Java Proxy Component

I’m not sure if this is actually cool, or I just think it is, so I figured I would share.

I was working on demo code for tomorrow’s presentation; one of things I wanted to show off was ColdFusion acting as an IM bot, running functionality in Java. To do that, I basically wanted to be able to dynamically call methods on the Java Math class. Basically, I want to type “pow 2 5” in the IM client and have it be the equivalent of “math.pow(2,5)”.

Calling Java dynamically from ColdFusion isn’t straightforward. But basically I figured if I could somehow use missing method to map calls to the underlying Java object then I could use cfinvoke to call the methods dynamically. The downside is that I couldn’t figure out any way to call Java dynamically without resorting to evaluate:

Once you have that CFC, you can call it this way:

#result#


Now, I’m sure I’ll get trounced for the use of the dreaded “evaluate”, but it definitely got the job done for me.

I think the cool thing is that once you have your Java object proxied to a CFC you can extend it. Not true Java object extension in CF, but not nothing.