This minor release brings in some major performance enhancements for the way WireBox maps and creates objects. We highly encourage upgrading to it.

Compatibility Notes

If you are using annotations for component aliases you will have to tell WireBox explicitly to process those mappings. As by default, we no longer process mappings on startup.

map( name ).process();

New Feature

• [WIREBOX-84] - Remove auto processing of all mappings defer to lazy loading

• [WIREBOX-85] - MapDirectory new boolean argument process which defers to false, if true, the mappings will be auto processed

• [WIREBOX-86] - New binder method: process() if chained from a mapping, it will process the mapping's metadata automatically.

Improvement

• [WIREBOX-87] - AOP debug logging as serialized CFCs which clogs log files

This release is part of the ColdBox 5.0.0 upgrade and it is a major release. Below you will find the major areas of improvement for WireBox and the full release notes.

Error Reporting

We have done greats strides in consistency of error reporting during the creation of objects and their wiring. We have also added countermeasures for rogue mappings that could bring entire applications down. You will now get more consistency and better error reporting overall.

AOP Performance

AOP now performs in over 70% faster than previous implementations. In previous versions, we would create intermediate class files that would then be loaded and injected as part of the AOP proxies. This took time and not only that, it would create 1 stub per call to a method implementation. Our strategy worked but lacked performance. In 5.0.0 we completely re-architected the way we did method injection and stub creation. We now take md5 hashes of the source code to be injected and only created the stubs 1 per-lifetime. The improvements are drastic and amazing. Enjoy AOP and don't hold back!

DI Performance

We have moved from an instance scope approach to a variables scope approach with accessors and mutators in 5.0.0 and yet again we benefit from CFML engine speed improvements. Again, thanks to the community for many pull requests.

Virtual Inheritance

We have completely re-engineered virtual inheritance in 5.0.0 and it behaves eerily similar to traditional inheritance at the dynamic level. Not only do we cover public methods like we used to, but also private methods and object state. You can also leverage AOP with virtual inheritance now which was a limitation in the previous version.

We have also added the capability to inherit implicit getters and setters from parent classes.

Listener Registration

You now can register listeners on-demand with WireBox via the registerListener( listener ) method in the Injector.

New onLoad(), onShutdown() Binder Callbacks

Any WireBox binder can now have two new callback methods onLoad(), onShutdown(). The onLoad() is called once WireBox has loaded with logging, caching, and the configure() on the binder has been called. You can use this for leveraging mapDirectory() calls which require the entire event system to be online or any other type of execution that leverages the entire machinery to be online.

The onShutdown() callback is a nice way to shutdown services as you see fit.

function onLoad(){
    mapDirectory( "commandbox.commands" );
}

Binder Is An Interceptor

The new WireBox Binder object is also an interceptor now. So you can create functions that listen to the entire DI/AOP process. Please see the events sections.

Release Notes

Bugs

• [WIREBOX-29] - Virtual inheritance breaks AOP on on base class methods.

• [WIREBOX-52] - Virtual Inheritance doesn't inherit variables-scoped properties

• [WIREBOX-63] - CFC's with same name don't get aliases picked up with mapDirectory()

• [WIREBOX-64] - Illusive double id exception when race conditions

New Features

• [WIREBOX-58] - Allow new listeners added to the Binder to also be registered right away, especially from modules

• [WIREBOX-62] - New request context dsl injection -> coldbox:requestContext

• [WIREBOX-67] - New coldbox dsl element => coldbox:router to retrieve the application's router object.

• [WIREBOX-68] - Virtual Inheritance now copies over properties and private functions with generic accessors

• [WIREBOX-69] - Module Injection Shortcut when the inject annotation is @moduleAdress

• [WIREBOX-70] - Add a new onLoad() method interceptor for WireBox configuration binder

• [WIREBOX-72] - Make the Binder also an interceptor

• [WIREBOX-73] - Add a new onShutdown() method interceptor for WireBox configuration binder

Improvements

• [WIREBOX-28] - Improve errors while building depenencies

• [WIREBOX-34] - Improve AOP binding by caching temp files

• [WIREBOX-59] - Throw error on non-existent coldbox DSL

• [WIREBOX-65] - Increase Wirebox performance by scoping variables

• [WIREBOX-66] - Complete refactoring of wirebox scopes/DSL to script and direct scope usage

• [WIREBOX-71] - Ability to cache metadata in CacheBox

Introduction

WireBox 2.0.0 is a major release of our Dependency Injection and AOP library with some major fixes and some cool new updates.

Release Notes

You can find the release version information here: https://ortussolutions.atlassian.net/browse/WIREBOX/fixforversion/12300

Bugs

• [WIREBOX-31] -Builder.buildDSLDependency does not use the custom DSL correctly as the default namespace kicks in

Improvements

• [WIREBOX-32] -binder.mapDirectory now skips hidden dirs

• [WIREBOX-35] -Remove coldbox:cacheManager DSL reference, it is no longer valid

New Features

• [WIREBOX-2] -allow mapDSL to be altered at runtime by modules via new wirebox method: registerDSL()

• [WIREBOX-30] -Support wiring new injection DSL = byType, which leverages the type to match to an implementation

• [WIREBOX-33] -Add a force argument to the map functions so you can override if a mapping already exists

• [WIREBOX-36] -New coldbox dsl to get a renderer reference: coldbox:renderer

Major Enhancements

• All LogBox libraries updated

• All CacheBox libraries updated

ColdBox DSL Updates

The ColdBox injection DSL has had major updates to get to the ColdBox 4 standards.

• All ocm injections have been removed in preference to

  cachebox injection DSL

• The coldbox:cachemanager DSL has been removed in preference to

  cachebox injection DSL

• All plugin injections have been deprecated in preference to

  model/object injections

• New coldbox:renderer dsl to inject the new ColdBox system

  renderer

Forced Mappings

The map() function on the Configuration Binder now has a force argument which allows you to map no matter if the mapping exists or not already.

map( alias="MyService", force=true )
    .to( "model.MyService" );

Dynamic Custom DSL Registration

Injectors allow you to register custom DSLs at runtime by using the registerDSL() method on any injector. This feature was mostly done for modules, so they could enhance WireBox in a ColdBox context. However, this also allows you to leverage this in any non-ColdBox applications.

// Register Custom DSL
controller.getWireBox()
    .registerDSL( namespace="javaloader", path="#moduleMapping#.model.JavaLoaderDSL" );

Injection By Type: byType DSL

We have expanded our custom DSL and injectors to allow you to do injection by ColdFusion types. This feature is more in-line with features from Java or static languages were you can tell injectors to inject by argument or property type. Let's say you have a package of interfaces with subpackages of implementations:

/app/pkg/ISomeObject.cfc // <- interface
/app/pkg/adb/SomeObject.cfc // <- component implementing the above interface.
/app/pkg/odb/SomeObject.cfc // <- component implementing the above interface.

You then want to rely on the interface type field of properties in my dependent CFCs and leveraging the byType injection DSL. You would first map the right implementation using the alias as the name of the Interface.

// mappings...
map( "app.pkg.ISomeObject" ).to( "app.pkg.adb.SomeObject" );

// Injection
component {

    /**
     * @inject byType
     */
    property app.pkg.ISomeObject object;

}

Bugs

• [WIREBOX-82] - builder.toVirtualInheritance(): scoping issues

• [WIREBOX-83] - When using sandbox security, and using a provider DSL the file existence checks blow up

 __          ___          ____
 \ \        / (_)        |  _ \
  \ \  /\  / / _ _ __ ___| |_) | _____  __
   \ \/  \/ / | | '__/ _ \  _ < / _ \ \/ /
    \  /\  /  | | | |  __/ |_) | (_) >  <
     \/  \/   |_|_|  \___|____/ \___/_/\_\

WireBox Manual - Version 5.x

WireBox is an enterprise ColdFusion Dependency Injection and Aspect Oriented Programing (AOP) framework. This project has been part of ColdBox since its early version 2.0 releases but it is also a standalone library that can be used in ANY ColdFusion application or framework. WireBox's inspiration has been based on the idea of rapid workflows when building object oriented ColdFusion applications, programmatic configurations and simplicity. With that motivation we introduced dependency injection by annotations and conventions, which has been the core foundation of WireBox. We have definitely been influenced by great DI projects like Google Guice, Grails Framework, Spring and ColdSpring so we thank them for their contributions and inspiration

Versioning

WireBox is maintained under the Semantic Versioning guidelines as much as possible.Releases will be numbered with the following format:

<major>.<minor>.<patch>

And constructed with the following guidelines:

• Breaking backward compatibility bumps the major (and resets the minor and patch)

• New additions without breaking backward compatibility bumps the minor (and resets the patch)

• Bug fixes and misc changes bumps the patch

License

The ColdBox Platform, WireBox is open source and licensed under the Apache 2 License.

• Copyright by Ortus Solutions, Corp

• ColdBox is a registered trademark by Ortus Solutions, Corp

Info: The ColdBox Websites, Documentation, logo and content have a separate license and they are a separate entity.

Discussion & Help

The WireBox help and discussion group can be found here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/coldbox

Reporting a Bug

We all make mistakes from time to time :) So why not let us know about it and help us out. We also love pull requests, so please star us and fork us: https://github.com/coldbox/coldbox-platform

• By Email: bugs@coldbox.org

• By Jira: https://ortussolutions.atlassian.net/browse/WIREBOX

Professional Open Source

ColdBox is a professional open source software backed by Ortus Solutions, Corp offering services like:

• Custom Development

• Professional Support & Mentoring

• Training

• Server Tuning

• Security Hardening

• Code Reviews

• Much More

Resources

• Official Site: https://www.coldbox.org

• Source Code: https://github.com/coldbox/coldbox-platform

• Bug Tracker: https://ortussolutions.atlassian.net/browse/WIREBOX

• Twitter: @coldbox

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coldboxplatform

• Google+: https://www.google.com/+ColdboxOrg

• Vimeo Channel: https://vimeo.com/channels/coldbox

HONOR GOES TO GOD ABOVE ALL

Because of His grace, this project exists. If you don't like this, then don't read it, its not for you.

"Therefore being justified by **faith**, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by **faith** into this **grace** wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." Romans 5:5

The source code for this book is hosted in GitHub: https://github.com/ortus-docs/wirebox-docs. You can freely contribute to it and submit pull requests. The contents of this book is copyright by Ortus Solutions, Corp and cannot be altered or reproduced without author's consent. All content is provided "As-Is" and can be freely distributed.

• The majority of code examples in this book are done in cfscript.

• The majority of code generation and running of examples are done via CommandBox: The ColdFusion (CFML) CLI, Package Manager, REPL - https://www.ortussolutions.com/products/commandbox

External Trademarks & Copyrights

Flash, Flex, ColdFusion, and Adobe are registered trademarks and copyrights of Adobe Systems, Inc. Railo is a trademark and copyright of Railo Technologies, GmbH.

Notice of Liability

The information in this book is distributed “as is”, without warranty. The author and Ortus Solutions, Corp shall not have any liability to any person or entity with respect to loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the content of this training book, software and resources described in it.

Contributing

We highly encourage contribution to this book and our open source software. The source code for this book can be found in our GitHub repository where you can submit pull requests.

Charitable Proceeds

15% of the proceeds of this book will go to charity to support orphaned kids in El Salvador - https://www.harvesting.org/. So please donate and purchase the printed version of this book, every book sold can help a child for almost 2 months.

Shalom Children's Home

Shalom Children’s Home (https://www.harvesting.org/) is one of the ministries that is dear to our hearts located in El Salvador. During the 12 year civil war that ended in 1990, many children were left orphaned or abandoned by parents who fled El Salvador. The Benners saw the need to help these children and received 13 children in 1982. Little by little, more children werecame on their own, churches and the government brought children to them for care, and the Shalom Children’s Home was founded.

Shalom now cares for over 80 children in El Salvador, from newborns to 18 years old. They receive shelter, clothing, food, medical care, education and life skills training in a Christian environment. The home is supported by a child sponsorship program.

We have personally supported Shalom for over 6 years now; it is a place of blessing for many children in El Salvador that either have no families or have been abandoned. This is good earth to seed and plant.

Dependency injection is the art of making work come home to you. Dhanji R. Prasanna

WireBox alleviates the need for custom object factories or manual object creation in your ColdFusion (CFML) applications. It provides a standardized approach to object construction and assembling that will make your code easier to adapt to changes, easier to and extend.

As software developers we are always challenged with maintenance and one ever occurring annoyance, change. Therefore, the more sustainable and maintainable our software, the more we can concentrate on real problems and make our lives more productive. WireBox leverages an array of metadata annotations to make your object assembling, storage and creation easy as pie! We have leveraged the power of event driven architecture via object listeners or interceptors so you can extend not only WireBox but the way objects are analyzed, created, wired and much more. To the extent that our capabilities are all driven by our AOP listener which decouples itself from WireBox code and makes it extremely flexible.

Dependency Injection Explained

Advantages of a DI Framework

Compared to manual Dependency Injection (DI), using WireBox can lead to the following advantages:

• You will write less boilerplate code.

• By giving WireBox DI responsibilities, you will stop creating objects manually or using custom object factories.

• You can leverage object persistence scopes for performance and scalability. Even create time persisted objects.

• You will not have any object creation or wiring code in your application, but have it abstracted via WireBox. Which will lead to more cohesive code that is not plagued with boilerplate code or factory code.

• Objects will become more testable and easier to mock, which in turn can accelerate your development by using a TDD (Test Driven Development), BDD (Behavior Driven Development) approach.

• Once WireBox leverages your objects you can take advantage of AOP or other event life cycle processes to really get funky with OO.

Features at a Glance

Here are a simple listing of features WireBox brings to the table:

• Annotation driven dependency injection

• 0 configuration mode or a programmatic binder configuration approach via ColdFusion (No XML!)

• Creation and Wiring of or by:

  • ColdFusion Components

  • Java Classes

  • RSS Feeds

  • WebService objects

  • Constant values

  • DSL string building

  • Factory Methods

  • Providers

• Multiple Injection Styles: Property, Setter, Method, Constructor

• Automatic Package/Directory object scanning and registration

• Multiple object life cycle persistence scopes:

  • No Scope (Transients)

  • Singletons

  • Request Scoped

  • Session Scoped

  • Application Scoped

  • Server Scoped

  • CacheBox Scoped

• Parent Factories

• Factory Method Object Creations

• Object life cycle events via WireBox Listeners/Interceptors

• Customizable injection DSL

• WireBox object providers to avoid scope-widening issues on time/volatile persisted objects

WireBox RefCard

Useful Resources

Luis Fernando Majano Lainez

Luis Majano is a Computer Engineer with over 15 years of software development and systems architecture experience. He was born in in the late 70’s, during a period of economical instability and civil war. He lived in El Salvador until 1995 and then moved to Miami, Florida where he completed his Bachelors of Science in Computer Engineering at . Luis resides in Rancho Cucamonga, California with his beautiful wife Veronica, baby girl Alexia and baby boy Lucas!

Luis has a passion for Jesus, tennis, golf, volleyball and anything electronic. Random Author Facts:

• He played volleyball in the Salvadorean National Team at the tender age of 17

• The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is something he reads every 5 years. (Geek!)

• His first ever computer was a Texas Instrument TI-86 that his parents gave him in 1986. After some time digesting his very first BASIC book, he had written his own tic-tac-toe game at the age of 9. (Extra geek!)

• He has a geek love for circuits, microcontrollers and overall embedded systems.

• He has of late (during old age) become a fan of running and bike riding with his family.

Keep Jesus number one in your life and in your heart. I did and it changed my life from desolation, defeat and failure to an abundant life full of love, thankfulness, joy and overwhelming peace. As this world breathes failure and fear upon any life, Jesus brings power, love and a sound mind to everybody!

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” Proverbs 3:5

Contributors

Jorge Emilio Reyes Bendeck

Jorge started working as project manager and business developer at Ortus Solutions, Corp. in 2013, . At Ortus he fell in love with software development and now enjoys taking part on software development projects and software documentation! He is a fellow Cristian who loves to play the guitar, worship and rejoice in the Lord!

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 2 Corinthians 5:17

WireBox Manual - Version 5.0.0

WireBox is an enterprise ColdFusion Dependency Injection and Aspect Oriented Programing (AOP) framework. This project has been part of ColdBox since its early version 2.0 releases but it is also a standalone library that can be used in ANY ColdFusion application or framework. WireBox's inspiration has been based on the idea of rapid workflows when building object oriented ColdFusion applications, programmatic configurations and simplicity. With that motivation we introduced dependency injection by annotations and conventions, which has been the core foundation of WireBox. We have definitely been influenced by great DI projects like Google Guice, Grails Framework, Spring and ColdSpring so we thank them for their contributions and inspiration

Versioning

And constructed with the following guidelines:

• Breaking backward compatibility bumps the major (and resets the minor and patch)

• New additions without breaking backward compatibility bumps the minor (and resets the patch)

• Bug fixes and misc changes bumps the patch

License

• Copyright by Ortus Solutions, Corp

• ColdBox is a registered trademark by Ortus Solutions, Corp

Info: The ColdBox Websites, Documentation, logo and content have a separate license and they are a separate entity.

Discussion & Help

Reporting a Bug

Professional Open Source

ColdBox is a professional open source software backed by Ortus Solutions, Corp offering services like:

• Custom Development

• Professional Support & Mentoring

• Training

• Server Tuning

• Security Hardening

• Code Reviews

• Much More

Resources

HONOR GOES TO GOD ABOVE ALL

Because of His grace, this project exists. If you don't like this, then don't read it, its not for you.

"Therefore being justified by **faith**, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by **faith** into this **grace** wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." Romans 5:5

This release is part of the ColdBox 4.2.0 update and contains the following updates:

Bug

• [] - Closure-based providers don't work as documented

New Features

• [] - Add a force argument to the mapDirectory() binder method

• [] - Influence instance build via closure in the binder

Improvements

• [] - Add better checks for file system write permissions

• [] - Update the documentation URL in box.json

• [] - Pass injector to closure-based providers

WireBox can be downloaded as a standalone framework or it is included with the latest ColdBox Platform release, so no need to install it if you are within a ColdBox application.

System Requirements

• Adobe ColdFusion 11+

• Lucee 4.5+

CommandBox Installation

You can leverage to install the standalone version of WireBox with a simple command:

This will install Wirebox as a dependency in your application into a folder called wirebox. You can then leverage the standalone namespace within your application: wirebox.system.ioc.

Manual Download

You can download the latest version of WireBox from . Place in your webroot or create a /wirebox mapping in your system.

Namespaces

Standalone Namespace

wirebox.system.ioc

ColdBox Namespace

coldbox.system.ioc

Improvements

• [WIREBOX-79] - Account for leading slashes in mapDirectory()

• [WIREBOX-80] - Throw a nicer DSL error if ColdBox is not linked

• [WIREBOX-81] - Some improvements for the construction of transients

Each configuration binder has two public properties accessible in the this scope:

1. this.TYPES : A reference to wirebox.system.ioc.Types used to declare what type of object you are registering for construction or wiring

2. this.SCOPES : A reference to wirebox.system.ioc.Scopes used to declare in what life cycle scope the object will be stored under

These two classes contain static public members in the this scope that facilitate the declaration of persistence scopes and construction types for object mappings. Below are the valid enumerations for these two classes:

this.TYPES

• CFC : Construction of a CFC

• JAVA : Construction of a Java class

• WEBSERVICE : Construction of a webservice object

• RSS : Construction of an RSS feed

• DSL : Construction by DSL string

• CONSTANT : A constant value

• FACTORY : Construction by factory method

this.SCOPES

• NOSCOPE : Transient objects

• PROTOTYPE : Transient objects

• SINGLETON : Objects constructed only once and stored in the injector

• SESSION : ColdFusion session scoped based objects

• APPLICATION : ColdFusion application scope based objects

• REQUEST : ColdFusion request scope based objects

• SERVER : ColdFusion server scope based objects

• CACHEBOX : CacheBox scoped objects

The WireBox binder will also be injected with 3 methods that will allow you to talk to your system environment or Java system properties. This will help you with container based applications or applications that rely on environment settings/secrets.

• getEnv( key, [defaultValue] ) - Get a Java system environment value

• getSystemProperty( key, [defaultValue] ) - Get a Java system property value

• getSystemSetting( key, [defaultValue] ) - This method will retrieve a key from the Java system properties and if it does not exist, then it checks the system environment.

Whether you use WireBox standalone or within a ColdBox context a Binder gets a structure of configuration properties so it can use them whenever you are configuring it or declaring mappings. If you are in standalone mode, the Injector can be constructed with a properties structure that will be passed to the binder for usage. If you are in a ColdBox application the ColdBox application configuration structure is passed for you. You can then use these properties with the following methods:

• getProperty(name,[default]) : Get a specific property

• getProperties() : Get all the properties structure

• propertyExists(name) : Check if a property exists

• setProperty(name,value) : Dynamically add properties to the structure

We touched briefly on singleton and no scope objects in this section, so let's delve a little into what scoping is. WireBox's default behavior is to create a new instance of an object each time you request it via creation or injection (Transient/Prototype objects), this is the NO SCOPE scope.

Scopes allow you to customize the object's life span and duration. The singleton scope allows for the creation of only one instance of an object that will live for the entire life span of the injector. WireBox ships with several different life span scopes but you can also create your own custom scopes (please see the custom scopes section). You can also tell WireBox in what scope to place the instance into by annotations or via the configuration binder. We have an entire section dedicated to discovering all the WireBox annotations, but let's get a sneak peek at them and also how to do it via our mapping DSL.

Scope Annotations

• You can tag a cfcomponent tag or component declaration with a scope={named scope} annotation that tells WireBox what scope to use

• You can have nothing on the cfcomponent tag or component declaration which denotes the NO SCOPE

• You can tag a cfcomponent tag or component declaration with a singleton annotation

Scope Configuration Binder

component extends="wirebox.system.ioc.config.Binder"{

    function configure(){

        // map with shorthand or full scope notation
        mapPath("model.CoffeeShop").asSingleton();
        mapPath("model.CoffeeShop").into(this.SCOPES.SINGLETON);

        // map some long espresso into request scope
        map("longEspress")
            .to("model.Espresso")
            .into(this.SCOPES.REQUEST);

        // cache some tea
        map("GreenTea")
            .to("model.Tea")
            .inCacheBox(timeout=20,provider="ehCache");

        // cache some google news that refresh themselves every 40 minutes or after 20 minutes of inactivity
        map("latestNews")
            .inCacheBox(timeout=40,lastAccessTimeout=20,provider="ehCache");
            .toRSS("http://news.google.com/news?output=rss")
    }

}

Internal Scopes

Here are the internal scopes that ship with WireBox:

This is cool! We can now have full control of how objects are persisted via the WireBox injector, we are not constricted to one type of persistence anymore.

In all reality we could be building our objects and its dependencies, object graph, without any configuration just plain location and implicit conventions. This is great but not very flexible for refactoring, so let's do the best practice of defining a mapping or an alias to a real object.

We do this by creating a WireBox configuration binder wirebox.system.ioc.config.Binder, which is a simple CFC that defines the way WireBox behaves and defines object mappings. This binder is then used to initialize WireBox so it has knowledge of these mappings and our settings.

We have now coded our classes and unit tests with some cool annotations in record time, so what do we do next? Well, WireBox works on the idea of three ways to discover and create your classes:

So let's do examples for each where our classes we just built are placed in a directory called model of the root directory.

Implicit Creation

injector = new wirebox.system.ioc.Injector();
espresso = injector.getInstance( "model.CoffeeShop" ).makeEspresso();

Explicit Binder Configuration

map("CoolShop").to("model.CoffeeShop");

Explicit Creation

injector = new wirebox.system.ioc.Injector();
espresso = injector.getInstance("CoolShop").makeEspresso();

Scan Locations Binder Configuration

wirebox.scanLocations = ["model"];

Set Locations Creation

injector = new wirebox.system.ioc.Injector();
espresso = injector.getInstance("CoffeeShop").makeEspresso();

A primer to WireBox usage

Dependency injection and instance construction with WireBox is easy. In its most simplest form we can just leverage annotations and be off to dancing Big Willy style! You can use our global injection annotation inject on cfproperties, setter methods or constructor arguments. This annotation tells WireBox to inject something in place of the property, argument or method; basically it is your code shouting "Hey buddy, I need your help here".

What it injects depends on the contents of this annotation that leverages our (Domain Specific Language). The simplest form of the DSL is to just tell WireBox what mapping to bring in for injection. Please note that I say mapping and not object directly, because WireBox works on the concept of an object mapping. This mapping in all reality can be a CFC, a java object, an RSS feed, a webservice, a constant value or pretty much anything you like.

If you don't like annotations because you feel they are too intrusive to your taste, don't worry, we also have a programmatic configuration binder you can use to define all your objects and their dependencies. We will discuss object mappings and our configuration binders later on, so let's look at how cool this is by checking out our Coffee Shop sample class. The CoffeeShop class below will use our three types of injections to showcase how WireBox works, please note that most likely we would build this class by picking one or the other, which in itself brings in pros and cons for each approach.

So let's break this class down. First, you can see a singleton annotation on the component declaration. This tells WireBox that this class should only be created once and then cached in its internal singleton scope of the injector. In other words, this is called object life scopes. You can refer to the persistence scopes annotations later on in the guide to learn all about how to scope your classes.

Second, we built our coffee shop class with three external dependencies: 1 by cfproperty, 1 by constructor argument and 1 by setter injection. Again, you can see later on in this guide the difference between all these injection styles and choose what you prefer. In this example, we just showcase the different injection styles. Also, as you can see from the source code the three types of injection uses the inject annotation but with different content:

If you just mark a property, argument or method with the inject annotation, WireBox will assume it is a mapping and the ID should be either the property name, the argument name or the method name. However, if you want to specify the id in the DSL string, just use the simple id:{mapping} dsl notation. That's it! Isn't that cool, you just mark out your dependencies and WireBox will build and inject them for you!

Thirdly, this class has the following method:

The method has a cool little annotation called onDIComplete that tells WireBox that after all DI dependencies have been injected, then execute the method. That is so cool, WireBox can even open the coffee shop for me so I can get my espresso fix. Not only that but you can have multiple onDIComplete methods declared and WireBox will call them for you (in discovered order). These are called object post processors that are discovered by annotations or can be configured via our configuration binder and we will learn about them later on. WireBox also fires a series of object life cycle events throughout an object's life span in which you can build listens to and actually perform some cool stuff on them. So now that we got all excited about opening the coffee shop let's get into something even more interesting, unit testing and mocking.

Another important aspect leveraging DI concepts when building our components is that we can immediately write tests for them and leverage mocking to test for actual behaviors. This is a great advantage as it allows you to rapidly test to confirm your component is working without worrying about building or assembling objects in your tests. You have eliminated all kinds of crazy creation and assembler code and just concentrated yourself on the problem at hand. You are now focused to code the greatest piece of software you have ever imagined, thanks to WireBox!

Now we can run our tests and verify that our coffee shop is operational and producing sweet sweet espresso!

If you are using your configuration binder within a ColdBox application you will have some extra goodies in the Binder that come in very handy:

• getColdBox() : Retrieve the instance of the running ColdBox application

• getAppMapping() : Get the current AppMapping, the location of the application on th server, setting for the running ColdBox application

Another aspect of our objects is when are they created? Good question!

By default all objects are created ONLY when they are requested, in other words they are lazy created. But what if you are spoiled and you want your stuff NOW NOW NOW! Well, you can, cry if you want to! Just tell WireBox that you want your objects to be eagerly created via the mapping DSL asEagerInit() function or a eagerInit annotation on the component.

Most of the time we believe our DI engines should be black boxes, but we try to think otherwise. We encourage developers to know what is going on so they can debug easily and not hit their foreheads against their keyboards. Believe me, I have done so before. That is why WireBox is tightly integrated with to provide incredible debugging information to ANY appender you desire so you can know what is going on. Another aspect of knowing what the DI engine does is how dependencies are resolved. Here is a typical flow of injection:

Instance Creation

1. Object is requested by name and the Injector tries to check if the mapping exists for that name. If no mapping is found then it tries to locate the object by using the internal scan locations to try to find it. If it cannot find it and there is a parent injector defined, then the request is funneled to the parent injector and we start our process again. If no parent injector is declared and no localization, then we throw a not located exception.

2. If the object was found via the scan locations, then we register a new mapping according to its location and discover all the metadata out of the object in preparation for construction and DI

3. We now have a guaranteed mapping so we retrieve it and we verify if the mapping's metadata has been processed or not. If the mapping is marked with no autowiring then we skip to the next step. If not, we process the mapping's metadata and prepare it for DI

4. We verify that the scope define for the mapping exists, else we throw an invalid scope exception

5. We ask the scope to produce the mapping object for us. The scope is in charge of persistence, locking, etc.

6. The scope builds the instance by asking the injector to build a new instance with the correct constructor and constructor arguments and stores it in its scope once the injector builds it. The builder decides what type of construction is needed for the mapping as it can be a CFC, java object, webservice, RSS feed, factory method call, etc. Each constructor argument is processed for dependency resolution.

7. The scope then sends the instance for DI wiring and process back to the injector

8. The injector returns the instance

Dependency Resolution

1. Arrive at the desired injection point and get the injection DSL. If the DSL is empty, then it defaults to the id/model namespace. For this injection DSL Namespace we try to find a valid DSL builder for it. If none is found an exception is thrown. If we have a match, then the DSL builder is called with the DSL string to retrieve.

2. The DSL builder then tries to parse and process the DSL string for object retrieval. If the DSL is a WireBox mapping then we try to retrieve the instance by name (Refer back to Instance Creation).

3. If the builder could not produce an instance, it is logged and DI is skipped on it.

When using WireBox inside of ColdBox, the binder CFC is located by convention in /config/WireBox.cfc. When using WireBox outside of ColdBox, you can create a binder CFC anywhere with any name using one of these two methods:

1. Create a configuration CFC that extends the WireBox configuration object: coldbox.system.ioc.config.Binder and has a configure() method.

1. Or create a simple configuration CFC that has a configure( binder ) method that accepts a WireBox configuration binder object

From the configure() method you will be able to interact with the Binder methods or creating implicit DSL structures in order to configure WireBox for operation and also to create object mappings. From the onLoad() method you can also use it for mappings with main distinction that the WireBox machinery is now online (logging, events, caching, etc). This is necessary for leveraging mapDirectory() calls.

When you instantiate the Wirebox injector, pass either the CFC path to your binder CFC or an instance of the CFC.

Ok, now that we know how to configure WireBox, let's get into the fun stuff of object mapping. How do we do this? By using our DSL mapping initiators that tell WireBox how to start the object registration process. You will then concatenate the initiators with some DSL destinations methods, DI data, etc to tell WireBox all the information it might need to construct, wire and persist the object. Here are the DSL initiators:

The mapping destinations tell WireBox what type of object you are mapping to. You will usually use these methods by concatenating map() or with() initiator calls:

Here are some examples:

The mapDirectory() allows you to leverage closures or lambdas to influence and filter mappings. The arguments are filter to add a filter that MUST return boolean in order to process the mapping and influence that can influence the created mapping with any custom bindings.

You can use our mapping DSL to register influence closures or lambdas on a per mapping basis. This will allow a developer to influence the requested instance of any object/data element and decorate objects or even return different objects.

This is similar to object providers but instead of overriding the ENTIRE creation process of the object like a provider does, the user might want to simply influence the creation of a normal mapping with some additional flair. This is accomplished via the withInfluence mapping DSL function. It receives a closure as an argument and the closure has the following signature:

/**
* Influence an instance of an object
* @injector The WireBox injector reference
* @object The object to influence
*/
function( injector, object ){}

Here is an example of adding some nice pizzazz to an object:

map( 'myObject' )
   .toPath( 'com.foo.bar' )
   .withInfluence( function( injector, object ) {
      object.customSettings( true );
      object.pizzazz = 'Oh, yes!';
      return object;
});

In this instance, the instance is already built and then passed into the closure for additional influence. Please note, that the object is returned from the closure. You can make this optional, but if something IS returned, it will override the instance which will allow a developer to replace or decorate the instance as they see fit.

The mapping DSL is the way to configure object mappings in WireBox that will represent objects, factories or providers. All mappings DSL methods return back an instance of the binder so you can concatenate methods to create readable execution chains.

The chains are divided into three types:

1. Initiators - Start the mapping DSL process

2. Modifiers - Can modify a mapping with metadata and behavior

3. Destinations - Tells the binder to what object or behavior we should map to.

map( "Luis" )
    .to( "model.Likes.Espresso" )
    .asEagerInit()
    .asSingleton();

In the configure() method you can create a structure called wirebox in the variables scope that will hold the configuration data for WireBox. You can configure WireBox for operation using these structures or via programmatic method calls.

/**
* Configure WireBox
*/
function configure(){

    // The WireBox configuration structure DSL
    wireBox = {

        // LogBox Config: instantiation path
        logBoxConfig = "wirebox.system.ioc.config.LogBox",

        // CacheBox
        cacheBox = { enabled = true },

        // Scope registration, automatically register a wirebox injector instance on any CF scope
        // By default it registeres itself on application scope
        scopeRegistration = {
            enabled = true,
            scope   = "application", // server, cluster, session, application
            key        = "wireBox"
        },

        // DSL Namespace registrations
        customDSL = {
            // namespace = "mapping name"
        },

        // Custom Storage Scopes
        customScopes = {
            // annotationName = "mapping name"
        },

        // Package scan locations
        scanLocations = [],

        // Stop Recursions
        stopRecursions = [],

        // Parent Injector to assign to the configured injector, this must be an object reference
        parentInjector = "",

        // Register all event listeners here, they are created in the specified order
        listeners = [
            // { class="", name="", properties={} }
        ]
    };

    // Map Bindings below
}

logBoxConfig

The path to the LogBox Configuration object to use. By default it uses the one displayed below. If you are using WireBox within a ColdBox application, the LogBox configuration is taken from the ColdBox application.

wirebox.logBoxConfig = "wirebox.system.ioc.config.LogBox";

cachebox

If you are using WireBox within a ColdBox application this setting is ignored and it will use the ColdBox application's CacheBox configuration. The following are the keys for this configuration structure:

wirebox.cacheBox = {
    // Activate the CacheBox DSL and caching
    enabled = false,
    // An optional configuration file to use for loading CacheBox
    configFile = "coldbox.system.ioc.config.CacheBox",
    // A reference to an already instantiated CacheBox CacheFactory, instead of building one
    cacheFactory = "",
    //A class path namespace to use to create CacheBox: Default=coldbox.system.cache or wirebox.system.cache
    classNamespace = ""
};

scopeRegistration

This structure tells WireBox how to leach itself into any ColdFusion scope when initialized instead of you placing it in the scope.

wirebox.scopeRegistration = {
    // activate scope registration
    enabled = true,
    // The CF scope to place the WireBox injector on
    scope   = "application",
    // The key used to store it in the scope
    key        = "wireBox"
};

customDSL

Please refer to the Custom DSL section to find out more about custom DSLs, the following are just the way you declare them:

wirebox.customDSL = {
    // The value of the DSL Namespace is the instantiation path
    // of the DSL Namespace builder that implements wirebox.system.ioc.DSL.IDSLBuilder
    cool = "my.path.CoolDSLBuilder",
    funkyBox = "my.funky.DSLBuilder"
};

customScopes

Please refer to the Custom scopes section to find out more about custom scopes, the following are just the way you declare them:

wirebox.customScopes = {
    // The value of the instantiation path of the custom scope
    // that implements coldbox.system.ioc.scopes.IScope.
    // The name of the scope will be used when registered
    // the scope annotation.
    CoolSingletons = "my.path.SingletonScope",
    FunkyTransaction = "my.funky.Transaction"
};

scanLocations

The instantiation paths that this Injector will have registered to do object locations in order. So if you request an object called Service and no mapping has been configured for it, then WireBox will search all these scan locations for a Service.cfc in the specified order. The last lookup is the no namespace lookup which basically represents a createObject("component","Service") call. If you are using WireBox within a ColdBox application, ColdBox will register the models convention folder for you.

wirebox.scanLocations = ["models","com","org.majano"];

stopRecursions

This is an array of class path's that WireBox will use to stop recursion on any object graph that has inheritance when looking for dependencies.

wirebox.stopRecursions = [ "transfer.com.TransferDecorator", "coldbox.system.EventHandler" ];

parentInjector

This setting is actually a reference to another parent injector you would like this injector to set as its parent injector. Now say this sentence 10 times without hiccuping.

wirebox.parentInjector = application.coolInjector;
// or
wirebox.parentInjector = new coldbox.system.ioc.Injector( "old.legacy.binder" );

listeners

This section only shows you how to register WireBox listeners, so please refer to the object life cycle events section for more information. This setting is an array of listener structure definitions that WireBox's event manager will use when broadcasting object life cycle events.

wirebox.listeners = [
    {
        // The path to the listener
        class="path.to.CFC",
        // A unique name for the listener
        name="UniqueName",
        // A structure of name-value pairs for configuring this interceptor
        properties = {}
    }
    {class="my.AOPTracker"},
    {class="annotationTransactioner",properties={target='*'} },
    {class="Timer", name="CoolTimer"}
];

You can store a-la-carte attributes in a specific mapping so it can be retrieved at a later time by either an AOP aspect or Events. This is a great way to store custom metadata about an object so it can be read later for some meaningful purpose. Let's say you want to tag a mapping with a custom type that is not so easily determined from the object instance itself. You don't want to do all kinds of introspection in order to know what object you received in an aspect or an event.

map("MyHandler")
    .to("handlers.MyHandler")
    .extraAttributes({
        handlerPath = handlerLocation,
        module         = arguments.module
    });

This mapping declares that an object has some extra attributes that will be stored in the mapping, such as the location and if it belongs to a module. This is then incredibly useful when you have an attached listener to WireBox:

function afterInstanceAutowire(event, interceptData){
    var attribs = interceptData.mapping.getExtraAttributes();
    var iData     = {};

    // listen to plugins only
    if( structKeyExists(attribs, "handlerPath") ){
        //Fill-up Intercepted MetaData
        iData.handlerPath = attribs.handlerPath;
        iData.module       = attribs.module;
        iData.oHandler    = interceptData.target;

        //Fire My Own Custom Interception
        instance.interceptorService.processState("afterHandlerCreation",iData);
    }
}

As you can see from this sample, the extra attributes are incredibly essential, as the listener just sends the target object. It would take lots of introspection and metadata inspections in order to determine certain metadata about an object. However, with the extra attributes, it is just a snap!

The dependencies DSL methods are mostly used to define dependencies and also to activate advanced features on target objects, such as runtime mixins, virtual inheritance, etc.

Note Please note that you can concatenate more than one of these methods calls to dictate multiple constructor arguments, setter methods, cf properties, and more.

The next step in our mapping DSL excursion is to learn about how WireBox will persist these object mappings into WireBox scopes. By default (as we have seen), all object mappings are transient objects and they belong to a scope type called NOSCOPE.

However, we need to specifically tell WireBox into what scope the declared mapped objects should be placed on in order for us to leverage caching, the singleton pattern, etc. This is accomplished by leveraging our persistence component annotations or the following methods if you prefer a non-annotation approach:

Note Please note that all WireBox configuration binders have two public properties:

this.TYPES - Enum class (coldbox.system.ioc.Types)
this.SCOPES - Enum class (coldbox.system.ioc.Scopes)

These classes have on themselves several public properties that are a cool shorthand way to link to construction types or persistence scopes

So just remember that these persistence DSL methods are not mandatory. If you are an annotations kinda developer, then you can easily add these persistence annotations to your classes.

// CFC
map("FunkyObject")
    .to("myapp.model.service.FunkyService")
    .asSingleton();
mapPath("myapp.model.service.FunkyService")
    .into(this.SCOPES.REQUEST);
// Java as NO SCOPE
map("buffer").toJava("java.lang.StringBuffer");
// RSS feed
map("googleNews")
    .toRSS("http://news.google.com/news?output=rss")
    .inCacheBox(timeout=60,lastAccessTimeout=15);
// Webservice
map("myWS")
    .toWebservice("http://myapp.com/app.cfc?wsdl")
    .into(this.SCOPES.APPLICATION);

A part from using the configuration binder, you can also leverage component annotations to dictate behavior on the object.

WireBox bases itself on the idea of creating object injectors (wirebox.system.ioc.Injector) that in turn will produce and wire all your objects. You can create as many injector instances as you like in your applications, each with configurable differences or be linked hierarchically by setting each other as parent injectors.

Each injector can be configured with a configuration binder or none at all. If you are a purely annotations based kind of developer and don't mind requesting pathed components by convention, then you can use the no-configuration approach and not even have a single configuration file, all using autowiring and discovery of conventions. However, if you would like to alter the behavior of the injector and also create object mappings, you will need a configuration binder. The next section explains the way to create this configuration binder, below is how to startup or bootstrap the injector in different manners:

No Configuration Binder:

With a Configuration Binder:

The following annotations can be placed in the component declaration to tell the WireBox injector where to persist the constructed object. If no scope annotations are found on the component or mappings then the object is treated as NO SCOPE or a prototype/transient object; one that gets constructed and discarded every time.

• singleton - A singleton object that persists for the entire life-time of the application

• scope="registered_scope" : Persist in a registered scope: session, request, singleton, custom, etc.

Thanks to Phill Nacelli, you can reuse object definitions in your binder or via annotations. This means that you can declare an object with its dependencies and then create other definitions that use all of this parent object's definitions. This saves tons of time in declarations and provides you with great reusability.

Here is a small example:

Since version 5.5.0 all mappings in WireBox will only be processed when they are requested for the very first time. This is to enhance performance and increase startup times. Processing means that the object's and its inheritance trail are inspected for metadata, which can be a very time consuming process.

process()

However, you can explicitly process a mapping right after mapping it via the binder's process() method.

That's it! If you call the process() method right after a mapping, it will be automatically processed. This means all annotations will be inspected.

mapDirectory( process=true )

If you are mapping using mapDirectory() then you can pass the process argument to true and all mappings in that directory scan will be processed automatically.

The injector can be constructed with three optional arguments:

If you are using WireBox within a ColdBox application, you don't even need to do any of this, we do it for you by using some configuration data in your ColdBox configuration file or conventions.

Now that we have constructed our injector let's discuss a little about injection idioms or styles WireBox offers before we go all cowboy and start configuring and using this puppy. Below is a nice chart that showcases the WireBox injection styles, but we really encourage you to review our dependency injection section to learn the different approaches to DI, their values, and when to use them.

These are the three injection styles that WireBox supports and which style you choose depends on your requirements and also your personal taste. The setter method approach is linked to the way Spring and ColdSpring approach it which is the traditional JavaBean style of setXXX where XXX is the name of the mapping or object to pass into the setter method for injection.

Note Whichever injection style you use with WireBox, the target's visibility does not matter. This means that you can create private or package methods and WireBox will still inject them for you. This is absolutely great when you are an encapsulation freak and you do not want to expose public setter methods.

If you would like to use CacheBox for persistence for you objects you will need to mark your CFC with the following annotation(s)

• cachebox="[provider]" - The default provider is called 'default', so this annotation can be empty or a named cache provider

• cache - Cache into the default provider, shorthand annotation, no value needed

This annotation has two sub annotations that you can also leverage for granular control of your CacheBox integration:

• cacheTimeout - The timeout in minutes (optional)

• cacheLastAccessTimeout - The last access or idle timeout in minutes (optional)

Caution When storing objects in volatile scopes like cache, session, request, etc. You must be careful of not injecting them directly into singletons or other volatile objects as you could have memory leaks via a side effect called Scope Widening Injection. We recommend combining them via WireBox Providers to avoid this side effect.

The following chart shows you the most common methods when dealing with the WireBox Injector. This doesn't mean there are no other methods on the Injector that are of value, so please check out the CFC Docs for more in-depth knowledge.

// A method you can use to send objects to get autowired by convention or mapping lookups
autowire(target,[mapping],[targetID],[annotationCheck]) </td>

// A utility method that clears all the singletons from the singleton persistence scope. Great to do in development.
clearSingletons()

// Checks if an instance can be created by this Injector or not
containsInstance(name)

// Get the configuration binder for this injector
getBinder()

// The main method that asks the injector for an object instance by name or by autowire DSL string.
getInstance([name],[dsl],[initArguments])

// Retrieve the ColdBox object populator that can populate objects from JSON, XML, structures and much more.
getObjectPopulator()

// Get a reference to the parent injector (if any)
getParent()

// Get a reference to a registered persistence scope
getScope(name)

// Set a parent injector into the target injector to create hierarchies
setParent(injector)

The injection DSL is a domain specific language that denotes what to inject in the current placeholder: property, argument, or method via the inject annotation. This injection DSL not only can it be used via annotations but also via our mapping DSL whenever a dsl argument can be used. This DSL is constructed by joining words separated by a : colon. The first part of this string is what we will denote as the injection DSL Namespace.

inject="{namespace}:extra:extra:extra"

Property Annotation

Every cfproperty can be annotated with our injection annotations:

• @inject : The injection DSL

• @scope : The visibility scope to inject the dependency into. By default it injects into variables scope

property name="service" inject="id:MyService";

property name="TYPES" inject="id:CustomTypes" scope="this";

property name="roles" inject="id:RoleService:getRoles" scope="instance";

Constructor Argument Annotation

You can also use annotated constructor arguments with the inject annotation.

<---  Via tag based annotations --->
<cffunction name="init" returntype="any" output="false">
    <cfargument name="myService" inject="UserService">
    <cfargument name="cache"      inject="cachebox:default">

</cffunction>


// Via script but alternative method as inline annotations are broken in ACF

/**
* Init
* @myService.inject UserService
* @cache.inject cachebox:default
*/
function init(required myService, required cache){
}

Caution In full script components, annotating inline arguments is broken in Adobe ColdFusion 9. You will have to annotate them via the alternative annotation syntax in ColdFusion 9 via the javadocs style comments.

Setter Method Annotation

You can also annotate setter methods with the inject annotation to provide injections

<---  Via tag based annotations --->
<cffunction name="setService" returntype="any" output="false" inject="UserService">
    <cfargument name="service">
</cffunction>


function setService(required service) inject="UserService"{
  variables.service = arguments.service;
}

WireBox offers a wide gamut of annotation namespaces you can use in your CFML applications and ColdBox applications. However, we took it a step further and allowed you to create your own custom DSL namespaces making your annotations come alive!

The default namespace is not specifying one. This namespace is used to retreive either named mappings or full component paths.

// Let's assume we have mapped a few objects called: UserService, SecurityService and RoleService

// Empty inject, use the property name, argument name or setter name
property name="userService" inject;

// Using the name of the mapping as the value of the inject
property name="security" inject="SecurityService";

// Using the full namespace
property name="userService" inject="id:UserService";
property name="userService" inject="model:UserService";

// Simple factory method
property name="roles" inject="id:RoleService:getRoles";

// Module Injection Shortcut
property name="MyService" inject="@myModule";

CFC Instantiation Order

When WireBox builds CFC instances, it is important to know the order of operations. This controls when injected dependencies are available for you to use.

1. Component is instantiated with createObject()

2. CF automatically runs the pseudo constructor (any code outside the a method declaration)

3. The init() method is called (if it exists), passing any constructor args

4. Property (mixin) and setting injection happens

5. The onDIComplete() method is called (if it exists)

Based on that order, you can see that injected dependencies (except constructor ones) are not available yet to use in the init() and you must wait to use them in the onDIComplete() method.

Gives you the ability to easily inject base orm services or binded virtual entity services for you:

// Generic ORM service layer
property name="genericService" inject="entityService";
// Virtual service layer based on the User entity
property name="userService" inject="entityService:User";

Inject object providers, please refer to our provider section in this guide.

// using id
property name="timedService" inject="provider:TimedService";

// using DSL
property name="timedService" inject="provider:logbox:logger:{this}";

This DSL namespace is only active if using CacheBox or a ColdBox application context.

property name="cacheFactory" inject="cacheBox";
property name="cache" inject="cachebox:default";
property name="data" inject="cachebox:default:myKey";

Talk and get objects from the current wirebox injector

property name="beanFactory" inject="wirebox";
property name="settings" inject="wirebox:properties";
property name="singletonCache" inject="wirebox:scope:singleton";
property name="populator" inject="wirebox:populator";
property name="binder" inject="wirebox:binder";

This namespace is a combination of namespaces that are only active when used within a ColdBox application:

Single Stage Injections

Two Stage Injections

Three Stage Injections

Examples

WireBox's offers a wide gamut of life cycle events that are announced at certain points in execution time. Below are the current events announced by the Injector wirebox.system.ioc.Injector.

Note Please see our documentation to see all of CacheBox's events.

Please note the configure() method in the standalone listener. This is necessary when you are using Wirebox listeners outside of a ColdBox application. The configure() method receives two parameters:

• injector : An instance reference to the calling Injector where this listener will be registered with.

• properties : A structure of properties that passes through from the configuration file.

As you can see from the examples above, each Listener component can listen to multiple events. Now you might be asking yourself, in what order are these listeners executed in? Well, they are executed in the order they are declared in either the ColdBox configuration file as interceptors or the WireBox configuration file as listeners.

Caution Order is EXTREMELY important for interceptors/listeners. So please make sure you order them in the declaration file.

We have already seen in our previous section all the events that are announced by WireBox, but how do we listen? There are two ways to build WireBox listeners because there are two modes of operations, but the core is the same.

1. Listeners are simple CFCs that must create methods that match the same name of the event they want to listen to.

2. If you are running WireBox within a ColdBox application, listeners are and you declare them and register them exactly the same way that you do with normal interceptors.

These methods can take up to two parameters depending on your mode of operation (standalone or ColdBox). The one main difference between pure Wirebox listeners and ColdBox interceptors are that the configure method for the standalone WireBox is different.

So let's say that we want to listen on the beforeInjectorShutdown and on the afterInstanceCreation event in our listener.

WireBox also sports a very nice event model that can announce several object life cycle events. You can listen to these events and interact with WireBox at runtime very easily, whether you are in standalone mode or within a ColdBox application.

Note If you are within a ColdBox application, you get the benefit of all the potential of and if you are in standalone mode, well, you just get the listener and that's it.

Each event execution also comes with a structure of name-value pairs called interceptData that can contain objects, variables and all kinds of data that can be useful for listeners to use. This data is sent by the event caller and each event caller decides what this data sent is. Also, remember that WireBox also can be ran with a reference to , which also offers lots of internal events that you can tap into. So let's start investigating first the object life cycle events.