An Architect's View

Framework One 2.0 just reached Beta status. Apart from documentation updates, there are only two issues still open: adding some sort of lightweight tracing mechanism, and adding a structured API for request scope data.

As per the recent Alpha release, the main new features (in no particular order) are:

• custom URL routes with parameter substitution are supported, along with HTTP method restrictions and wildcard routes
• setLayout() to override layout conventions
• view() can be called from a controller, as a way to render email or documents for PDF delivery etc
• controller/service execution can be short-circuited, providing more control over the request lifecycle
• populate() and autowiring now support property-based injection as well as setter-based injection
• additional lifecycle hooks for global before() / after() and pre-rendering setupView() - Beta adds setupResponse()
• baseURL is configurable per-request and per-subsystem (new in Beta)
• option to not lowercase actions for view lookup - caveat programmer! (new in Beta)
• ".item" action is now relative to current section instead of default section (new in Beta)
• complete rewrite of the code to use cfscript - for Adobe ColdFusion 9.0.1 and Railo 3.2.2 or later

In particular, note the last bullet - if you are on earlier CFML engines, you will have to stick with FW/1 1.2 (there will be a 1.3 maintenance release). The mix of tags and script was driving me crazy and I didn't want to add all this new functionality with the code as it is!