ColdFusion is a great language in its own right. What makes it even more awesome? The fact that it is a Java application. Why is this cool? Because you can dig into Java to do all the dirty stuff ColdFusion shields you from, should you desire to do so.

While writing this profiling code this last week I had the need to get information specific to the server executing my ColdFusion code. The first bit of information I need is the host name, or the proper name of the server running ColdFusion. Java to the rescue! The Java package java.net contains what we need to do this.

<cfset inet = createObject("java", "java.net.InetAddress") />
<cfset hostName = inet.getLocalHost().getHostName() />

<cfoutput>This computer's name is #hostName#</cfoutput>

The other piece of information I needed was something to identify the instance of ColdFusion I was running on in a multi-instance environment. I’m betting the way I did this could be done better, but for now it is doing the job. By default ColdFusion installs JRun as the J2EE server that runs ColdFusion as a Java application. As such I was able to delve into the Java classes provided by JRun to get the JNDI port number, which is of course unique per instance.

The code below shows how to do that. Also note I have a try/catch around that code, and in the catch I am trying to create a different object of type org.apache.catalina.ServerFactory. This is because my co-workers are running JRun, and I am running Tomcat, and that object is what get’s me a server class from Tomcat, which in turn can give me the port Tomcat listens on for the shutdown command.

<!---
    Get the port number. This is *J2EE server specific*!
--->
<cftry>
    <cfset j2eeService = createObject("java", "jrun.naming.NamingService") />

<cfcatch>
    <cfset j2eeService = createObject("java", "org.apache.catalina.ServerFactory").getServer() />
</cfcatch>
</cftry>

<cfset port = j2eeService.getPort() />

<cfoutput>This instance is running against port #port#</cfoutput>

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why ColdFusion rocks! Happy coding!