ColdFusion Time Out Error…
So I have been working on an application that allows a client to update their site via an admin interface. The code is pretty sweet, of course because I wrote it, but it is all done in ColdFusion. Why? Because ColdFusion is the way to go for rapid online application development. It really isn’t a coding language, it is a tagging language. I was having problems because one of my clients has a lot of content. I do a monthly refresh that reloads their entire site to keep everything fresh and in synch. Because the site has been getting so large, the FTP process has been timing out because the execution of the page has exceeded what ColdFusion allows by default. Simple problem right? Turns out not so.
ColdFusion has gone through a lot of revisions since I first learned about it in v.4.0. Before you could just pass a querystring variable called RequestTimeout and pass a value in seconds to allow the page to execute. It sounds like a great idea, but it also has its potential to be a bad thing. If someone wanted to let a page that was timing out execute longer they could just add the variable and the site would keep that particular process going for however long it was set.
New to me… not to ColdFusion is that you can set the property RequestTimeout via the CFSetting tag. (i.e. <CFSETTING RequestTimeout=”TimeoutInSeconds”>) They even tell you that you can set the value via a querystring variable… hmm <CFSETTING RequestTimeout=”#URL.RequestTimeout#”>… I didn’t use this, but add it to your application and make sure the parameter exists and now you have the old functionality of it back.
LiveDocs reference:
http://livedocs.macromedia.com/coldfusion/6/CFML_Reference/Tags-pt36.htm
Word,
Matt