This week a read a lot about ZeroMQ(zeromq.org). It’s a very complex and elegant way to connect applications via a message queue service. What I like most is the possible connection on a single host or over multiple hosts. The reason why I was interested in this topic was the search of an easy way to connect Coldfusion to ruby.
We have lot of code running on Coldfusion and we want to migrate a lot of complex parts from it to a more performant environment. On the other hand we want to keep the easy HTML-templating system Coldfusion is providing. This means to create a ruby library to be the base of the new system and having Coldfusion on top of it.
Part 1: Connecting Coldfusion and ruby
While reading the zeroMQ documentation I got the idea of trying the same approche of using the TCP socket in a simpler way. So I was looking for different Socket examples for Coldfusion. In contrast to the most available articles, I want to use Coldfusion as a Socket Client and ruby as a Socket Server.
Creating the ruby Socket Server
At first I started with the ruby server, because later I want that server to receive and return the data. For now I’m only fine with the transfer of text based data.
require 'socket'
def incommingMessage(client)
data = ""
incomming_length = 56
while( tmp = client.recv(incomming_length) )
data += tmp
break if tmp.length < incomming_length
end
return data
end
def init()
server = TCPServer.open(2000)
loop {
client = server.accept
puts incommingMessage(client)
client.puts "Hi from ruby, cya!"
client.close
}
end
init()
Start the server: ruby socket.rb
Creating the Coldfusion client
After having the ruby Socket server running I was concentrating on the Coldfusion client part. For that I downloaded and startet the Express Version of Railo 4.2, which can be found here: http://www.getrailo.org/index.cfm/download/.
private string function callSocket2( required string host, required numeric port, required string message ) {
var result = "";
var socket = createObject("java", "java.net.Socket");
var outputStream = "";
var inputStream = "";
var output = "";
var input = "";
var inputStreamReader = "";
try {
socket.init(arguments.host, arguments.port);
} catch(java.net.ConnectException error) {
throw message="#error.Message#: Could not connected to host #arguments.host# on port #arguments.port#";
}
if ( socket.isConnected() ) {
outputStream = socket.getOutputStream();
output = createObject("java", "java.io.PrintWriter").init( outputStream );
inputStream = socket.getInputStream();
inputStreamReader = createObject("java", "java.io.InputStreamReader").init(inputStream);
input = createObject("java", "java.io.BufferedReader").init(inputStreamReader);
output.println(arguments.message);
output.println();
output.flush();
result = input.readLine();
socket.close();
} else {
throw message="Not connected to host #arguments.host# via port #arguments.port#";
}
return result;
}
#callSocket2('localhost','2000',"Hello there, it's CF")#
When having both scripts executed, the output should look like this.
Within Terminal:
Within the browser:
view on github: https://github.com/Macagare/Ruby-CF-Socket
christian mueller design 
