Coldfusion 8: Simple messaging example using Messaging Event Gateway

The Messaging Event gateway allow us to recieve/send messages from/to Flex clients. This simple example will provide the necessary code to send messages from Flex to the ColdFusion Event Gateway and recieve it back from it.

You can get the files here

Installation:

Create a new flex project and define it as using LifeCycle Data Services and point it you your ColdFusion webroot ( Multiserver default install is under C:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war ). Point your output folder to your webroot (where you deploy your applications) or some subfolder. I deployed to c:\inetpub\wwwroot\samples\ and set the output url to http://localhost/samples.

Go to the CFAdmin and in the EventGateway Instances create a new flex messaging gateway called 'flexmessaging' and point to the provided cfc and start it.

Compile and run the application the application. Try to send messages from each pod.

How does it work?

When you press the send button, that message is built and sent to the ColdFusion gateway. Based on the gatewayid in the headers property, it will deliver the message to the corresponding event gateway. Then, the onIncomingMessage is called and at the end of the function I decided to return the exact same message back to the clients.

Notice that I use return but I could also use the SendGatewayMessage function.

Then all connected clients to that same destination will get the notification and the consumer will dispatch a MessageEvent.

Messages are slow to show up?

Messages will take long to appear since by default, integrated LCDS is configured to only use cf-polling-amf with a poll interval of 8 seconds. You can lower this value

You can also enable rtmp channel which will provide real data push to the client.

To enable rtmp channel, uncomment under the services-config.xml that channel and in the flex-messaging-config.xml add as first channel

You will have to restart the ColdFusion server and then recompile the application.