what is this mean

Do this:
<cfhttp method="get" url="http://localhost:8500/projects/test.txt" timeout="5" />
<cfdump var=”# cfhttp#”>

That will display what returns from the cfhttp request. If that is not ‘200 OK’, if that is something else like 404, then your coldfusion server could not access localhost:8500. That happens base on the security settings in the web server. Try with the sever name or with the IP address. Some times that works.

If your test.txt and this cfm file in the server, you can use FileExists() function to check if the text file exists. That is way faster than cfhttp.

Thanks

Sam
cflove.org

Assuming you are taking this approach to check for existence of the file on a remote server instead of the server executing the CF code, try using method="HEAD" instead of "get". This will prevent the CFHTTP call from actually transferring the entire remote file content via CFHTTP and will be far more efficient since it will only transact on headers.

Also, keep in mind that under certain scenarios it is possible to get a 200 status code even when the file in question does not exist.

If the file is on the same physical server, test using fileexists("test.txt") instead of going through CFHTTP.

I would be very interested in the WHY of this page....

It requests test.txt with <cfhttp....>

If that request returns a http "200 OK" response then relocate the current request to text.txt

Otherwise relocate the current request to search.cfm