ColdCourse Updated for Nicer URLs Regardless of Hosting

One of the biggest limiting factors of ColdCourse was that in order to get the full effect you needed to have a host that supported .htaccess files or have access to install an isapi filter on IIS. Not anymore though! Now you can create SES URLs regardless of your OS or host as long as you don’t mind BlogCFC style rewrites that look like /index.cfm/some/parameters. Here’s a rundown of how ColdCourse works:

You enter the URL into your browser such as http://localhost/mycontroller/myaction or http://localhost/index.cfm/mycontroller/myaction. ColdCourse takes over before your framework (fusebox, model-glue, mach-ii, coldbox or just about anything else) and tells your framework that the page that was really called was http://localhost/index.cfm?fuseaction=mycontroller.myaction. This is how ColdCourse had been all along when using .htaccess/isapi filters, but now you can call the http://localhost/index.cfm/mycontroller/myaction URL without any webserver setup.

All the same bells and whistles from before are still in there:

• Hooks into all major frameworks that use a single event/fuseaction variable with a single value.
• Ability to have unique URLs, so that http://localhost/index.cfm?fuseaction=mycontroller.myaction forwards the user to http://localhost/mycontroller/myaction for example.
• Ability to create new URL parameters programmatically rather than by editing a .htaccess file. For instance You might want http://localhost/user/AdamFortuna to be the same as http://localhost/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.about&username=AdamFortuna.
• Ability to have specifically named actions included automatically. For instance the URL http://localhost/home might be the same as http://localhost/home/index, or http://localhost/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.index. ColdCourse can make sure when someone types http://localhost/home/index it’ll redirect them to http://localhost/home
• All redirects are done using the “301 Moved Permanently” implementation which means search engines will pick up the new URLs with ease and not index multiple resources with the same content.
• You can drop it into an already existing application and see how it works! If you’ve been linking to resources with a prefix slash then ColdCourse will work right out.

Coldcourse is honestly a snap to use. There’s one setup file when you can basically forget about it until you have to create a custom course. If you’re in the market for SES URLs, give it a try!