patreon. You can also get lots of goodies and services depending on the level of contributions.

• Become a backer or sponsor on Patreon

• One-time donations via PayPal

Bugs

BL-1353 BoxRunner fails on some input args

New Features

• - Zip Components, Utility and incorporating BIFS

• - Implement pagePoolClear()

• - Add the ability to configure the CF transpiler

• - Transpiler doesn't handle attributeCollection

• - Zip Components, Utility and incorporating BIFS

Improvements

• - Compiler thread safety

• - Implements SystemCacheClear()

• - Allow "object" passed to throw to be a struct representation of an exception

• - Added all missing boxlang types to BoxLangType class

• - Address parser performance by limiting operator reserved words

• - Change template parsers to use SLL prediction mode

• - Improve parsing performance by only calculating lines of code on error

• - Add ValueRequiresOneOf Validator

Bugs

• - Lock expects timeout to be minimum of 1

• - numeric literals with leading zeros are confused with octal values in java source

• - getApplicationMetadata() fails before application listener is defined

• - AST string values incorrectly unescaped outside of cfoutput

• - Pretty printer incorrect for default case ending tag

Luis Fernando Majano Lainez

Luis Majano is a Computer Engineer who has been developing and designing software systems since 2000. During economic instability and civil war, he was born in San Salvador, El Salvador, in the late 70s. He lived in El Salvador until 1995 and then moved to Miami, Florida, where he completed his Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering at .

He is the CEO of , a consulting firm specializing in web development, BoxLang, Java development, and open-source professional services. He is the creator of ColdBox, ContentBox, CommandBox, WireBox, TestBox, LogBox, and anything "Box," and he contributes to over 250 open-source projects. He has a passion for learning and mentoring developers so they can succeed with sustainable software practices and the usage and development of open-source software. You can read his blog at

Luis is passionate about Jesus, tennis, golf, volleyball, and anything electronic. Random Author Facts:

• He played volleyball in the Salvadorean National Team at the tender age of 17

• His favorite books are The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (Geek!)

• His first computer was a Texas Instruments TI-99 that his parents gave him in 1986. After some time digesting his very first BASIC book, he had written his own tic-tac-toe game at the age of 9. (Extra geek!)

• He has a geek love for circuits, microcontrollers, and overall embedded systems.

• He has, as of late, become a fan of organic gardening.

Keep Jesus number one in your life and in your heart. I did and it changed my life from desolation, defeat and failure to an abundant life full of love, thankfulness, joy and overwhelming peace. As this world breathes failure and fear upon any life, Jesus brings power, love and a sound mind to everybody!

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding." Proverbs 3:5

Beta 4 is a small incremental release which includes improvements and bug fixes.

Improvements

, , , Query caching improvements and compatibility updates

Ensure request attributes are available to the web runtime scope

CFML compatibility module updates to ensure null query column values are returned as empty strings

Bug Fixes

Fixes compilation issue with variables name cfcatch

CFML compatiblity for CGI.QUERY_STRING when not provided

Fix null queryparam functionality

This release introduces several new features and configurations to enhance functionality and security. It also continues to squash tons of bugs to bring about CFML compatibility. Key updates include:

• Enhanced arrayFind and arrayFindNoCase functions, allowing value closures to accept item indices.

• New validBoxLangTemplates configuration for filtering templates processable by the Runnable Loader.

• New validClassExtensions configuration to specify permissible class extensions.

• A new security configuration section designed to disallow BIFs, Components, and Imports, enhancing security.

New Feature

BL-617 arrayFind, arrayFindNoCase value closures, accept the value and now the index of the item as the second param

BL-626 New configuration: validBoxLangTemplates to determine which templates the Runnable Loader can process

BL-627 New configuration: validClassExtensions to determine which class extensions to work with

BL-629 New security configuration section for disallowing: BIFS, Components, Imports

BL-630 Internal refactor to make the class locator and resolvers have a life-cycle based on the runtime and not alone

Improvement

BL-611 Remove debugmode capture on miniserver, delegate to the core runtime.

BL-622 Consolidate CastAttempt and Attempt into a hierarchy

BL-623 New DynamicFunction type that can be used to generate dynamic BoxLang functions using Java Lambda proxies. Great for code generation

Bug

BL-614 Import nested classes

BL-615 Java static funcitons not behaving as expected

BL-616 array.find does not use cf rules to convert result of predicate to boolean

BL-619 QueryColumnType doesn't handle "idstamp" (mssql)

BL-620 static scope in application.cfc not initialized before psuedoConstructor runs

BL-624 Auto-escaping of {} in regex needs to ignore already-escaped braces

BL-625 Instead of removing special chars from Java FQN, replace with __ to avoid conflicts

BL-628 Tag expressions not parsing inside template island inside braces

BL-631 duplicate() doesn't work on empty structs

BL-633 randrange() not inclusive of upper bound

BL-634 array.find - can't cast closure to string

In this release, we've introduced the exciting addition of websockets support to BoxLang through the powerful SocketBox module. This enhancement is not limited to our CommandBox Runtime but also extends to our MiniServer runtime, creating a more dynamic and efficient framework for real-time communication. For an in-depth introduction to these features, please visit our community post here.

Additionally, we've implemented several new features and improvements. We've also improved the system startup process by adding version and build date information to the MiniServer startup output (BL-607). Lastly, we've addressed session management by ensuring that application settings are readily accessible during the onSessionEnd event (BL-610). This release encapsulates our ongoing commitment to providing robust, cutting-edge solutions for developers and reaching stable release in the coming weeks.

New Features

BL-605 MiniServer WebSocket handler

Improvement

BL-607 Add version/build date to output of Miniserver startup

BL-610 onSessionEnd needs application settings made available

BL-611 Remove debugmode capture on miniserver, delegate to the core runtime.

Bugs

BL-608 Timeouts (connection, idle) for datasources needs to be in seconds and not in milliseconds to adhere to cfconfig

BL-609 BoxLang resolvers do not allow class paths to have `-` in them.

Welcome to Beta 16! This release focuses on web support functionality and contains a number of improvements and bug fixes for HTTP operations, including multi-part file uploads and error handling. It also provides enhancements to Java interoperability, dump template output, and metadata introspection.

Overall, this beta release brings further stability for CFML applications migrating to BoxLang!

Release notes - BoxLang - 1.0.0-Beta16

New Feature

BL-603 Implement timeout for HTTP requests

BL-604 Multi-part request support in HTTP

Improvement

BL-586 Add text-based toString() method for Queries (used in console dumps)

BL-589 for in Java transformer not mapping source line numbers for start of loop

BL-590 Make include case insensitive

BL-596 Enhance metadata visitor to process extends

BL-597 add fieldNames key to form scope

BL-599 Auto casting for URI and URL classes to string

BL-600 Handle bad gateways in HTTP component

BL-601 Allow for multiple form fields with the same name in HTTP component

BL-602 autocast InetSocketAddress to string

Bug

BL-584 Fix for overeager escaping of quantifier sequences in REFind

BL-585 High order closures creating incorrect AST when parsing

BL-587 Update DateTime Parsing to handle the Common Javascript Date.toString format

BL-588 Module settings no longer overriding after deep merge function added

BL-591 Java interop doesn't find method by argument types when passing null

BL-592 Can't assign to List due to incorrect validation in referencer

BL-593 content-type isn't always getting defaulted in some requests

BL-594 for/in loop over struct should get String keys instead of BL Key instances

BL-595 showUDFs not cascading down in dump levels

BL-598 using cfcookie should update cookie scope

BL-606 Fix argument order for FileUpload

New Features

• BL-1365 Add parse() helper methods directly to runtime, which returns parse result

• BL-1388 new security configuration item: populateServerSystemScope that can allow or not the population of the server.system scope or not

Improvements

• BL-1333 Create links to BoxLang modules

• BL-1351 match getHTTPTimeString() and default time to now

• BL-1358 Work harder to return partial AST on invalid parse

• BL-1363 Error executing dump template [/dump/html/BoxClass.bxm]

• BL-1375 Compat - Move Legacy Date Format Interception to Module-Specific Interception Point

• BL-1381 allow box class to be looped over as collection

• BL-1382 Rework event bus interceptors to accelerate during executions

• BL-1383 Compat - Allow handling of decimals where timespan is used

• BL-1387 Allow Numeric ApplicationTimeout assignment to to be decimal

Bugs

• BL-1354 BoxLang date time not accepted by JDBC as a date object

• BL-1359 contracting path doesn't work if casing of mapping doesn't match casing of abs path

• BL-1366 sessionInvalidate() "Cannot invoke String.length() because "s" is null"

• BL-1370 Some methods not found in java interop

• BL-1372 string functions accepting null

• BL-1374 onMissingTemplate event mystyped as missingtemplate

• BL-1377 fileExists() not working with relative paths

• BL-1378 optional capture groups throw NPE in reReplace()

• BL-1379 array length incorrect for xml nodes

• BL-1384 Numeric Session Timeout Values Should Be Duration of Days not Seconds

Versioning Schema

BoxLang is maintained under the Semantic Versioning guidelines as much as possible. Releases will be numbered in the following format:

<major>.<minor>.<patch>

And constructed with the following guidelines:

• Breaking backward compatibility bumps the major (and resets the minor and patch)

• New additions without breaking backward compatibility bump the minor (and resets the patch)

• Bug fixes and misc changes bump the patch

BoxLang Release & Support Lifecycle

Our release cadence follows a predictable yearly major-version schedule, with each release enjoying two years of Long-Term Support (LTS):

• Active Support: First 12 months after release – full feature updates, bug fixes & security patches.

• LTS (Updates & Security): 2nd year – maintenance releases (minor improvements & security).

• LTS (Security-Only): 3rd year – critical security fixes only, then archived.

This gives you a clear planning horizon and overlap between versions, so you can upgrade on your own schedule without ever being left unprotected.

Support Lifecycle Chart

Here is our 5-year outlook.

• After the “security-only” phase, the version is archived: no further updates, but archives remain available for reference.

• Overlaps ensure there’s always at least one actively maintained release.

• All dates refer to calendar years; exact dates will align with our annual major-version launch each Q1.

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, functional and expressive syntax.

BoxLang has been designed to be a highly adaptable and dynamic language to take advantage of all the modern features of the JVM and was designed with several goals in mind:

1. Be a rapid application development (RAD) scripting language and middleware.

2. Unstagnate the dynamic language ecosystem in Java.

3. Be dynamic, modular, lightweight, and fast.

4. Be 100% interoperable with Java.

5. Be modern, functional, and fluent (Think mixing CFML, Node, Kotlin, Java, and Clojure)

6. Extend via Modules

7. Be able to support multiple runtime environments:

   1. Native OS Binaries (CLI Tooling, compilers, etc.)

   2. Serverless Computing (AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, etc)

   3. Servlet Containers - CommandBox/Tomcat/Jetty/JBoss/Undertow

   4. Docker Containers

   5. Android/iOS Devices

   6. Web assembly

   7. Etc

8. Compile down to Java ByteCode

9. Framework Capabilities (Scheduling, applications, events, async computing, tasks, queues, modules)

10. Professional Open-Source Support

11. Drop-in Replacement for Adobe ColdFusion and Lucee CFML

Launch Video

License

BoxLang is open source and licensed under the Apache 2 License. Copyright and Registered Trademark by Ortus Solutions, Corp.

BoxLang Subscriptions

BoxLang can also be enhanced by purchasing subscriptions to give you:

• Business Support with SLAs

• Enhanced builds

• Custom patches and builds

• Dedicated Engineer

• Premium Modules

• Much More...

Support Open Source

To support us, please consider becoming our patron at patreon.com/ortussolutions for as little as $10/month.

Discussions & Help

The Ortus Community is how to get help: https://community.ortussolutions.com/c/boxlang/42

You can also join our Slack Box Team at: https://boxteam.ortussolutions.com

Reporting a Bug

We all make mistakes from time to time :) So why not let us know about it and help us out? We also love 😍 pull requests, so please star us and fork us at https://github.com/ortus-boxlang/boxlang

Jira Issue Tracking

• BoxLang: https://ortussolutions.atlassian.net/browse/BL

• BoxLang IDE: https://ortussolutions.atlassian.net/browse/BLIDE

• BoxLang Modules: https://ortussolutions.atlassian.net/browse/BLMODULES

Resources

• Professional Support: https://www.ortussolutions.com/services/support

• GitHub Org: https://github.com/ortus-boxlang

• Twitter: https://x.com/TryBoxLang

• FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/tryboxlang/

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tryboxlang

Ortus Solutions, Corp

This book was written and maintained by Luis Majano and the Ortus Solutions Development Team.

Ortus Solutions is a company that focuses on building professional open source tools, custom applications and great websites! We're the team behind ColdBox, the de-facto enterprise BoxLang HMVC Platform, TestBox, the BoxLang Testing and Behavior Driven Development (BDD) Framework, ContentBox, a highly modular and scalable Content Management System, CommandBox, the BoxLang <BoxLang> CLI, package manager, etc, and many more - https://www.ortussolutions.com/

The source code for this book is hosted on GitHub: https://github.com/ortus-boxlang/boxlang-docs. You can freely contribute to it and submit pull requests. Ortus Solutions, Corp copyrights the contents of this book and cannot be altered or reproduced without the author's consent. All content is provided "As-Is" and can be freely distributed.‌

Notice of Liability

‌The information in this book is distributed as is, without warranty. The author and Ortus Solutions, Corp shall not have any liability to any person or entity concerning loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the content of this training book, software, and resources described in it.

Charitable Proceeds‌

10% of the proceeds of this book will go to charity to support orphaned kids in El Salvador - https://www.harvesting.org/. So please donate and purchase the printed version of this book; every book sold can help a child for almost two months.‌

Shalom Children's Home

The Shalom Children's Home (https://www.harvesting.org/) is one of the ministries that are dear to our hearts located in El Salvador. During the 12-year civil war that ended in 1990, many children were left orphaned or abandoned by parents who fled El Salvador. The Benners saw the need to help these children and received 13 in 1982. Little by little, more children came on their own, churches and the government brought children to them for care, and the Shalom Children’s Home was founded.

Shalom now cares for over 80 children in El Salvador, from newborns to 18 years old. They receive shelter, clothing, food, medical care, education, and life skills training in a Christian environment. A child sponsorship program supports the home.‌

We have supported Shalom since 2010; it is a place of blessings for many children in El Salvador who either have no families or have been abandoned. This is a good earth to seed and plant.

This release brings another round of powerful tools and refinements to the BoxLang community, making development more dynamic and robust than ever. We’ve added new capabilities for debugging and tracing, expanded context-sensitive controls for thread management, and introduced new methods for fluent attachment handling.

For deeper flexibility, our improvements enhance configurability, streamline session control, and add deeper levels of JSON serialization management. Plus, we’ve squashed a wide range of bugs, enhancing stability across database connections, date handling, and runtime compatibility with CFML.

In addition, CSRF Token functionality is now provided via .

New Feature

Global events for Application events

Implement table filter for dbinfo component

getComponentList() should also return the declared attributes of a component

getFunctionList() should also return the declared arguments of a BIF

Improvement

Implement Algorithm Argument for RandRange

Set request class loader into thread as context class loader

Retain directories in dynamic class loader

Add nullIsUndefined flag to control how null variables are handled

Don't default properties with no default value to null when compat has enabled nullIsUndefined scope behavior

Bug

Passing a null named argument hides outer bindings by the same name

Missing BIF - CSRFGenerateToken is now supplied with the bx-csrf module

Difference in args vs local variables handling

Incompat: metadata annotations from inherited sub classses added to top level class

cfloop collection with an array throws casting exception

argument collection optional param is null

dot access not chaining to static access

NPE when calling non-existent Java method

Duplicate of cfc instance presenting as struct

Key access in StructMapWrapper not working

GetTagData(), GetFunctionData() function not implemented, implement in the COMPAT module

import name restrictions too strict

Assignment not working on static fields of an imported class

Adding two ints uneccessarily returns a long

The BoxLang 1.0.0-Beta22 release includes several improvements, bug fixes, new features, and stories. Key improvements include enhanced redirection for the Miniserver, better transactional event broadcasting, and added convenience methods like getRequestContext() and getApplicationContext(). Bug fixes address issues such as JSON deserialization, whitespace management, and various errors related to data types and loops. New features include support for multiple statements inside queries and a new datasourceRegister() BIF for easier SaaS integrations.

Release Notes

New Features

BL-123 Implement multiple statements inside queries

BL-383 new bif: datasourceRegister() to allow for easy saas integrations to create datasources

BL-658 MIgrate AST Capture to it's own experimental flag

BL-748 Add getApplicationContext() method on all contexts for convenience, especially when calling from CF/BL

Improvement

BL-730 Miniserver needs to 302 redirect when hitting a directory without the trailing slash

BL-734 Broadcast Transactional events at the Application listener-level

BL-735 Allow unregistering a java class (IInterceptor) from an InterceptorPool

BL-737 Add getRequestContext() method on all contexts for convenience, especially when calling from CF/BL

BL-738 Allow output from functional wrappers

BL-740 Autocast simple values to Keys when calling java methods from BL

BL-741 Allow :: static access to be chained to any expression

BL-746 Add toLegacyDate BIF and Member Function to Compat module

BL-751 Make generated getters return null when property is not initialized

BL-116 Implement unfinished query options

Bug

BL-694 Fix tests that fail when using ASM

BL-695 large json fails to deserialise with bx-compat

BL-714 Add Whitespace Management

BL-731 dump errors with compat installed due to null variable

BL-733 RandRange seems to never return upper range

BL-736 JDBC Transaction listeners not firing upon transaction event announcement

BL-739 shebang checks in BoxRunner don't nicely handle invalid file paths

BL-743 WDDX not parsing booleans correctly

BL-744 Cannot cast ortus.boxlang.runtime.types.DateTime to java.util.Date

BL-745 parseDateTime failing

BL-747 for (sentinel) loop is evaluating the step/increment expression one final time too many when a break is used

BL-752 error using negative indices to get characters from strings

BL-754 error: integer number too large

BL-755 SerializeJSON not working with named params

BoxLang Beta 25 Has Landed!

This release takes BoxLang to the next level, delivering a mix of critical bug fixes, thoughtful improvements, and exciting new features designed to enhance your development experience. With Beta25, we’ve solidified and made the ASM ByteCode BoxPiler the default compiler, refined module, and logging management, and added long-requested query of queries and JSON-based logging encoders. Additionally, we’ve tackled critical issues around debugging, compatibility, and system settings to make this the most stable and feature-complete beta yet.

At this point, we have a handful of small bugs open, which will completely certify all of the major Ortus frameworks like ColdBox, ContentBox, and over 50 modules. Complete certification is around the corner.

As a bonus, we are almost ready to release our Hibernate ORM module (bx-orm) and move into a Release Candidate phase for our entire lineup. So please test test test, and give us your feedback.

✨ New Features

• : createObject() now supports classloading arguments as the third argument.

Easily manage and control classloading with arguments to enhance flexibility and modularity.

• : Dynamic Task Management in Schedulers

Added startupTask(task) to dynamically initialize tasks by name or task object.

• : JSON-based Logging Support

Appenders and root configurations now include JSON encoders for enhanced logging formats.

• : Improved Scheduler Logging

Scheduler logs are now effectively reported to provide better insights.

• : Enhanced Module Logging

Modules now have dedicated logs to improve debugging and diagnostics.

• : New Event Lifecycle: onConfigurationLoad

Introduced a new lifecycle event for IServices to optimize configuration handling.

• : Enhanced Compatibility Assignments

Assignments now accurately interpret null variables for better compatibility.

• : New Logging Setting: statusPrinterOnLoad

Added statusPrinterOnLoad for much-needed debugging of logging configurations.

🛠 Improvements

• : Streamlined Method Expectations

Improved handling of methods that don’t expect return values for better consistency.

• : Enhanced Session Cookie Controls

Added missing controls for session cookie management to improve security and compliance.

• : Bytecode Line Number Enhancements

Added line number details to bytecode generated with ASM for improved debugging.

• : ASM is Now the Default BoxPiler

Streamlined the toolchain by making ASM the only default stock BoxPiler.

• : Optimized Replace Operations

Updated replaceAll() methods to use pre-compiled patterns for better performance.

• : Unified Logging Configuration

Consolidated logging startups and configurations for both servlet and non-servlet environments.

• : Support for this.componentPaths

Introduced implicit mapping support for more intuitive path management.

• : Module Enable/Disable Support

Modules can now be enabled or disabled using enabled in boxlang.json, removing double negatives like disabled.

• : Forms Module Introduced

A new module for handling forms was added, enhancing the BoxLang ecosystem.

• : Improved Scope Assignment

Allowed reassignment of a scope to a struct for more flexible programming.

• : Collision Prevention in IClassRunnable Methods

Prefixed methods to prevent naming collisions for safer execution.

• : Graceful Module Unloading

Added defensive coding for module unloading failures to ensure runtime stability.

• : Consistent Struct Collector Outputs

Resolved inconsistencies by ensuring collectors return Struct objects.

• : Improved Parent Class Delegation

Enhanced module class loaders to delegate certain parent classes to the parent loader exclusively.

🐞 Bug Fixes

• ASM and Debugging Fixes:

, , , ,

• Localization and Formatting Issues:

, ,

• Parsing Errors:

, ,

• Thread and Scope Resolution Bugs:

, ,

• Miscellaneous:

, , ,

This release introduces several new features aimed at enhancing the usability and functionality of BoxLang. We have closed a tremendous amounts of bugs on this release in order to bring more compatibility and stability to BoxLang. We have also started to introduce performance enhancements and more innovations as we progress towards final release.

Enjoy!

New Features

Writedump output support

We have finalized the console output for the dump component, but we have also added the following ticket:

New dump event to listen when an non-core output is detected so modules can handle it. onMissingDumpOutput

Which will allow module developers to collaborate their own output destinations for any dump in the language. This is something we have wanted for years and it's now a possibility. Just listen to the onMissingDumpOutput interception point, you get all the arguments to the BIF or component and you decide where things will go. VScode Dump Panel, here we come.

The console output has also been enhanced where everything will be pretty printed, including labels.

Ability to mark a @BoxBif as excluded from documentation

This is more of an internal documentation process for the team.

New dump template for Java instants

Java Instants will now be dumped nicely with an internal representation and a human readable representation.

dump showUDFs

All the arguments for dumps are now available including this one for controlling the dumping of UDFs on classes.

Improvements

Simplify BoxLang class dumps

Add output and format to dump

Some BIFs not fully supporting BigDecimal values

access e.cause as shortcut for e.getCause()

When creating an abstract class a new `AbstractClassException` is thrown. Great for testing frameworks

Bugs

queryaddcolumn ignores the datatype

Issue with #dateTimeFormat(now(),'mm-dd-yyyy')# function returning incorrect results

structnew( "linked" ) doesn't work

argumentCollection doesn't work with implicit constructor

directory component must always return query

BoxNewTransformer using hard-coded context name

toNumeric() not accepting radix values of 2-36

cannot cast [x to object] on generic caster when using `QuerySetCell()`

Issue with `Duplicate()` Function Causing Null Pointer Exception in BoxLang

final keyword not working on this scope

directoryList() filters are not working as closures/lambdas as they are hardcoded as strings

Cannot invoke "ortus.boxlang.runtime.types.Query.isEmpty()" because "this.query" is null

Multiple pipe-delimited glob patterns are not working as directoryList filters

DuplicationUtil not doing deep clones of structs according to all types

Throwing custom type exceptions just shows `custom` as the type instead of the actual type in the throw

remote access not treated as public but as private for functions

Interfaces don't support multiple inheritance

CFC source type not detected correctly for abstract or final classes

Metadata with : in them in cfml mode not treated correctly

xml entity parsing issue when calling `toString()` on Java objects

Introducing BoxLang 1.0.0 Beta 24!

We’re excited to announce the release of Beta 24, packed with powerful new features, essential bug fixes, and impactful improvements that enhance performance and security. This release brings more robust logging capabilities, enhanced configuration flexibility, and new query-handling methods to streamline your development experience. We’ve also squashed several parsing bugs, ensuring smoother code execution.

Whether you’re optimizing your runtime with custom logging encoders or leveraging the new queryColumnList for seamless data manipulation, Beta 24 is designed to empower developers with a more secure, customizable, and efficient development environment.

🐞 Bug Fixes

• BL-797: Parsing issue fixed when using a < symbol before a tag. No more parsing hiccups!

• BL-798: = sign after an if tag? No problem now! Fixed to handle this scenario smoothly.

• BL-799: Parentheses confusion resolved! Opening parentheses (afterword operators will no longer be mistaken for function calls.

• BL-800: Environmental safety improved: BOXLANG_DEBUG will now be parsed only if non-null to prevent unexpected behavior.

✨ New Features

Improved Logging

BoxLang's logging features have been completely revamped in preparation for its stable release. You also have fine-grain control over them, and module developers will be able to register and leverage custom loggers and appenders.

Please note that the logsDirectory setting has been moved from the root of the boxlang.json to the new logging section.

Check out the new configuration:

JSON Anyone?

We have added support for log files. You can now switch the default encoder for the log files from text to json and see the JSON log files in full splendor!

• BL-792: Introducing CFConfig support and named loggers for more precise control over your logging setup!

• BL-793: Added the ability to configure logging items, giving you more flexibility in managing your logs.

• BL-803: Choose your logging format! You can now select text and JSON logging encoders for better runtime output customization.

📈 Improvements

• BL-782: Refined the LoggingService to encapsulate all logging characteristics, streamlining log management.

• BL-783: Strengthened security by disabling absolute path logging and prohibiting custom log extensions. Your logs are safer now!

• BL-785: Upgraded logging to follow ISO8601 date/time format and threading standards for more standardized logs.

• BL-786: Replaced FileAppender with RollingFileAppender to better handle large log files through automatic rotation.

• BL-795: Introduced queryColumnList BIF and a columnList() member method for easier Query column management.

• BL-804: Enhanced support for customTagPaths in Application.cfc/bx, expanding customization capabilities.

Welcome to Beta 15! This release brings several significant enhancements aimed at improving the efficiency and functionality of the CLI environment and continued bug fixing to bring our CFML compatibility to several client applications and Ortus Libraries. Key among these is the introduction of the bx-web-support module, which allows the CLI to interface with web server capabilities, making it an excellent tool for testing and feature auditing. Additionally, the merge capabilities within module settings have been refined to support deep merges from the configuration file, ensuring greater flexibility and control.

Moreover, running scripts or classes via CLI execution now supports the automatic detection and execution of Application.bx|cfc, streamlining the process for developers. The new ToString dump template enhances debugging by enabling a concise display format for lists of Java objects, simplifying the analysis and debugging process.

Overall, this beta release brings further stability for CFML applications migrating to BoxLang!

New Features

Look and execute for Application.bx|cfc when running scripts or classes via CLI execution

We have always wanted even further CLI enhancements for applications built with BoxLang. Now you get it! BoxLang will look for an Application.bx|cfc whenever it executes a template or class and follow the process of application startup, settings, ORM, etc. The full life-cycle of an application but at the CLI level. This will allow you to completely test your web applications with no web server and even build CLI applications with easy application constructs!

New bx-web-support module to support the CLI with web server capabilities. Great for testing, mocking and feature audits.

We have released the bx-web-support module which will give you mocking, testing and auditing capabilities for CLI testing and runners. This means that your CLI applications will look and feel like a real web application with a real web server, but using our mock approaches.

This module is still in it's alpha stages so expect much more development on it.

Module settings should have a deep merge from the configuration file

All module settings in your boxlang.json can now be deeply merged automatically by BoxLang.

Add a new ToString dump template that will take a list of java objects to display them in short hand format

We will be easing the visibility of certain human readable Java classes in our dump templates.

Handle single values in arrayAppend merge=true

A nice feature to support further merging techniques with arrays.

Improvements

dump improvement of UI when using expand/collapse

Show errors in class pseudo constructor in tag context

List utils need to trim all values when converting to arrays

LocalDateTime not showing in dumps as a date/time string, but as a Java Object

Update date/time and instant dump templates to be less verbose and more functional

Allow CF tag islands and template islands to be nested more than one level deep.

Merge CF lexer and grammar for faster parsing and more accurate lexing

Make tag expression parsing smarter

expandPath() must ignore invalid paths, just returning the input

More IO BIFs need to ignore invalid paths

Bugs

script block parsing can be tricked by comments

Lucee allows properties to be anywhere in the pseduoconstructor of a class, not just at the top

flush component only flushes up one buffer, not all the way

Boxlang doesn't parse milliseconds in datetime string

Date "string" doesn't have date time member functions available

Querynew failing with more than one column defined

Regular Expression Syntax not supported

Metadata visitor doesn't support struct annotations with unquoted keys

Hyper module failing

bx-compat cfloop requires "index" when it shouldn't

transaction shouldn't require global DSN

cfproperty tag lucee allows non quoted properties

Class name sensitivity based on provided rather than class found

No reading dump templates due to pathing incorrectly in debug mode

Static support not compatible with CFML

javacast not actually casting as expected

functions in variables scope vs values in variables scope

bx-compat unquoted hashed expressions cause compiler error

serializeJSON errors when serializing a function

Sentinel loop with missing expressions fails

mid() It does not remove characters if the count is more than the length

Cannot invoke "ortus.boxlang.runtime.types.IStruct.putAll(java.util.Map)" because "recipient" is null

🚀 Introducing BoxLang 1.0.0 Beta 20! 🚀

This release brings another round of powerful tools and refinements to the BoxLang community, making development more dynamic and robust than ever. We’ve added new capabilities for debugging and tracing, expanded context-sensitive controls for thread management, and introduced new methods for fluent attachment handling.

For deeper flexibility, our improvements enhance configurability, streamline session control, and add deeper levels of JSON serialization management. Plus, we’ve squashed a wide range of bugs, enhancing stability across database connections, date handling, and runtime compatibility with CFML.

New Feature

trace bif and component

Setup the thread's context class loader when an application is defined with the correct loader from the Applications java settings

showDebugOuput added to request box context to allow for tracer/debugging outputs

new computeAttachmentIfAbsent, to make fluent attachments on IBoxAttachable implementations

refactor escapeHTML to the lib we use instead of multiple functions

DateTime objects don't have a len member method

Improvements

Add line break in dump console output

Allow access to super scope from thread

reuse config of validTemplateExtensions

Add ability to deep merge config items from the environment.

track current request context in thread

improve concurrency of session ID creation

Move from immutable verbiage to unmodifiable

Need to set explicit `/` path on session cookies

if calling serializeJSON() on a class, and the class is marked as not serializable, then return empty struct

if calling serializeJSON() on a class, properties marked as not serialiable should be skipped.

Arrays/Lists/Structs/Maps/Classes that have been visited already by JSON will not serialize again but show a recursion marker

Bugs

bx-compat-cfml datediff fails to convert string

Update parser to allow for `@module` notations on imports and `new` operators

NOT operator precedence not grabbing operators in the chain

Java Doc implementation is stricter that ACF and Lucee

Missed module class hierarchy to have the runtime class loader as the parent

ortus.boxlang.runtime.events.InterceptorPool: Errors announcing [logMessage] interception ortus.boxlang.runtime.types.exceptions.BoxRuntimeException: An error occurred while attempting to log the message

Dump not showing BoxLang type NullValue as null

DBInfo schema and several other columns can be null, make sure you address it

boxclass dump looping construct exception

java class method not found

argument collection optional param is null

Cannot convert class ortus.boxlang.runtime.types.DateTime to SQL type requested due to com.mysql.cj.exceptions.WrongArgumentException - Conversion from ortus.boxlang.runtime.types.DateTime to TIMESTAMP is not supported.

DatabaseException: There is no known date-time pattern for '09/24/2024' value at ortus.boxlang.runtime.jdbc.PendingQuery.executeStatement(PendingQuery.java:390)

cannot get lenght of native java date time objects

Can't cast [2021-01-01 12:00:00 pm] to a DateTime.

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.

New Features

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:

Add loop times=n

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

You can also use times and the index

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

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.

Improve parser error messages for unpopped parser modes

For code like

or

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.

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:

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

Allow for circular references in structs and arrays

Java 21 update to URL creation as new URL is deprecated

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

Bugs

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

session scope can be null in onSessionEnd, causing errors

Tasks

Create tests for all valid and invalid dot and array access expressions

BoxLang Betas are released weekly.

This is our seventh beta marker and we are incredibly excited of this beta marker since it now fully supports ColdBox for operation.

Improvements

web support error template only shows details of exceptions if IN debug mode else secure by default

If you are using the MiniServer or CommandBox, then if an exception occurs, only in DEBUG MODE, will you get the exception stacktrace, details and more. This makes it secure by default of not exposing any potential data for exceptions.

Consolidate the runtime into services without the need of getInstance()

A simple internal improvement to improve locking and instance usage.

New Features

threadNew()

This is a new BIF for BoxLang. We have a way to create threads using the thread{} component in both script and template, and we have threadJoin(), threadTerminate() but we never had a way to create threads functionally.

Signature

Examples

Please note that the attributes is a struct of data that we will bind into the thread's local scope.

Stream type and collector member methods

Java streams are now a native BoxLang type, which for now we don’t try to coerce, but simply match any existing instance or subclass of java.lang.Stream. This means we can now add member methods to ANY stream from BoxLang source code and make Streams also dynamic:

• .toBXArray()

• .toBXStruct( [String type] )

• .toBXQuery( [Query query] )

• .toBXList( [String delimiter] )

Examples

Collect stream of objects into BoxLang array

Collect stream of Map entries into a struct

Collect an array of structs into an existing query object

Collect a stream of objects into a list

orThrow( type, message ) for attempts

Attempts now allow you to do a custom exception type and message. Check out the docs.

ifSuccessful() alias to ifPresent() on attempts

Attempts now allow you to have an alias to ifPresent() that's fluent: ifSuccessful(). Check out the docs.

Bugs

Parser detection for unparsed tokens only works if there are 2 or more tokens left

Declaring UDFs in function context doesn't always work

CFConfig datasources aren't importing due to lack of support for the 'dbdriver' key

Runtime can deadlock due to syncronized methods

NPE calling isNumeric()

JSONSerialize() errors when useSecureJSONPrefix not a boolean

Cannot call getWriter(), getOutputStream() already called

empty url vars coming through as null

Tasks

Create tests for al valid and invalid dot and array access expressions

This was our first stable release of the BoxLang language. It grouped the entire betas and release candidate features and fixes. This specific version included the following release notes from issues that changed between release candidate 3.

New Features

BL-1319 Create the config `runtimes` struct so any runtime can store their settings there by convention

BL-1327 Add simple rewrites to miniserver

Improvements

BL-1199 Add a `version` key to the boxlang.json to track the current version of the runtime.

BL-1275 expandPath(".") when running boxlang as a shell script does not point to the current working directory

BL-1278 Possible minor bug in Mail

BL-1285 Can we improve URL to PDF support?

BL-1286 Pre-compiled matchers for exception stack builds for performance

BL-1287 LineNumber alias on exception traces for multiple Box tools in the open

BL-1293 Upate isObject, isArray and IsStruct to have more edge cases and consistencies across engines

BL-1296 looping over XMLNode as collection only loops over child nodes

BL-1310 BoxLang file with no extension should try to determine if it's an executable class

BL-1311 Expand relative this.mappings in application class

BL-1323 change extract() BIF so filter argument works the same as directoryList()

BL-1324 make missing template error use relative path, not absolute path

BL-1334 Support samesite and expires in servlet

BL-1336 change compress() BIF so filter argument works the same as directoryList()

BL-1337 generatePBKDFKey() compat issues

BL-1339 SCryptVerify() doesn't support hashes generated in Adobe ColdFusion

Bugs

BL-1098 Compat: FileMove in ACF/Lucee automatically overwrites the destination file

BL-1123 Use of compat-transpiled name in scoped variable throws error

BL-1131 Compat: Error parsing date with zero month

BL-1218 Cookie with Quoted Value Intermittently comes back with URL-Escaped quotes

BL-1266 Rethrown Exception Inside Transaction Being Wrapped In Application Exception

BL-1267 Elvis using nullValue on right hand side throws error

BL-1271 Using BIFS in CLI schedulers throws an error that request context is empty

BL-1272 Dumping class with top argument results in Struct template error.

BL-1273 Class which implements IReferenceable alone throws errors when Attempting Serialize to JSON

BL-1274 Error with parseDateTime on ISO with fully numeric offset

BL-1279 relative include with ../../ can result in illegal class name

BL-1280 caches set operations relies on timeouts being Objects, do stricter validation and conversion to avoid can't cast string to longs

BL-1281 hash CFML compatability

BL-1282 cfml compat: returnformat is case sensitive for remote methods

BL-1283 cfml compat - cfinclude with non cfml files

BL-1284 CFML compat. Undefined query values are strings in ACF / Lucee

BL-1289 CacheLocator cache is too aggressive on same name but different location classes

BL-1290 dump templates for Function, Map and XML missing expand null checks

BL-1291 XML structkeyExists returns false when objects are there but isNull returns false

BL-1292 jsonSerialize() or deserialize with cookie setting is adding extra "

BL-1294 static initializer above properties is giving a syntax error

BL-1297 Update session storage key removal interceptor so it can detect if the clear is a session or not, as it could be in a cache that holds much more data

BL-1299 Serializing queries to JSON compatibility

BL-1301 DynamicObject.hasMethodNoCase() is returning false for methods that clearly exist and are invokable

BL-1302 JDBC - Missing support for no connection limit

BL-1303 Static access is not a valid construct for array access

BL-1304 featureAudit incorrectly reports the valueList() BIF as missing

BL-1306 cfhtmlhead does not work properly

BL-1307 Implement CFCookie Expires

BL-1308 cfcookie samesite attribute not honored

BL-1309 CFML Compat - cfcookie encodevalue attribute not honored

BL-1312 overriding `/` mapping in this.mappings not working

BL-1313 dump/abort doesn't always default response content type in servlet

BL-1317 ASM Boxpiler is not generating the correct bytecode when dealing with abstract classes

BL-1321 bx:location throws error in console

BL-1325 BX-PDF - Issue with PDF support and document section, specifically Acrobat Reader

BL-1326 documentsection name not properly setting bookmark name

BL-1328 Relax default permissions of bx:document

BL-1331 Compat: dateTimeFormat "h" mask

BL-1340 SCryptVerify() function aliases

BL-1341 hash() returns lower case from CFM pages

BL-1343 Schedulers defined in Application.bx do not have access to application scope values defined in onApplicationStart

BL-1345 cliread was closing the system.in instead of sharing across the cli

BL-1346 bitwise complement doesn't work with variable

BL-1348 Expansion of "/tmp" resolves to relative path.

BL-1349 elvis doesn't work in lambda

Tasks

BL-179 TimeBox Certification

BL-1136 Compat: Document DateAdd Behavior with Decimal Number Difference from ACF/Lucee

🚀 BoxLang Release Candidate 1 is Here! 🚀

After nearly a year of relentless iteration, rigorous testing, blood, sweat, lots of praying, tears, and over 1,000 resolved tickets, we proudly announce the first Release Candidate (RC1) of BoxLang! With 27 beta versions behind us, we are now on the final stretch toward the official 1.0 release.

This milestone ensures that most of our libraries are fully compatible and certified for BoxLang, making it production-ready. RC1 delivers significant bug fixes, performance optimizations, and stability enhancements, enabling teams to deploy and fine-tune their applications in real-world environments confidently. We strongly encourage the community to start running production workloads now—your feedback will be instrumental in refining BoxLang ahead of the final release.

Licenses Available TODAY!

Additionally, we are thrilled to open up support license subscriptions (https://www.boxlang.io/plans) for BoxLang +/++, offering enterprise-grade support, priority fixes, and exclusive benefits. As an introductory offer, all licenses are available at 50% off for February. In March, with the release of RC2, discounts will adjust to 25% off—scaling down progressively until our official launch at Into The Box 2025 (www.intothebox.org).

Let me also remind you that our Visionary Licenses will cease to be offered by the end of this month. Visionary licenses are unique for 10 years and 5 years of support. If you are interested in securing a visionary license, please email us at [email protected].

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.

Release Notes

New Features

BL-1065 Make sure execution exceptions are propagated to an `exception.log` for all runtimes

BL-1070 Create getHTTPTimeString bif in the CFML Compat Module

BL-1071 Missing bif: createTime()

Improvement

BL-1020 returns 500 status code when hitting the default error page

BL-1027 Allow annotation values of unquoted strings

BL-1028 allow RHS of castas operator to omit quotes

BL-1029 default output to true in Application classes

BL-1034 Disable external DTD validation

BL-1050 Migrate usage of LoggerFactory.getLogger to the internal BoxLang logger classes in the core

BL-1052 BIF and Component abstract objects now have a logger that maps to a `runtime` logger for ease of use

BL-1054 Favor native java methods on a struct if there is a key of that name, but it's not a function

BL-1062 Improve boxpiler selection by using the interface not classes or direct implementations

Bugs

BL-816 Abort should not fire the `onRequestEnd` method ( or it should fail quietly )

BL-1008 Struct.put Usage Throws Error

BL-1023 BX-ORM: When First Request to Application is a CFC, the application scope is undefined when starting ORMApp attempts to instantiate

BL-1025 numeric key access of struct failing for BigDecimal keys

BL-1030 directoryList does not sort by name

BL-1031 Too many pattern letters: m

BL-1032 Trivial: Typo in error message

BL-1033 thread attribute scope needs to be headlessly accessible

BL-1035 structget() incorrectly returning true with cfml-compat installed

BL-1037 String caster doesn't work on char[] and produces incorrect results for Character[]

BL-1038 class dump template doesn't work with compat module

BL-1039 Access and mutation of native Java unboxed arrays doesn't work

BL-1040 Query objects do not allow complex data when adding columns via `queryAddColumn()` with no data type.

BL-1041 Can't use EMail as a returntype from EMail object

BL-1043 shebang detection not working and skipping execution to the REPL

BL-1044 isValid uuid returns false

BL-1045 Error executing dump template

BL-1047 default string representation of exception object

BL-1048 Dereferencing property on Java class not calling getter

BL-1049 Jakarta servlet removed response.setStatus( int, String ) from API

BL-1051 Typo in exception string for parseDateTime

BL-1053 getDirectoryFromPath breaks when passed a null value

BL-1055 Durations created by `createTimespan` can't be casted to strings

BL-1058 `this` scope can no longer be mutated

BL-1059 final access modifier with explicit static scope on assignment not working

BL-1060 static method access on non-imported identifer not working

BL-1061 boxpiler was defaulting to javaboxpiler internally, remove it, it should be null and seeded later

BL-1066 isSimpleValue returns true on Exception in Compat Mode

BL-1068 QueryParam: SQL Server Unknown Column Type `datetime`

BL-1069 ParseDateTime failure with `hh:nn a` mask - e.g. `03:00 PM`

BL-1075 onRequestEnd() not firing for on class requests

We have really kicked into gear with this release, tackling a whopping 26 tickets and delivering some of our most aggressive features to date. This update signifies a significant leap forward towards a stable release in the Fall. Thank you for your continued support and stay tuned for more exciting developments!

New Features

Phase I : Performance improvements for grammar and parser validation

We have been working with an amazing ANTLR expert: Jim Idle, and we have been able now after several months of hard work to merge in a complete update to our parsers. This has a massive performance increase between 5-10 times more performant than before. However, we are still not those, we have three more performance phases coming up!

Support numeric literal separators in source code

We’ve added a small, but useful syntax to our BoxLang parser that comes from multiple other languages. Numeric placeholders allow you to place underscore characters (_) inside of a numeric literal for readability. Take a number like this

That’s 1 billion. Or was it 1 million? Or maybe it was 100 million… pauses to re-count. With numeric place holders, your code can look like this:

Ahh, so it was 1 billion! There’s no rules on where you can place the underscores, so long as they are INSIDE the number and not leading or trailing. Heck, this is valid (though pointless):

You can also place numeric separators in decimals

and in the exponent of scientific notation

These underscores are simply thrown away at compile time. They are not represented in the bytecode and will not appear anywhere in your running app. They are purely for readability in your source code.

Add static assignment modifier

You can now use the static assignment modifier in your code:

which is sugar for

and validate at runtime there is actually a static scope, or throw an exception.

Add final modifier to classes

You can now use the final modifier in your classes

which is sugar for:

This means that your classes will not be able to be inherited from.

final modifier for UDFs

Your UDFs can now also be declared as final

which will set the function as final into the scope it gets registered into. Any additional function declarations with the same OR ATTEMPTS TO SET A VARIABLE OF THAT NAME will result in an error.

Add final assignment modifier for variables

You can now add final assignment modifers to variables in your code:

this, of course, can be used with other modifiers

The only 2 modifiers that can’t be used together are var and static since they represent different scopes.

When a variable is declared as final, the scope it is being set into will track a list of keys that are designated as final, and will prevent those keys from being modified in the future.

This is ONLY a feature of scopes. Structs and other struct-like container will not have a final concept.

The following example

cannot be mutated OR re-assigned.

You can see the Set of final keys for a scope via the meta object

You can also remove keys from the set to make a variable no longer final.

DynamicInterop now filters non-callable methods when invoking and matching thus accelerating lookups considerably

This is a major update to our dynamic invocation with Java interop. We know only look at callable methods, where as before we looked at every single method on Java classes. This is a significant boost in performance when doing invocations and well, it also fixes a bug on ambiguity between same named methods with different visibility scopes. Relax and ride the lightning ⚡

Zip Utility & compress(), extract(), isZipFile() bifs

BoxLang now speaks Zip language. We have added zip and gzip capabilities to the core. This will allow us to leverage compression and extraction for modular activites, jar installations, logging, and much more. We have also created the following BIFS available to you:

• compress( format, source, destination, [includeBaseFolder=true], overwrite=false ) - Compress a source to a destination using available compression formats.

• extract( format, source, destination, [overwrite=false], [recurse=true], [filter], [entryPaths] ) - Extract a zip/gzip archive to a destination with nice options.

• isZipFile( filepath ) : Determines if the passed file can be treated as a zip archive.

We support the following formats:

• zip

• gzip

More formats will be available for our +/++ subscribers.

Please note also that the filter arguments can be the following:

• A valid regular expression string: ".*\.txt"

• A BoxLang closure or lambda (name) => name.endsWith(".txt")

  • Receives the full path of the entry

• A Java Predicate: (entry) -> entry.getName().endsWith(".txt")

  • Receives the ZipEntry object

In our next betas we will have a the Zip component which will allow you to do the following:

• Compress Files

• Extract Files

• List File Entries

• Delete File Entries

• Read File Entries

• Read Binary File Entries

• Much More.

java.math.BigInteger caster

We had a BigDecimal caster, now we have a BigInteger caster. Not only that, we can correctly coerce Java interop calls for BigDecimal and BigInteger.

Improvements

Allow the incorrect foo..bar syntax that Adobe allows for

Cache sets() and getOrSets() does not accept duration in seconds alongside Duration objects.

Enhance ClassMetadataVisitor

Enhance feature audit to track QoQ separate

Validate var outside of a function

Support Adob'e loose comma parsing in their generic tag-in-script syntax

Enhance errors for identifiers starting with numbers

File And Directory BIFs to auto-expand received paths

Support variable starting with number

Bugs

Compatible encryption with lucee/acf

replace() and replaceNoCase() should accept "one" not "once" for the scope

tag comments not parsing inside output tag in template parsers

parsing fails with extra whitespace in closing output tag

<cfset and <bx:set fail if not followed by a space

Debugger breakpoints not working regression

BoxLang Error is not readable

Tag island Templating outputs in unexpected order

In this release, we are excited to introduce several new features and enhancements aimed at improving functionality and user experience. These updates include the creation of Unmodifiable query types, new server keys to aid on CLI tooling, and methods to identify runtime initiation modes.

Additionally, we've added an event announcement for dump rendering to enable better integration with external listeners. Read on to learn more about these features and how they can benefit your workflow.

Code Strong!

New Features

BoxRunner cli options are now prefixed with `--bx-{option}`

This is a breaking change in our betas. All the CLI options for the BoxRunner now use the --bx- prefix. We are doing this to avoid any issues going forward when building CLI tooling. Pleaes checkout the section for all the docs on this.

Create Unmodifiable query type

We have now introduced the Unmodifiable query type. Any query in BoxLang can become Unmodifiable by just calling the toUnmodifiable() method on it. This will lock the query into read-only mode. Great for multi-threaded operations or just data safety. You can also unlock Unmodifiable types via the toMutable() method.

Announce the onBXDump whenever a dump is about to be rendered, to allow for external listeners to receive the dump

We have added a new global listener for the language: onBxDump which allows you to listen to any call to our dump component. This will allow developers to tap into the dumping facilities and intercept the dump calls. We are doing this in order to bring real-time dump facilities to VSCode.

All the arguments from the dump bif/component will be passed through.

New runtime inCLIMode() method to tell you if the runtime was started via the runtime or something else

This is a new method in the BoxRuntime which allows developers or module authors to know if your runtime is in CLI mode or not. The server.boxlang also contains much more information about the modes you are in:

• server.boxlang.cliMode - True or false if you are in CLI mode

• server.boxlang.jarMode - True or false if running in JAR mode

• server.boxlang.runtimeHome - The runtime home seeded in the runtime

New server.cli key to provide you with all the CLI options used to run the runtime

There is a new server.cli structure that will assist CLI developers. It contains the following data:

• server.cli.executionPath - From what directory was the runtime command called from

• server.cli.command - The full raw commandline string used by the OS to call the binary + your command

• server.cli.args - The raw array of arguments the command was called with

• server.cli.parsed.options - A struct of name-value pairs of all the options detected in the CLI arguments.

• server.cli.parsed.positionals - An array of positional arguments sent to the CLI

BoxLang will detect and parse the following conditions into the options struct:

• --{name} - Will crete a key called {name} with a value of true

• --!{name} - Will crete a key called {name} with a value of false

• --no-{name} - Will crete a key called {name} with a value of false

• -{character} - Shorthands using a single character. The value will be true and the key will be the character used. Example: -p

• -{characters} - You can use multi-shorthand characters and each of them will be keys in the struct with a value of true. Example: -abc will create a=true, b=true, c=true

• --{name}=value - Will create a key called {name} with the value from the right side of the equals sign.

• --{name}="value" - Will create a key called {name} with the value from the right side of the equals sign and removing the quotes.

• --{name}='value' - Will create a key called {name} with the value from the right side of the equals sign and removing the single quotes

Refactor the CLIOptions to it's own class and add a simple argument parser

In preparation to the inclusion of CommandBox commands into BoxLang we have also added our CLI utility to assist with argument parsing and detection. We have also encapsulated our CLI tooling in preparation for more in the next betas.

Improvements

Consolidate/Rename "LS" Bifs and Move US-Centric ones to Compat

Member method cleanup

Improve REPL output of native Java arrays

Add "decimal" as a cast type

Bugs

replace and replaceNoCase functions do not accept a callback

Query dereferencing is not working correctly: Column '1' does not exist in query

Run Class via URL

A class which uses inheritance, the metadata includes the inherited functions in itself and parent.

reFindNoCase( "^(f|x)?test$", arguments.methodName ) fails with Cannot invoke "String.length()" because the return value of "java.util.regex.Matcher.group(int)" is null

lsParseDateTime errors when given locale and mask

dateformat incorrectly parsing date with leading 0's?

onMissingMethod is not firing if the execution of the method is from within the class

query dumps assume the value is simple and can explode with encodeForHTML() can't do complex objects

Improve tracking of class in function box context

Difference of behavior with cfdirectory recurse = true not including path

super long strings cause compilation errors due to limitations in Java source code

Errors in miniserver when flushing large amounts of output to buffer

Missing !== operator

query cell assign erroring

Add onBifInvocation Interception Announcement to BIF invoke method

Introducing BoxLang 1.0.0 Beta 23

The latest release of BoxLang, Beta 23, marks a significant step forward in our journey to create the ultimate dynamic language for the JVM. Packed with powerful new features, important bug fixes, and thoughtful optimizations, this update is designed to make your development experience smoother, faster, and more reliable, especially after now starting to take 100s of comments and bug reports from our community.

Modularity takes center stage in this release with the ability to define BoxLang components (aka Tags) within modules and a new version-checking mechanism that ensures module compatibility. Database interactions are now more intuitive with enhancements to the Generic JDBC Driver, and the introduction of the getSemver() function brings a robust tool for managing semantic versioning with precision and ease.

Debugging and performance have also seen major improvements. The dump function now outputs directly to the console in scripting contexts, simplifying debugging workflows, while significant optimizations in functions like len() and the DateTimeCaster improve execution speed and efficiency. We've also addressed critical issues around argument handling, JDBC URL creation, and logging performance, ensuring a more stable and predictable environment for your applications.

Please continue to test your applications as we continue to push forwards towards stable release this winter.

🚀 New Features

1. Component in BX for Modules (BL-750) Modules in BoxLang just got a serious upgrade! You can now build components for BoxLang using BoxLang. No more Java ma!

1. Module Compatibility Check (BL-768) The ModuleService now includes a powerful compatibility check for the "boxlang" version in your box.json. This ensures that your modules are running on a supported version of BoxLang, avoiding unexpected runtime issues. Just add the minimumVersion to the box.json under the boxlang section and it will tell the Module Service which supported minimum version your module will work on.

1. Generic JDBC Driver Enhancement (BL-771) We've added a default URL delimiter to the Generic JDBC Driver. This improvement makes BoxLang more adaptable to various database configurations, simplifying JDBC URL handling for databases with unique delimiter requirements.

2. New getSemver() BIF (BL-777) Introducing the getSemver() built-in function! You can now quickly parse or construct semantic versioning (semver) strings and work with them as Semver objects for enhanced version management. The new BIF will parse and give you a Semver object to work with. You can also use it to build fluent semantic version strings.

🔧 Improvements

• Console Output for dump in Scripting Contexts (BL-769) Debugging just got easier! By default, the dump function now outputs to the console when running in scripting contexts, making it seamless to debug CLI scripts.

• Optimized len() Function (BL-770) The len() function is now smarter and faster! We've removed unnecessary date parsing, resulting in better performance.

🛠️ Tasks

• Query Options Completion (BL-116) We've implemented unfinished query options, giving you more control and flexibility when working with data queries.

🐞 Bug Fixes

1. abort in cfdump Tag (BL-761) Resolved an issue where using abort in conjunction with the cfdump tag caused unexpected errors.

2. Whitespace Handling in HTTP Responses (BL-763) Improved handling of whitespace in responses where the Content-Type header was not yet set, ensuring better compatibility with various HTTP clients.

3. Positional vs Named Arguments (BL-765) Fixed inconsistent behavior when handling arguments passed by position versus named.

4. Invalid JDBC URLs (BL-772) Corrected the handling of the dsn key for JDBC drivers, ensuring compatibility with cfconfig replacements and producing valid JDBC URLs.

5. Improved DateTime Performance (BL-774) Enhanced the performance of the DateTimeCaster and DateTime object instantiation when working with strings.

6. Endless Recursion in onSessionStart() (BL-775) Addressed an issue where the onSessionStart() event could cause infinite recursion under certain conditions.

7. debugmode in boxlang.json (BL-776) Fixed a problem where the debugmode flag was not being utilized as expected.

8. Servlet Debug Mode Reconfiguration (BL-778) Resolved issues with reconfiguring debug mode in servlet-based environments.

9. Logging Performance (BL-779) Overhauled the LoggingInterceptor to prevent inefficient recreation of appenders and loggers, especially under heavy stress.

10. Missing application Argument in Logging (BL-780) The writelog and log components now properly support the application boolean argument.

Why Upgrade?

This release has powerful new features, performance enhancements, and critical bug fixes. Whether you're a developer building complex applications or managing modular systems, Beta 23 makes your BoxLang experience smoother and more efficient.

Ready to dive in? 🚀 Update to Beta 23 now and take your BoxLang projects to the next level!

BoxLang Betas are released weekly. This is our tenth marker and we are incredibly excited to bring you a very big release. This gives us a huge push forwards towards compatibility with other engines and many more new features we have always wanted in our language. Enjoy!

Release notes - BoxLang - 1.0.0-Beta10

New Features

transpile queryGetRow() to queryRowData()

Ths is a compatibility feature for CFML engines so they can use the queryGetRow() BIF which internally funnels to the () method.

Ini files support

CFML engines always had half baked support for working with INI files. We now have full support and a fluent way to interact with ini files. This is really important for those building IoT solutions or interacting with micro processor devices. To get started use the boxlang installer install-bx-module bx-ini or if using CommandBox: install bx-ini

Here is a typical ini file example:

Here are the contributed functions in this module:

• getIniFile( file ) : Reads an ini file and returns the IniFile object. If the file does not exist, it will create it.

• getProfileSection( iniFile, section ) : Gets a section from the ini file as a struct

• getProfileSections( iniFile ) : Gets all the sections from the ini file as a struct of structs

• getProfileString( iniFile, section, entry ) : Gets an entry from a section in the ini file, if it does not exist, it will return an empty string

• setProfileString( iniFile, section, entry, value ) : Sets an entry in a section in the ini file, if the section does not exist, it will create it

• removeProfileSection( iniFile, section ) : Removes a section from the ini file

• removeProfileString( iniFile, section, entry ) : Removes an entry from a section in the ini file

The IniFile object is a fluent object that allows you to work with ini files in a very easy way. Here is an example of how to use it:

JSStringFormat BIF

This BIF is now complete to provide JavaScript escaping when using BoxLang as the template processor:

xml component

We have now finalized XML support in BoxLang with a beautiful xml component:

getVariable() & setVariable()

These two functions now exist in the compat module. It allows you to set and get variables in the variables scope. This can also be used to retrieve dynamic variable names or set dynamic variable names:

Add getClientVariablesList() to compat

Legacy client scope support added to the compat module

New getDescendantsOfType() AST method with predicate

This is an internal method of our contexts to allow us to retrieve things easily with predicates.

Implement single quote escapes in queries and preserveSingleQuotes

We thought this was going to be an easy one. preserveSingleQuotes() is now built for the core language to assist when building dynamic SQL and escaping quotes smartly.

Allow .cfm and .cfs files from the boxlang CLI runner

Our BoxLang runner now allows for the CLI execution of cfm and cfs files directly along side BoxLang templates.

Add isNumericDate BIF

This BIF is now in the core thanks to a client migration.

Add getHTTPTimeString BIF to web-support

Our web support package gets a new BIF thanks to a client migration

Writedump label support

WriteDump in BoxLang now get beautiful labels!

java.math.BigInteger caster

We have a new caster for BigInteger and BigDecimal to help us with precise mathematics in BoxLang.

Improvements

When doing class serialization make sure to identify which properties have `serialize=false` on them

Our serializer to binary for classes now respects the serialize annotation on properties.

content component can have body

Enhance error messages for parsing invalid tag code

Bugs

MalformedInputException: Input length = 1 when parsing CFC

component detection can be tricked if there is a tag comment line starting with the word "component"

Regression: Can't run files via BoxRunner due to new action command logic

Sometimes trying to shutdown runtime throws NPE if it was never started fully

pretty print visitor outputting extra " on tag catch block

pretty print visitor doesn't handle array notation invocation

This release brings enhanced XML handling, new CLI app support, improved error handling, and expanded interoperability with Java and CFML runtimes. We've also added new HTTP event hooks, improved caching strategies, and a streamlined class resolution process to make your applications more performant, even in debug modes.

🌟 Highlights:

✅ Enhanced XML Support – Improved cloning, merging, and namespace handling in XML operations. ✅ Unified Template & Script Grammars – BoxLang now seamlessly integrates both styles, bringing performance updates to the parser. ✅ Improved Java Interop – Automatic coercion of BoxLang arrays to native Java arrays and varargs support ✅ Better Error Handling – More robust dump rendering and exception management. ✅ New CLI Features – Built-in functions like cliRead(), cliGetArgs(), and cliExit() for pure CLI apps. ✅ Improved HTTP Handling – Proxy support, authentication, and new request/response events.

✅ Trusted Cache – Trusted cache is in the house, to get high performance in production

✅ Class location caches – More performance updates for class resolutions for BoxLang classes

With over 40 improvements, new features, and fixes, this release makes BoxLang even more powerful and stable! 🔥

Improvements

Implement Node pass-through methods to handle cloning and merging of XML objects

Combine template and script grammars for boxlang

Error Getting method keyExists for class ortus.boxlang.runtime.types.XML

StructFindKey returns two findings on the same node if top level key is array

Better error handling when dump template errors

Return callback return value from runThreadInContext()

java interop coerce BL arrays to native arrays

Add toOptional() method to Attempt

coerce return values of proxied methods

output class of non-simple valued fields in class output for cfdump

prefer same mapping for relative class lookups in box resolver

Client scope needs more consistencies like the session scope when validating and expiration determination

Module service record was not registering interceptors with the module settings

HTTP Component - Implement Proxy Server handling

add default itnerface helper for the IBoxContext to get the running application name if any

Servlet to support Jakarta namespace

New Features

Move defaultCache to the caches section as default, verify it exists, else create it anyways

add http events: onHTTPRequest, onHTTPResponse

Expose buildRegistry() and encapsulate per location registration

CLI BIFS for working with pure cli apps: cliRead(), cliGetArgs(), cliExit()

Activate box resolvers cache according to request and app settings

New setting: classResolverCache : boolean [true] which controls if the class locators caches resolve lookups

Bugs

varargs not working

CF casts Class instances to a String

Namespaced XML nodes not accessible by their non-namespaced names

XMLSearch Not Finding Correct Results When Namespaces are Present

XML asString Generates trailing line break

StructFindKey Not Returning owner values correctly

ASM compilation error

query with empty column name can't be dumped

WriteDump()/Dump() is broken in current snapshot build

DateCompare on two zero-hour strings fails with long overflow

XMLElemNew Illegal Character exception when using the namespace URI as the second argument

HTTP Component - Implement Basic Authentication

Cannot access variables scope in a static context -- but there is no variables access

timezone not always used in datetime caster

toUnmodifiableStruct() method not threadsafe

directoryList filter param does not accept a closure

Support for guid and uuid type

getDirectoryFromPath returns different result to Lucee and ACF

argument type of binary is not supported

argument type of email is not supported

CGI scope reporting 0 items

JSONSerialize pretty prints JSON which blows up outbound NDJSON

CFHTTParam Encodes Query Strings By Default

URLEncodedFormat Replaces Spaces with Plus Symbols

Bracket Notation Usage on Java Hashmaps Does not work.

Detail and Extended Info Can Be Null In Thrown Exceptions

Welcome to the latest release of BoxLang, where innovation takes center stage with groundbreaking enhancements and features designed to elevate your development experience. With the introduction of the ASMBoxPiler, we're pioneering a direct pathway to converting BoxLang code into highly optimized Java bytecode, offering an unprecedented boost in performance and efficiency. By eliminating traditional bottlenecks, we're empowering developers to achieve seamless integration with Java environments, transforming the way applications are built and executed. Prepare to explore the full potential of your projects with this transformative update!

New Features

ASMBoxPiler to do direct Java bytecode creation

With the implementation of the ASMBoxPiler, developers can now compile BoxLang source code directly into Java bytecode, streamlining the process and improving performance by over 4 times. This feature eliminates the intermediate steps previously required for code execution, resulting in faster compilation times and seamless integration with Java environments.

The JavaBoxPiler will remain in BoxLang as it's an integral debugging piece. It might be moved later to it's own module, but having the capability to transpile BoxLang/CFML code to Java will remain.

The direct bytecode generation allows for enhanced optimization and leverages the full potential of Java's JVM, leading to more efficient and scalable applications. By default, right now this is an experimental feature and it will need to be turned ON in order to use it via our boxlang.json configuration, via the compiler : "asm"

Star-import for boxlang classes

You can now use * imports for BoxLang classes, which allows you to bring in all the classes found in the imported package into the class namespace so you can create them by just using their name. In practice, the use of star-imports is a trade-off between convenience and potential issues such as namespace collisions. While they can make code more concise, especially when many classes from a package are needed, they may also import unintended classes, leading to ambiguities. Therefore, it's generally recommended to use specific imports when only a few classes are required and reserve star-imports for when numerous classes from the same package are genuinely required.

Java wildcard imports from loaded jars

The feature enhances import capabilities by allowing Java wildcard imports from loaded JAR files. This means you can use the * notation to import all classes within a JAR package, reducing the need to import each class manually. This functionality streamlines the process of utilizing numerous classes within a package and is particularly beneficial when dealing with extensive libraries. However, similar to BoxLang star-imports, it is essential to be aware of possible namespace conflicts and ensure that unintended classes do not get imported, maintaining code clarity and preventing ambiguity.

Ability to import/create BoxLang classes from modules via direct `@{moduleName}` notation.

The @ notation in BoxLang’s import system allows for more efficient and precise class referencing. By explicitly addressing classes from a specific module, performance is improved because it avoids the need for BoxLang to search through all available modules, reducing ambiguity in cases where classes with the same name exist in different modules. The module’s root serves as the base for addressing the class.

Here’s a breakdown of how it works:

By using this method, developers can avoid potential issues like performance degradation due to unnecessary module scanning and the possibility of naming conflicts. It provides a clear and concise way to manage dependencies and class imports in BoxLang.

Ability to import create java classes from modules explicitly using the `@`notation

Just like with BoxLang classes, you can also do the same for all Java libraries modules are packaged with. This allows you to import and create Java classes from specific modules by addressing them using the @ notation.

The following were support tickets for all of these functionalities

• Import Definitions now support module addressing for simple, wildcard and aliases

• JavaResolver module targeted resolution

MIgrate AST Capture to it's own experimental flag

If you want to capture AST JSON for debugging purposes you will need to activate the new AST experimental flag:

Add STOMP subprotocols in miniserver

We continue to make great strides with easy websocket support for BoxLang. Now we have added our very own STOMP implementation which makes our websockets behave like AMQP Messaging Brokers like RabbitMQ.

Improvements

Move CFID to compat module

Have servlet runtime return actual pagecontext object instead of fake

Update the allowedFileOperationExtensions and disallowedFileOperationExtensions to the security block

Allow casting to array of primitive types

Improve exception when trying to invoke null as a function

Get ColdBox Loading via ASM

Improve logic surrounding loading of pre-compiled source files

added a `isCommitted()` to the PageContext to match the servlet response to assist when doing resets without exceptions

StopGaps and config from cfconfig.json to boxlang.json

NotImplemented updated to check if it's a string and if empty, then ignore it to provide leeway

Rename default sessions cache to `bxSessions` to create the `bx` prefix standards. Add configuration to boxlang.json

Bug

boxlang invokes private onApplicationStart

expandPath does not preserve file system case

cfml2wddx action missing

deserializeJSON not handling white space / control characters

Update parser to allow for `@module` notations on imports and `new` operators

listFind() and listFindNoCase() are allowing partial matches

Can't dump null in console

Cannot invoke "java.lang.CharSequence.length()" because "this.text" is null

BoxLang Betas are released weekly. This is our third beta marker. Here are the release notes.

New Features

BL-256 Implement query cache ability

Thanks to our enterprise cache engine and aggregator built into BoxLang, you can now use it to cache queries via its options configuration structure using cfquery or queryExecute. Here are the query caching properties you can use:

• cache:boolean - To turn on caching, this must be true. The default is false

• cacheTimeout:timespan - Optional timeout of the query in the cache. By default, is uses whatever the default timeout of items the cache has been configured with.

• cacheLastAcccessTimeout:timespan - Optional last access or idle timeout of the query in the cache. By default, is uses whatever the default timeout of items the cache has been configured with. This means that if this query is NOT used or requested in this timespan, it will be marked for eviction.

• cacheProvider:string - The name of the cache provider to store the queries. By default, we use the DEFAULT cache in BoxLang.

queryExecute(
    "SELECT * FROM developers WHERE role = ?",
    [ "Developer" ],
    { cache: true }
);

By default, queries will use the default Boxlang CacheProvider, which has default timeouts and lastAccessTimeout values set.

To specify a custom caching provider, you can use the cacheProvider query option:

queryExecute(
    "SELECT * FROM developers WHERE role = ?",
    [ "Developer" ],
    { cache: true, cacheProvider : "redis" }
);

To specify custom cache entry timeouts, use cacheTimeout or cacheLastAccessTimeout:

queryExecute(
    "SELECT * FROM developers WHERE role = ?",
    [ "Developer" ],
    {
        cache: true,
        cacheTimeout : createTimespan( 0, 0, 0, 30 ),
        cacheLastAccessTimeout : createTimespan( 0, 0, 0, 30 )
    }
);

Metadata

All query metadata will also have the cache information available to you as well. So you if get dump the query metadata you will see a ton of debugging information about the query:

writedump( myQuery.$bx.meta )

Interacting With The Cache

Please note that this leverages the BoxLang cache. This means you have full access to the cache provider and you can interrogate it for queries, clear all of them, or clear one of them. The default prefix used for all cached queries is: BL_QUERY

// Clear everything in the default cache
getBoxCache()
    .clearAll()

// Clear only the cached queries
getBoxCache()
    .clearAll( key-> key.getName().startsWith( "BL_QUERY" ) )

// Get a list of all cached queries
getBoxCache()
    .getKeys( key-> key.getName().startsWith( "BL_QUERY" ) )

// Get a stream of all the cached queries
getBoxCache()
    .getKeysStream( key-> key.getName().startsWith( "BL_QUERY" ) )

BL-261 coerce java SAMs from BoxLang function interfaces

This is another major milestone in the Java interop features of BoxLang. This allows us to coerce any BoxLang Lambda/Closure/UDF or even Classes to ANY, yes, ANY Java Functional Interface or Java SAM (Single Abstract Method Interface).

// Build your own Java comparators with BoxLang
Collections.sort(
    myArray or Java Array,
    (s1, s2) -> compareNoCase( s1, s2 )
)

// Create your own threads and completable futures
CompletableFuture.supplyAsync( () -> println( "Running in a thread" ) )

// Java predicates
arrayOfNumbers = [1,22,3,34,34,556]
arrayOfNumbers.stream()
    .filter( n -> n % 2 == 0 )
    .toList()

BL-281 AsyncService support for Virtual Thread Executors (create/manage)

Virtual Threads are now available to BoxLang via executors. You can choose the new VIRTUAL executor for schedulers or when creating schedulers via our AsyncService. This will treat all tasks and schedules to use virtual threads.

// Create, register and return
getBoxRuntime().getAsyncService()
    .newVirtualExecutor( "MyVirtualExecutor" )

More entry points to access this executor will be provided in the coming betas, alongside our very own runAsync() and the ability to create virtual threads as well.

BL-284 Bifs for module info: getModuleList() getModuleInfo( module )

As more modules are being developed for BoxLang, you now have the ability to know which modules have been loaded and activated in the language. As well as specific information about a module if needed. This is great for inter-dependencies and checking if modules have loaded from BoxLang.

writedump( getModuleList() )
writeDump( getModuleInfo( "bx-image" ) )

BL-285 Dumping of Java Classes now includes a dump of the `toString()` value to visualize values better

This is a developer eye-candy, so when you dump any Java class, you can actually see the value of the class instance data via the toString() method.

BL-289 New dump template for BL Functions

The dumping of BoxLang Functions (Closures, Lambdas, UDFs), either standalone or from a class, has great visibility now. You can see even the class used to generate the function, the function annotations, and much more.

BL-292 Allow the createDynamicProxy bif to support the request class loader so it can load classes from loaded libraries in the application.bx, runtime and more.

If you use createDynamicProxy() to make a BoxLang class look like a Java class, you can continue to do so now, but it accounts for all class loaders in the application. If you come from a CFML engine, this is impossible and is always a pain and limitation.

In BoxLang, your context matters. So depending on where you create the dynamic proxy, it will account for the surrounding class loaders to be able to create the appropriate Java proxies.

createDynamicProxy( myclass, [ array of interfaces ] )
createDynamicProxy( myclass, interface path )

BL-298 New Script Binaries for bxCFTranspiler, bxCompiler, bxFeatureAudit tools in the distribution bin folder

We have introduced Windows and Mac/Linux binaries for running several CLI tools. You no longer need to refer to the docs with extra-long options. You can now use the provided binaries to call the appropriate CLI tool.

If you use the quick installer, all these binaries will be installed for you.

Improvements

BL-254 Refactor JDBC connection retrieval out of the QueryOptions class

BL-280 Dynamic method matching discovery algorithms updated to do 2 pass algorithm: exact, loose coercion matching

BL-283 Improvement of cache service and cache provider methods for easier boxlang interactions

BL-290 Refactored the dump css to `resources/dump/html/Dump.css`

BL-291 Migrate dynamic proxies to native java implementation from the JDK

BL-296 passing the session id to the onsessionstart listener

BL-297 Give better warnings if the sessionStorage is not a valid string

Bug

BL-198 attributecollection not handled properly on cfthrow

BL-278 Left in system out calls that need to be removed

BL-279 JSR ScriptEngine starting runtime without debug flag if passed

BL-282 Creating a default cache was not setting the right name and a "default" already registered exception was being thrown

BL-286 Default argument values not always checked for type

BL-287 Implements missing from Box Class metadata

BL-288 Static Scope missing from metadata

BoxLang Beta 26 Has Landed!

We’re thrilled to announce the release of BoxLang 1.0.0 Beta 26, a monumental update that takes performance and functionality to the next level. This beta officially certifies the ColdBox HMVC Framework to run on BoxLang, marking a significant milestone in compatibility. Not only can you now run all ColdBox applications seamlessly on BoxLang, but with the latest ColdBox snapshot, you can also build your entire applications in BoxLang, unlocking the full potential of this dynamic and expressive language for modern application development.

This release also introduces blazing-fast Query of Queries (QoQ) support, delivering speeds up to 70 times faster than Adobe or Lucee in specific scenarios, along with exciting new features like list parameter support in JDBC queries and custom QoQ functions. Over 70 bugs have been resolved, and significant improvements have been made, such as enhanced debugging capabilities, refined Box Script syntax, and robust session and metadata handling. With Beta 26, BoxLang continues to push the boundaries, empowering developers to build robust, efficient, and fully modern JVM-based applications.

Welcome to what could be our last beta before the final release of our initial 1.0.0 version of BoxLang and its multi-runtimes.

New Features

Create query of queries support

Implement list parameters in JDBC queries

Ability to register custom functions for QoQ

Interceptor Service now does a service loader load of all interceptors found in the runtime to auto-load them

Improvements

dump Lots of UI quality of life improvements: show length of strings, show full classes for some Java integrations, and much more.

Update getMetaadata() for dynamic proxies to leverage the class metadata instead of instances

CFTranspiler should not turn off accessors for persistent classes

Exception type matching check cause

Implement "Quick" algorithm for Hash BIF

Compat: CacheGet second argument is boolean for Lucee

ASM error in do/while with a break

Update the getOrCreateSession() to verify if the session has expired, and if so, rotate it.

Change generic tag-in-script syntax for Box Script to prefix with bx:

Bugs

Allow a productivity hack to add ability to pass queries to some struct functions by taking the first row and converting the query to a struct.

structsort with callback errors

QofQ shouldn't require global DSN

xmlsearch - invalid XPath

ASM Failing test - fix bx:output transformer

ASM Failing test - fix abort exception

Dump Top Updates will not dump certain classes without a top argument, top shows as reached for subsequent dumps

BL GenericProxies cannot have java.lang.Object methods call on them

Class properties are merged from all inheritance levels in the metadata

Dumps are not in order of execution

Java List dumps are not working with top and are off by 1

Wirebox Block: testbuildJavaClass Methods on Java objects cannot be called with named arguments when using invoke()

Coercion for constructors from string to numbers are not working

Coercion from strings to numbers does not exist

isInstanceOf bif and keyword are not working on createObject("java") proxies. It gives a negative result

var scoping issues for bleeding scopes on class dump template

Calling getMetadata() on an instance of dynamic object that has not yet been inited, shows the metadata of DynamicObject instead of the proxy class

ORM: getter setters are not enabled for persistent CFCs

ORM: writedump causes ClassInfo not found

ORM: entityLoad should only require entity name

Show the right exception type when invoking dynamic objects and there are exceptions from a caused by

caching does not handle quoted numbers or booleans in config

ORM: EntityLoad errors when using a filter

soft reference cannot be stored directly in a struct

rework onSessionEnd to make sure the application exists when calling the listeners

Lucee allows params to be passed to cfquery tag via `params` attribute

IsNumeric() returns true for "true" and "false"

QueryNew() throws exception if row data array is empty

MSSQL throws error when executing certain queries if language is not English

Setting a dynamic variable name doesn't work

Can't cast [now] to a DateTime

cfloop step not implemented

allow "switch" as struct key name in CF script

The instance [ortus.boxlang.runtime.types.exceptions.ParseException] has no public field or inner class [ERRORCODE]

In function [numberFormat], argument [number] with a type of [java.lang.Boolean] does not match the declared type of [number]

Datasources created after module load take on custom DSN parameters defined in bx-mssql

cfqueryparam with list attribute causes "The index 2 is out of range"

Queryparam list=true is unsupported

Key in arguments scope gets lost

Allow "switch" to be used in dot access

Can't cast ts to a Number.

named query params not handled correctly

Account for placeholder text in comments and quoted strings in SQL

numberFormat is displaying a leading 0 when formatting integers < 10

Duplicate() on CGI scope creates empty struct

CGI-Scope weirdness

MSSQL connection gets lost

Empty test fails when using ASM

MSSQL Query columns have wrong values

Using inside of causes bxCatch scope to disappear

Array Loop with negative step doesn't work

Cannot invoke "ortus.boxlang.runtime.components.Component$BodyResult.isEarlyExit()" because "bodyResult" is null

Passing query column to listToArray() BIF fails

IsNumeric BIF returns true on booleans in compat mode

getBaseTemplatePath returns `Application.cfc` in onRequestStart

Throw with exception object as unnamed argument fails

Null session scope when attempting to update the last visit

Compat GetComponentMetadata Failures with "Can't cast null to a Key".

String [1 LTE 5] cannot be cast to a boolean

Compat: Attributes to Functions Are Scoped in to nested Parameters Struct

Cannot invoke method [clearbuffer()] on a null object

Double variable assignment failing in ASM

Compat: Invoke method has different required object method

StructFindKey Returns a Null Value when Struct being searched contains nulls

toBinary() not lenient enough for decoding with line paddings

When doing named parameter queries and you send more parameters than required, it should ignore them, not throw an exception that you sent more

getOrCreateSession() relying on the starting listener for settings, when it should look at the context to reflect changes if any

WebRequest interceptor in web support is not auto-loading, also will affect any other composable runtimes

node.xmlText explicit assignment throws error that value is not node or XML instance

xmlAttributes assignment error - key not found

Task

ColdBox Test Suite

Quick Test Suite

Parser performance and removing ambiguity

CFcasts Suite

UnleashSDK Certification

Incorporate TestBox test suite

Stories

Phase II : Update all the toAST() methods to the new and consolidated approach

Phase III : Performance tests for phase I + II toolchains

Phase V : Create the QoQ SQL grammar, parser, and astss

BoxLang Betas are released weekly. This is our ninth marker and we are incredibly excited as we are coming close to our stable release. We have some great news in this release!

New Features

PDF Module

PDFs have landed for BoxLang. The full implementation for creating PDF documents is now complete and available via our bx-pdf module. This module contributes the following Components to the language:

• document - the wrapping component for creating PDF documents

  • The following attributes are available to the document component

    • format - The format of the document to generate. This attribute is unused and will be removed in a future release as only PDF generation is supported. Any other format requested will throw an error.

    • encryption - The encryption level to use for the document. Default is none. Possible values are 128-bit, 40-bit, none

    • localUrl - If true, the document will be generated with local URLs. Default is false

    • variable - The name of the variable to store the generated PDF binary

    • backgroundVisible - If true, the background will be visible. Default is true

    • bookmark - If true, bookmarks will be generated. Default is true

    • htmlBookmark - If true, it is possible to convert outlines to a list of named anchors (<a name="anchor_id">label</a>) or a headings structure ( <h1>... <h6> ). Transforming of HTML hyperlinks to PDF hyperlinks (if not explicitly disabled Hyperlink jumps within the same document are supported as well

    • orientation - The orientation of the document. Default is portrait. Possible values are portrait, landscape

    • scale - The percentage to scale the document. Must be less than 100

    • marginBottom - The bottom margin of the document

    • marginLeft - The left margin of the document

    • marginRight - The right margin of the document

    • marginTop - The top margin of the document

    • pageWidth - The width of the page in inches

    • pageHeight - The height of the page in inches

    • fontEmbed - If true, fonts will be embedded in the document. Default is true

    • fontDirectory - The directory where fonts are located

    • openpassword - The password to open protected documents

    • ownerPassword - The password to access restricted permissions

    • pageType - The type of page to generate. Default is A4.

    • pdfa - If true, the document will be generated as a PDF/A document. Default is false

    • filename - The filename to write the PDF to. If not provided and a variable argument is not provided, the PDF will be written to the browser ( Web-context only )

    • overwrite - If true, the file will be overwritten if it exists. Default is false

    • saveAsName - The name to save the PDF as in the browser

    • src - A full URL or path relative to the web root of the source

    • srcfile - The absolute path to a source file

    • mimeType - The mime type of the source. Default is text/html. Possible values are text/html, text/plain, application/xml, image/jpeg, image/png, image/bmp, image/gif

    • unit - The unit of measurement to use. Default is inches. Possible values are in, cm

  • The following attributes are not currently implemented and will throw an error if used

    • permissions - Granular permissability is not yet supported

    • permissionspassword - Granular permissability is not yet supported

    • userPassword - Granular permissability is not yet supported

    • authPassword - Granular permissability is not yet supported

    • authUser - Granular permissability is not yet supported

    • userAgent - HTTP user agent identifier

    • proxyHost - IP address or server name for proxy host

    • proxyPassword - password for the proxy host

    • proxyPort - port of the proxy host

    • proxyUser - user name for the proxy host

    • tagged - yes|no ACF OpenOffice integration not supported

    • formfields - yes|no Form field attributes are not implemented in standard module

    • formsType - FDF|PDF|HTML|XML Form field attributes are not implemented in standard module

• documentitem - specifies header, footer, and pagebreaks within a document body or documentsection

  • The following attributes are available to the documentitem component

    • type A string which dictates the type of item. Accepted values are pagebreak|header|footer

    • evalAtPrint This attribute is deprecated as all content is evaluated when the body of the tag is processed

• documentsection - Divides a PDF document into sections. Used in conjunction with a documentitem component, each section can have unique headers, footers, and page numbers. A page break will always precede a section

  • The following attributes are available to the documentsection component

    • marginBottom - The bottom margin of the section in the unit specified in the document component.

    • marginLeft - The left margin of the section in the unit specified in the document component.

    • marginRight - The right margin of the section in the unit specified in the document component.

    • marginTop - The top margin of the section in the unit specified in the document component.

    • mimeType - The mime type of the content. If the content is a file, the mime type is determined by the file extension. If the content is a URL, the mime type is determined by the HTTP response.

    • name - The name of the section. This is used as a bookmark for the section.

    • srcfile - The absolute path of the file to include in the section.

    • src - The URL or path relative to the web root of the content to include in the section.

  • The following attributes are not currently implemented and will throw an error if used

    • userAgent - The HTTP user agent identifier to use when fetching the content from a URL.

    • authPassword - The authentication password to use when fetching the content from a URL.

    • authUser - The authentication user name to use when fetching the content from a URL.

Examples

Simple example using tag-based syntax to generate a physical file:

Example using script syntax to create a variable containing the binary contents of the PDF, which is then written to a file

objectLoad() and objectSave() implemented and renamed to objectSerialize() and objectDeserialize()

This is a really step forward for BoxLang in providing the ability to serialize and deserialize any BoxLang type and any BoxLang class to binary recursively n-levels deep. We have introduced two BIFS to accomplish this:

• objectSerialize( object, [filepath] ) : binary

• objectDeserialize( input ) : object

You can pass ANY object to the serialize function and it will recursively try to serialize the object to binary data. You can then store that in a database, cluster, cache, or a file using the filepath argument. To deserialize you can use the objectDeserialize() function and you can pass in the direct binary or a file path location for the binary.

The only requirement is that the object be a BoxLang type or any Java type that implements serializable.

Also note that for CFML compatibility, the compat module will expose them as objectLoad() and objectSave().

Exit REPL with quit or exit

You can now exit the BoxLang REPL by typing quit or exit.

Ability to serialize BoxLang classes to binary and deserialize them back using it's state

This was related to BL-110 but specifically to BoxLang classes. This allows us now to be able to take the state of any BoxLang class and be able to serialize it to binary. You can then deserialize the binary and inflate it back to a BoxLang object graph again.

New experimental features block on the `boxlang.json`

The boxlang.json get's a new top level configuration key: experimental which will be a feature flags approach to turn on/off experimental features in BoxLang.

BoxRunner action commands now for: compile, cftranspile, featureAudit

We have consolidated our CLI tooling to all funnel through the boxlang binary script or boxlang.bat for windows. You can now execute our CLI tools via action commands which is based on the following keys:

• compile - Executes the BoxLang compiler tool

• cftranspile - Executes the CF to BoxLang transpile tool

• featureAudit - Executes the feature audit tool

Improvements

Renaming of Box Cache functions to standardized cache{function}()

The BoxLang Cache BIFs have been renamed to be standardized to the following:

• cache( [provider:default] )

• cacheFilter()

• cacheNames()

• cacheProviders()

• cacheService()

Increase precision of math operations by using BigDecimal

This introduces BigDecimal usage all over BoxLang for two main use cases:

• Being able to store and process very large numbers that wouldn't fit inside a Long or a Double like 111111111111111111111111111 + 222222222222222222222222222

• Being able to retain precision for decimals-- even small ones. For ex: (0.1 + 0.2).toString() outputs 0.30000000000000004 in Lucee 5 and ACF 2023. But in Lucee 6 and BoxLang, it correctly returns .3 without any special work

Not ALL numbers are a BigDecimal-- just the ones that need to be:

• integer literals in your source code less than 11 chars will be a java Integer

• integer literals in your source code less than 20 chars will be a java Long

• All other integer literals in your source will be a java BigDecimal

• All decimal literals in your source will be a java BigDecimal

Furthermore, we have added a new NumberCaster which we should be using as our primary caster that returns an instance implementing the Number interface in Java

• any recognizable classes like int, long, double, big decimal, etc are just returned directly

• Any strings which contain integers (no decimal or sci notation) follow the same rules above (integer for small ones, long for bigger ones, big decimal for really big ones)

• Any strings with a decimal or sci notation will be made a BigDecimal

Basically, we return the "Smallest" data type we can without losing any precision. (An Integer is about 24 Bytes and a BigDecimal is about 64 Bytes so it seemed worth optimizing a bit)

Finalize FileUpload, FileUploadAll BIFs and File Component upload actions in Web Support

The web runtimes now have file uploading capabiltiies finalized.

Bugs

BigIntegers cause error: integer number too large

Not all unquoted tag attribute values are parsing

🚀 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)

Licenses Available!

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.

Release Notes

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

Bugs

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

Tasks

BL-814 CBSecurity Certification

BL-1076 isWDDX BIF missing from wddx module

BoxLang 1.2: Performance-Driven Innovation

We're excited to announce the release of BoxLang 1.2, a significant milestone that demonstrates our commitment to delivering both cutting-edge features and exceptional performance. This release represents how much innovation the entire BoxLang team can accomplish in just 2 weeks of focused development, bringing you powerful new capabilities while dramatically improving the runtime efficiency that makes BoxLang a compelling choice for modern applications.

What Makes 1.2 Special

BoxLang 1.2 isn't just another incremental update—it's a performance powerhouse packed with developer-friendly enhancements. We've implemented over 30 targeted optimizations across the runtime, from string operations and file handling to function invocations and memory management. These improvements mean your applications will run faster and more efficiently, often without requiring any changes to your existing code.

Headline Features

Enhanced Java Integration: The new Maven pom.xml support for BoxLang Home opens up seamless integration with the entire Java ecosystem, making it easier than ever to leverage existing Java libraries in your BoxLang applications. You can now add any Java dependencies in your BoxLang Home's pom.xml run mvn install and your runtime will be seeded with all the Java Libraries your application needs!

Advanced Logging Control: Take complete control of your application's logging with new encoder options (text or json) and flexible appender choices between file and console output. Your logs, your way. You can also now chose between a file or console appender in all of your configuration files.

Developer Experience: From nested grouped output support to the new BoxModuleReload() function for testing workflows, we've focused on making your development process smoother and more productive.

Performance at the Core

This release includes extensive performance optimizations that touch nearly every aspect of the runtime:

• Optimized Hot Code Paths: Critical operations like string comparisons, numeric casting, and function invocations have been streamlined

• Smarter Caching: From configuration lookups to file path resolution, we've added intelligent caching where it matters most

• Reduced Overhead: Eliminated unnecessary operations in frequently-called code, including regex optimizations and stream-to-loop conversions

• Memory Efficiency: Improved struct operations, hash encoding, and object creation patterns