We hope to feature some of the fantastic open source software and frameworks that use Assembla, starting with ColdBox, a ColdFusion development Platform. They recently migrated their development workspace to Assembla.com.  They also posted a pre-configured workspace in the catalog, so that ColdBox app builders can get started quickly. Project leader Luis Majano had this to say about the features that attracted them, "Having the ability to have multiple connected spaces has been HUGE" and "The collaboration features of Assembla are something that is essential for open source and community based initiatives such as ColdBox."

Here is why we think that ColdBox is worthy of your attention.

Luis Manajo and the rest of the team at ColdBox have built a broad-reaching ColdFusion development framework that CF developers all over the world are using to shorten their development cycles. ColdBox is an event-driven, conventions-based development platform for ColdFusion (CFML) Engines. It provides a set of reusable code and tools that can be used to increase development productivity as well as a development standard for working in team environments. ColdBox is comprehensive and modular, which helps address most of the infrastructure concerns of typical ColdFusion applications. It is worth noting that ColdBox was born out of a missing critical and high availability enterprise application and, consequently, it has been proven time over time and has been production-ready since 2005. It has an impressive array of internal frameworks, libraries and tools that can be leveraged by any ColdFusion developer. Some of the most novel features of ColdBox are the following:

1) Conventions Over Configuration

Often times the simplest innovations are the most impactful. As far back as 2005, ColdBox was a trendsetter when it became the first "conventions over configurations" development framework for the CFML community. ColdBox doesn't rely on XML declarative logic but, instead, a set of conventions that can be customized by developers. Unlike many frameworks ColdBox doesn't pigeon hole developers to code in a certain way, it offers flexibility and extensibility.

2) Enterprise Caching

ColdBox has an advanced, memory-aware and configurable enterprise caching engine. They provide several tuning parameters for the cache as well as visual cache reports in the debugging panel. You can actually see how many objects and what type of objects are in your cache, the efficiency of your cache and the tuning parameters. This feature helps developers to save time and not have to worry about persistence. ColdBox also allows for event caching, in which the HTML output that events produce will be cached by the framework and presented to users. This enhances application and system stability. To implement this you simply use metadata in the cfcomponent and cffunction tags to actually declare caching parameters. ColdBox also allows for extensive view caching and on-demand render and cache capabilities. To top it off, the caching engine has an event broadcaster model built-in that can advice you on object inserts, updates and deletes.

3) Unit Testing & Built-In Mocking

The ColdBox team proved themselves to be real trail blazers when they launched MockBox, their unit testing and mocking system. In fact, they were the first development framework to provide integration and unit testing for ColdFusion applications. With MockBox, CF developers can easily test all their applications and mock/stub objects with ease.

We could go on and on enumerating the great features of ColdBox, but we'll let you check it out for yourself at their website . There are two other non-feature aspects of ColdBox that we would like to highlight in addition. The first is that the ColdBox team provide a tremendous amount of documentation for their framework - they have more than 30 step-by-step guides and tutorials, 550+ pages of wiki content and have just published their first book on the ColdBox framework (readers of our blog can get a 10% discount on the book by entering the promocode "3B8VFUQJ"). The second is that the ColdBox team have recently ramped up their "professional open source" initiative should you need help with your projects. They offer on-site training, architectural reviews & mentoring and will soon provide dedicated professional support.

If you are part of an open source project that could benefit from Assembla.com's integrated development and collaboration tool, please don't hesitate to contact us at marketing@assembla.com especially if you have questions or if we could be of help in some way.