Still more reasons to make sure you have updated your ColdFusion 10 web server connector

Note: This blog post is from 2013. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

In this entry, I want to throw in another reason why it's important to make sure you properly update (reconfigure/rebuild/upgrade) your web server connector after applying certain CF10 updates, or if applying only the latest update for the first time to a newly installed CF10 instance.

It could help fix CFML that seems "broken"

There are some fixes addressed in various updates with respect to how your CFML may work, which are affected by the connector updates. The problem is that while the "fix" may be reported as being implemented by a given CF10 "update", if you do that "update" but then do NOT also reconfigure/rebuild/update the web server connector as may have been required by that CF10 "update", then you will not get some of the benefits of that "update".

I discuss in the last entry how this is a problem especially if you are skipping updates (or applying the latest one for the first time on a new CF10 install). You will be getting all the previous updates, and one (or more) of them may have required that you reconfigure/rebuild/upgrade the web server connector. The CF10 "update" lets you know that in the update page shown on the "server updates" page of the CF admin, but many people miss that and never bother with the web server connector reconfigure/rebuild/upgrade. See the previous entry for more on that tale of woe.

(And I explain in the other entry why I refer to the process as a need to "reconfigure/rebuild/upgrade" the web server connector, as well as how to do it, of course.)

The point here is to stress yet another reason (a few, in fact) that you want to reconfigure/rebuild/upgrade your web server connector, if the current or previous CF10 "updates" had said you should.

It fixes the problem of a blank cgi.path_info, when a pathinfo value has been provided on your URL

For instance, one of the CF10 updates addressed a problem where folks would find the cgi.path_info field to always be blank, whether a URL had one or not. (The path_info is supposed to hold the value in a url like "test" in the url "/somepath/somefile.cfm/test".

(For those who relied on path_info to hold the path to the file itself, as in/"somepath/somefile.cfm", that was itself a long-standing mistake in CF. That's NOT what the generic http concept of "path info" is supposed to mean, and CF long propagated that mistake, and it's removed in 10.)

But the point here is that some trying to use it correctly still saw it always blank, at least until the given CF10 update addressed it, and then ONLY if they also did properly udate the connector, as described above.

Other issues that are technically addressed by web server connector updates

There have also been other issues that have been "fixed" by the updated connectors, which you will not get if you have not reconfigured/rebuilt/upgraded the connector.

Some examples include proper handling of some aspects of IIS custom error handlers (more in a moment), proper processing of some aspects of web services and REST services, proper posting of xml files to CF, etc. I don't have the details for these, but am sharing this from my observations in the community and in posts/docs from Adobe (of which I can't recall the details as i write this, if someone were wondering)

The point is: there are things which are "fixed" by the updated connector, as provided in a given CF10 "update"--but if you don't update the connector after applying the update, then you don't get that fix.

So check your connector first, before asserting something is "broken"

So whenever you see someone complaining that something doesn't work in CF10, ask them first if they have really properly updated the connector, and confirmed the date update as I discuss in my last entry.

If they have not, they could be spinning their wheels and blaming Adobe for something that they did in fact already fix.

Caveat

All that said, I don't deny that there are some problems (including some custom error handler problems) that some people are STILL experiencing after indeed properly updating their connectors. I'm not saying it solves all problems. I'm just saying let's always rule it out first and foremost before asserting something in CF10 is "still broken".

Hope that's helpful.

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