Executing Groovy in ColdFusion

September 20, 2011 · groovy coldfusion

There's plenty of articles on loading Java in CF, but none for Groovy. Here's my guide.

This first piece of code creates a persistent class loader (in Application.cfc/onApplicationStart):

<cfscript>
	application.groovyClassLoader = createObject("java", "groovy.lang.GroovyClassLoader").init();
	l = directoryList(expandPath("lib"));
	for (i = 0; i < l.size(); i++) {
	application.groovyClassLoader.addClasspath(l.get(i));
	}
</cfscript>

The second is a function to load & instantiate Groovy classes:

<cfscript>
	function loadGroovyFile(groovyFile) {
		fl = CreateObject("java", "java.io.File").Init(JavaCast("String", groovyFile));
		return application.groovyClassLoader.parseClass(fl).newInstance();
	}
</cfscript>

You’ll need to copy the groovy-all jar into CF’s lib directory (/usr/local/coldfusion/lib) and restart CF so that it’s aware of it.

Next, a Groovy class (HelloWorld.groovy):

class HelloWorld {
    String sayHello() {
        return "Hello World!"
    }
}

Finally you can create a .cfm page (e.g. HelloWorld.cfm):

<cfset hw = loadGroovyFile("HelloWorld.groovy")>
<cfoutput>#hw.sayHello()#</cfoutput>