Sunday, May 22, 2011

CFCookie vs CFHeader for Session Cookies

A lot of times we re-write ColdFusion session cookies to add some additional flags. Flags like Secure, HttpOnly which were not present in the earlier releases. HttpOnly support was added in ColdFusion 9.0.1.

When one doesn't use J2EE session management, ColdFusion managed sessions are used. In This two cookies, CFID and CFTOKEN are set. There are additional authentication cookies added when is used. By default till CF9.0 they were not marked as secure and HttpOnly. With CF9.0.1, support for HttpOnly was added. 

Today, I am going to talk about, how to set these additional flags on these cookies. This is talked about a lot of times, but I would like to add my 2 cents to this. To add these additional flags (these flags provide additional security), one can use CFCookie or CFHeader. And here is the difference which I thought was worth mentioning.

With, CFCookie, the cookie name is always converted to Upper Case, and Value is encoded. This is not a problem for CFID or CFTOKEN but might not work with Authorization cookie, or even if you want to set some flags for JSessionID cookie.

CFHeader on the other hand will be handy to set any of these flags. So the preferred choice should be CFHeader while doing this.

For setting these cookie at your own, you must set sessionmanagement = true, clientclientcookie = false in Application.cfc/cfm as appropriate. Here is an example of an application with application name "test"

Using CFCookie

<cfif NOT StructKeyExists( cookie,"CFID" ) OR ( cookie.CFID NEQ session.CFID )>

      <!---using the CFID and CFTOKEN cookies again with same values but making them secure--->
      <cfcookie name="CFID" value="#session.CFID#" secure="true" httponly="true">


      <cfcookie name="CFTOKEN" value="#session.CFTOKEN#" secure="true" httponly="true">
</cfif>

<cfcookie name="CFAUTHORIZATION_test" value="#cookie.CFAUTHORIZATION_test#"  secure="true">

Note: cfccokie tag for Authorization cookie, here will create another cookie with same name but in different case, rather than updating the original one.




Using CFHeader


<cfif NOT StructKeyExists( cookie,"CFID" ) OR ( cookie.CFID NEQ session.CFID )>

      <!---using the CFID and CFTOKEN cookies again with same values but making them secure--->
      <cfheader name="Set-Cookie" value="CFID=#session.CFID#;SECURE;HttpOnly;"/>
      <cfheader name="Set-Cookie" value="CFTOKEN=#session.CFTOKEN#;SECURE;HttpOnly;"/>
</cfif>
<!---cfheader tag will update the original cookie generated by cflogin and will make it secure--->
<cfheader name="Set-Cookie" value="CFAUTHORIZATION_test=#cookie.CFAUTHORIZATION_test#;SECURE;HttpOnly;"/>



Hope this was helpful.


Wednesday, May 4, 2011

ColdFusion Builder 2.0 is released


ColdFusion Builder 2.0 is released with loads of great features. Features like -: Advanced Search/Replace, Keyboard Shortcuts, Quick fix, Task Management, Tag Replace, Enhanced Navigation, Code Assist, Code Formatting, Code Folding are great for faster and better application development. 

ColdFusion builder 2.0 is also coming with a Limited feature Express Edition.  - One can use  ColdFusion Builder trial version of the full-featured for 60 days. After the trial expires, you need to purchase a license to continue using all the features. If not, ColdFusion Builder switches to a feature-limited Express Edition. With the Express Edition, you continue to use ColdFusion Builder with basic features such as editor, code assist, and syntax highlighting. But the key features such as code assist for extensions, code insight, extension callbacks, connection to remote server, quick fix, debugging remote projects, refactoring, ColdFusion search, code formatting, FTP support, log viewer, local file browser, code hyper-links, and hover help are not available in the Express Edition of ColdFusion Builder. You can convert the Express Edition to a full-featured version by purchasing the license and specifying the product serial number.

For more information see Adobe ColdFusion builder 2.0 and ColdFusion Builder Blog.