Setting Environment Variables

Report · May 16, 2006

Greetings,

My ColdFusion application has to act slightly differently depending on whether it is on the live server or the develop server. The solution that I'm familiar with from other web development platforms is to set an environment variable on the server, which will be accessible from my CFM templates.

Can this be done through the ColdFusion Administrator? If not, can I set a variable from Apache (using 1.3)?

If someone point me in the right direction, I would be most grateful. I've been scouring google and forums for days and have found very little.

Thanks,
Nicholas

Report · May 18, 2006

The way I do this is by creating a page called Application.cfm. The Application page, by default, is executed before every ColdFusion page. In the Application.cfm you can define whatever environment variables you want and then you will only have to change this page's content depending on what platform you are in.

Hope this helps.

Report · May 18, 2006

Thanks for the response, but that won't work for me.

I'm using version control (Subversion. And you should use it, too), which means all the code for the entire project has to be exactly the same on both live and development servers.

Report · May 18, 2006

cgi.SERVER_NAME is something you could use.

<cfif cgi.SERVER_NAME eq "liveservername">
... set live parameters
<cfelse>
... set dev/staging/etc parameters
</cfif>

Report · May 18, 2006

Yeah, that was my backup plan. I'm still looking for the right way to do it. Maybe setting an environment variable is not the right way, but there has to be a good way to do this! Other people must encounter this problem on a regular basis. Or mabye ColdFusion developers don't use version control.

Report · May 18, 2006

nicholas,

I use version control, and I use the cgi.SERVER_NAME method. There's a single Application.cfm file. In that file, for any server-specific variables, I wrap them in the <cfif...> I posted in my first message.

You were asking about how to set an environment variable that you could access from your CFM templates. With cgi.SERVER_NAME, you don't _need_ to set an environment variable, because it's already set. And it's something you can use.

Another way would be to set a java environment variable in the jvm.config file, then use java calls to pull that out.

Report · May 18, 2006

Kronin,
Thanks for your help. It looks like I'm going to have to check the server name, like you suggested. Although it still seems like a hack to me (read: not ideal), the more I think about it, the more acceptable that solution is (or maybe I get more desperate as time goes on).

Thanks a lot for your help. I'm sorry for using a condescending tone in my previous message.

Best of luck,
Nicholas