Coldfusion 2016 war/ear lack of documentation

[jwhitene]

windows 2008/tomcat 8/iis 7.5.

Does no one install Coldfusion on an existing java server like Tomcat?  I ask because I've been searching adobe and googling for weeks now, and I have yet to come across anything remotely close to a complete install guide.  There are a few 1 page articles on adobe about ear/war file deployment, but nothing about further setup of API manager or any of the add-on services.  And maybe my google-fu was weak lately, but I have never found an article about anyone deploying a war in tomcat, then setting up iis isapi_redirect, then setting up api manager, etc.. 

The most frustrating thing, is that it is hard to translate the dozens of articles about the built-in web server, to a war/ear deployment. For instance, {CF Install}\config\wsconfig\ which is referred to all over doesn't exist in tomcat/webapps/cfusion.  For the isapi_redirect.dll, I was able to connect tomcat to IIS and serve up a cfml page after some experimentation, but now I'm seeking to further configure things, and am getting no where. 

So here are two examples:

1.   when you deploy cfusion.war (created by the installer) to tomcat/webapps, it creates tomcat/webapps/cfusion.   How would I change the context path from /cfusion to just "/"?  I assume create a cfusion.xml file and define a context in it, and then put it in tomcat/conf/host/instance/etc...  And then how would I represent that change in uriworkermap.properties?  Does the map need /*=worker to match the changed context path?  I can experiment and figure it out, but it just is slow, and the lack of documentation makes me wonder if I should just use the built-in server because apparently no one installs cf on an enterprise java server (or doesn't document it if they do).

2.  API manager setup wizard runs after you finish the base installer that produces cfusion.war.   The api manager installer wants the Coldfusion install directory, which for most people is something like /opt/coldfusion or c:\Coldfusion2016.   Picking my webapp path of tomcat/webapps/cfusion doesn't work.  The installer errors. 

Support has been fairly responsive, every 2-3 days or so I get an email answered about a question (which sometimes just includes links to things like apache tomcat documentation, nothing specific to coldfusion), which helps, but it sure is slow going.

[jwhitene]

I installed the bundled tomcat webserver today on a server.   I'll take a look at how Adobe set things up and hopefully extrapolate that to a stand-alone tomcat server.    And then write up my steps for the next person in my situation. 

One side note about the bundled tomcat install, is that configuring IIS with the web server connector, does not remove traces of older CF installs.   So I had to manually remove all IIS handler mapping referring to coldfusion 9 before CF2016 started working properly through IIS.

[Charlie Arehart]

Hi, jwhitene. How did things go for you? And did you ever give thought again the write-up you had considered? I know how that can go, so no complaints about that from me. Just curious.

Also, I will add that as for configuring the IIS connector, that would then be pure Tomcat steps as documented in the tomcat resources on configuring IIS. Make sense?  And perhaps you found that out on your own when considering all this last year. I'm just seeing the thread today, while searching for some info for someone.

And in case someone else may well find this, it's worth noting that there is indeed substantial docs on JEE deployment, as a chapter in the "Installing CF" manual, specifially at helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/installing/installing-the-jee-configuration.html. While it is indeed "just one web page", it would be 55 pages if printed. 🙂 And it covers details of deploying on websphere, weblogic, jboss, and tomcat (though I would agree it leaves you hanging in some of the ways you mention).

As for the API manager, it does have a very last tiny section on that, but not what you would seek, I'm sure.

As for the things like the add-on service (for Solr and CFHTMLtoPDF), as well as others, those are discussed in a different section of that manual:Install integrated technologies​ . And if you search for "j2ee" (not "jee", as not all docs have been updated for that), you will find that it discusses particulars of integrating those things from a CF JEE deployment.

I would add also that there was a nice series of posts done by we3geeks on their foray into deploying CF on Tomcat, starting here (and with links offered to the subsequent posts):

http://www.we3geeks.org/2012/02/24/exploring-tomcat-and-coldfusion-10/

Granted, it was on CF10, but the concepts have not changed in CF2016.

Let us know how it goes or did go. I'm sure others could find this thread in the future and benefit from the discussion.And at some point I would like to do a blog post to pull together some key points, as you are not alone in seeming to feel like there's "not enough info" out there.

But yep, people do deploy CF on JEE servers, and have since CF6. It's just not sexy, and I suspect that many who do it are in corporate IT shops who work more "heads-down" and with a "get the job done" type approach then folks who might take the time to document their observations. I could be wrong. 🙂