Integrating Coldfusion 8.01 with LiveCycle DS 2.6 Beta

Posted by Joshua in Technology on June 10, 2008

Update: Adobe LSDS 2.6 was released and is no longer in beta, you will have to download the trial for step 2 to continue, also Step 3 references a compiler module -- you may not need this for it to work.

 

I wanted to start playing with the new LiveCycle DS 2.6 functionality and I wanted to integrate 2.6 with Coldfusion 8. What I found on Adobe labs wasnt really clear enough to me on how to install 2.6 into CF 8.01, maybe it was just me but I like things explained fairly throughly in terms of instructions. I found some good resources after googling last night and decided I would just combine what I found on my blog for others as a reference. So grab a beer, sit back and relax, because its really easy to do if you know "exactly" what to do.

You can download the below instructions here as a PDF file.

Step 1: If you dont already have Coldfusion 8.01 update go download it first, if you already have it proceed to step 2.

Step 2: Download LiveCycle 2.6 Beta here

Step 3: Download the Flex 3 Compiler Module for Coldfusion 8 here

Step 4: Download the latest Flex 3 SDK (current is 3.0.1.1732 as of the date of this post) here so you can update your Flex Builder (or Eclipse Plugin)

Step 5: Install the CF 8.01 update if you dont already have it installed

Step 6: Install LC DS 2.6 Beta as a J2EE Application. You can probably install as the Tomcat turnkey option if you want, but since we are integrating with CF 8.01 why bother? (I installed it under my C: Drive as C:/LCDS)

Step 7: Shutdown Coldfusion

Step 8: Open up the root directory where you installed LCDS 2.6 and find the folder named "resources" then open up the Coldfusion folder

Step 9: Open up the LCDS_for_CF.txt file (would of been nice had Adobe told us about this on labs) you can use this for reference in the future, the text file misses two other steps that I will cover in a couple more steps.

Step 10: Unzip the lcds.war file included in your installation of LiveCycle Data Services ES 2.6 to a temp directory (temp for this document).

Step 11: Copy the ColdFusion ColdFusion8/lib/flex-messaging*.jar files (four files) to a backup location. If you are running multi-instance or J2EE install, these files are in the WEB-INF/cfusion/lib directory.

Step 12: Copy the temp/lcds/WEB-INF/lib/flex-messaging*.jar files (7 files) to the ColdFusion 8 lib directory and overwrite any files (you just backed them up so no worries)
Step 13: Copy the Coldfusion 8 lib/cfgatewyadapter.jar to your backup location

Step 14: Copy the file temp/lcds/WEB-INF/lib/cfgatewayadapter.jar to WEB-INF/flex/jars. Overwrite the existing file (again you just backed up the old one, no need to worry)

Step 15: Back up your ColdFusion8/wwwroot/WEB-INF/flex directory. In particular, back up any XML configuration files you have made changes to.

Step 16: Unzip the Flex 3 Compiler Module for ColdFusion 8 ZIP file that you downloaded in Step 3 into the ColdFusion wwwroot directory (for standalone Windows in the default location, that is C:/ColdFusion8/wwwroot). Overwrite the existing files (which you have backed up)

Step 17: Copy the new "fds" SWC libraries from the lcds.war file (temp/lcds/WEB-INF/flex/libs) to the ColdFusion WEB-INF/flex/libs directory:

- Copy the temp/lcds/WEB-INF/flex/libs/fds.swc file to the ColdFusion8/wwwroot/WEB-INF/flex/libs directory.
- Copy the temp/lcds/WEB-INF/flex/libs/player/playerfds.swc file to the ColdFusion8/wwwroot/WEB-INF/flex/libs directory.
- Copy the temp/lcds/WEB-INF/flex/locale/en_US/fds_rb.swc file over the ColdFusion8/wwwroot/WEB-INF/flex/locale/en_US/fds_rb.swc file.


Step 18: Unzip the latest Flex 3 SDK in a new folder (create this folder) called 3.0.1.1732 in your Flex 3 SDK install directory. (Mine was: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 3 Plug-in\sdks)

Step 19: Open up Flex Builder 3 or Eclipse (if your using the plugin version). If compiling in Flex Builder you should update the SDK at least to revision 1173 that you already downloaded in Step 4. Now go to: Window > Preferences > Flex > Installed Flex SDKs and add the new extracted SDK and name it Flex 3.0.1.1732

Step 20: Restart ColdFusion.

Step 21: Write some code and test it, you can use the Flex Builder 3 Wizards to do something rather quickly. Just make sure you compile the Flex App using the new SDK we installed in Step 19.

If you want to revert back to LC DS 2.5 in CF 8 just open your backup and overwrite the 2.6 files, make sure you delete the three new Flex messaging files we added in Step 12 and to overwrite the cfgatewateyadapter.jar file with your backed up one. (Dont forget to shutdown CF first before you do any of this)

References:
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/LiveCycle_Data_Services:Integrating_with_ColdFusion_8
http://www.adobe.com/support/coldfusion/downloads_updates.html
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Download+Flex+3
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/livecycle_dataservices2_6.html
http://www.onflexwithcf.org/index.cfm/ColdFusion

 

  1. brian

    #1 by brian - July 2, 2008 at 6:06 AM

    Thanks Josh, I know I would have torn out my last remaining strands of hair trying to figure all that out. Adobe, for those of us with attention deficit problems, please turn this into a 1 or 2 step process.
    Reply
  2. TomJ

    #2 by TomJ - July 2, 2008 at 6:20 PM

    What steps did you think are left out of the LCDS_for_CF.txt file?

    In those instructions, updating LCDS to 2.6 is a 4 step process (ignoring the setup 'get the software' steps). And the (optional) update to the web tier compiler is also 4 steps (total 8). You have 21 steps here, includeing updating FlexBuilder, which if you are using that, you do not need to update the web tier compiler in CF at all. Just ensure that you point to the services-config.xml file used by the server when you compile your flex applications and point your compiler output directory to someplace in your document root so you can load the swf via the browser.

    @brian See, only 4 steps!

    P.S. Yes, I wrote the LCDS_for_CF.txt file.
    Reply
  3. Sameer

    #3 by Sameer - August 27, 2008 at 10:41 AM

    Dear,

    Please help me with you step number 3.

    "Flex3_webtier_for_ColdFusion8.zip" is no where to be found on the internet.

    May be I am looking into wrong places, like Adobe.com. Should I try underworld internet?

    Kindly reply.

    Regards,
    Sameer
    Reply
  4. Josh

    #4 by Josh - August 27, 2008 at 12:43 PM

    Sameer, check out the updated notes above. Adobe moved the files off of labs since 2.6 was released and is no longer in Beta. Try googling 2.6 LCDS integration with Coldfusion, I will look later tonight after work and post what I find.
    Reply
  5. Sameer

    #5 by Sameer - August 27, 2008 at 3:12 PM

    Thanks Josh.

    - Sameer
    Reply
  6. Sameer

    #6 by Sameer - August 27, 2008 at 3:24 PM

    Josh,

    This is a sincere request. Can you please explain why we need LCDS? Adobe.com docs never makes it clear to me - the difference between FDS and LCDS. What happened to FDS? Can I still use it with my previous CF licenses?

    I just need to use Data Management event gateways? What is the best way to go about it.

    And, finally why are all the documents for LCDS on PDF format? Oh yes, its Adobe. But its difficult to maintain ten PDF from Adobe on a single topic.

    It appears like the worst documentation ever done by Adobe. Please help me.

    I am a CF developer and new to this LC thing. Its 3:51 AM here and I will probably kill Adobe over FDS/LCDS confusion they have created.

    Kindly guide me.

    -Sameer
    Reply
  7. Josh

    #7 by Josh - August 27, 2008 at 5:29 PM

    Sameer,
    LiveCycle Data services is part of the Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite, which comes with a ton of stuff. It is not cheap, you can review what it can offer on the Adobe.com product page.

    Lets just focus around Data services commonly known as LCDS, which used to be FDS. Adobe renamed it and it became apart of the Adobe Livecycle ES product suite.

    Adobe also released what is called BlaseDS, which is a free and open. It has some of the functionality that LCDS has, but it does not have the main piece the data management service piece. Here is a good guide on the differences between those two (BlazeDS and LCDS)

    http://www.t
    heriadeveloper.com/2008/04/blazeds-vs-lcds.html

    You can also go read blogs from folks at Adobe like Christophe Coenraets
    http://coenraets.org/blog/2007/12/blazeds-open-sourcing-remoting-and-messaging/

    Hope this helps.
    Reply
  8. Sameer

    #8 by Sameer - August 27, 2008 at 9:38 PM

    Thanks a ton.
    Reply
  9. Amer Maghazaji

    #9 by Amer Maghazaji - November 16, 2008 at 8:06 PM

    Thanks Joshua
    Here is how you can integrate LCDS ES 2.6 to coldfusion 8.02. very similar I'd say
    http://help.adobe.com/en_US/livecycle/8.2/lcds_coldfusion_conf.html

    cheers
    Reply
  10. Amer Maghazaji

    #10 by Amer Maghazaji - November 18, 2008 at 7:54 PM

    Small correction to the above entry. integrating LCDS ES 2.6 to Coldfusion 8 rather than 8.02 (http://help.adobe.com/en_US/livecycle/8.2/lcds_coldfusion_conf.html)
    cheers
    Amer
    Reply
  11. KS

    #11 by KS - March 4, 2009 at 12:11 PM

    Call me crazy but couldn't Adobe come up with an installer or installers depending on your configuration and automate all this? It just seems so messy. Then again, I am a CF/LCDS newb and could not have any idea what I'm talking about. :)
    Reply
  12. popmYT

    #12 by popmYT - May 15, 2009 at 12:04 AM

    Adobe needs to do something to their licensing structure. Right now its very hard to use on Amazon EC2 and other scalable datacenters. You can use Amazon EC2 http://file.sh/Amazon+EC2+torrent.html to quickly scale from 1 to 10 (for example) servers when you get a sudden rush of traffic, but how do you handle the CF licenses? Right now you’d have to buy 10 licenses and let 9 of them be wasted most of the time.
    Reply
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    #13 by HenryBee - October 3, 2009 at 2:46 AM

    http://healthnova.org
    Fantastic article.
    Reply
  14. goaway

    #14 by goaway - November 20, 2009 at 4:08 PM

    thanks for this betta version! not bad ...
    Reply
  15. Varun

    #15 by Varun - February 17, 2010 at 11:40 PM

    Hello flexies,
    I m beginner to the flex. one day i came across the [Managed] tag reading in one of the journals. but i hve searched a lot in livedocs everything other shit i can find. but i could not.. do any one really know how many types of metadata tags are there and till now wht tags hve been deprecated???

    Hopin a reply soon from u all flexies and josh also.

    Thanks for makin such a good blog josh...

    bye
    Reply
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    Do this work with CF9?
    Reply
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