WebStrada

A high-performance CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language) runtime engine and application server. Compiles .cfm/.cfc templates on-the-fly into native machine code via LLVM JIT compilation and serves requests through the FastCGI protocol.

Architecture

WebStrada is a from-scratch re-implementation of a ColdFusion server. Instead of interpreting CFML, it parses templates into an AST using TextParser, generates LLVM IR, and JIT-compiles to native code for execution.

CFML Source → TextParser AST → LLVM IR → MCJIT → Native Code → Execution

Building

Prerequisites

• CMake >= 3.16
• Ninja build system
• C++23 compiler (GCC or Clang)
• LLVM development libraries
• libfcgi (FastCGI)
• libminizip (for <cfzip> archive support; Debian/Arch package: minizip)

Build

git submodule update --init --recursive
./build.sh          # GCC (default)
# or
./build_clang.sh    # Clang
# or
./build-release.sh  # Size-optimized release build (see below)

Docker image (Ubuntu)

build_docker.sh builds a multi-stage Ubuntu Docker image: a builder stage (ubuntu:26.04) compiles the textparser dependency from upstream plus the project sources, an admin-builder stage (node:22-alpine) builds the Angular admin UI, and a runtime stage (ubuntu:26.04) keeps only the binaries and shared libraries the server needs. The image web root is /app; http-dev.py serves HTTP on port 8501 and auto-starts the FastCGI daemon, which can also be run directly on the TCP socket :6000.

./build_docker.sh                       # builds webstrada:latest
docker run --rm -p 8501:8501 webstrada  # dev web server

Environment overrides: IMAGE=name:tag (default webstrada:latest) and TEXTPARSER_VERSION=x.y.z (default 1.0.11).

Usage

CLI Tool

# Execute CFML from stdin without loading Application.cfm/cfc
echo '<cfdump var="hello" />' | ./bin/WebStrada-cli --stdin

# Print LLVM IR instead of executing
echo '<cfdump var="hello" />' | PRINT_AST= ./bin/WebStrada-cli --stdin

# Compile and run a file (loads Application.cfm/cfc if present)
./bin/WebStrada-cli mytemplate.cfm

Application Server

./bin/WebStrada -n :6000 -b 100 -w 4

Options:

• -n <socket> — FastCGI socket name (default :6000)
• -b <backlog> — connection backlog (default 100)
• -w <workers> — number of worker processes (default 1)

Development Web Server

http-dev.py is a single-file Python dev server (stdlib only) for quick manual testing without nginx. It listens on TCP port 8501 (all interfaces) by default, serves a web root and forwards .cfm/.cfc requests to the WebStrada FastCGI daemon — which it starts automatically on a unix socket in <app-root>/tmp/ (reusing an already running daemon if present) — while serving everything else as a static file.

By default the web root is the directory containing the script, but it can be pointed at any directory (e.g. a mounted host volume) with --webroot or the WEBROOT environment variable. The built admin panel (admin/dist/...) and its /admin/api/*.cfm endpoints are always served from the app root at /admin/, independent of the web root.

python3 http-dev.py [--host 0.0.0.0] [--port 8501] [--workers 4] [--webroot DIR]
WEBROOT=/path/to/site python3 http-dev.py --port 8501

Docker

The webstrada:latest image bundles the WebStrada binaries, the textparser libraries and the built admin panel. Run it with your CFML site mounted as the web root:

# cd to root of your cfml project
cd {to root of your CFML application}

# Serve a host directory as the web root (port 8501):
docker run --rm -p 8501:8501 -v .:/app/webroot -e WEBROOT=/app/webroot bokic78/webstrada:latest

# then visit http://localhost:8501/ (your pages) and http://localhost:8501/admin/ (admin panel)

License

MIT