BoxLang v1.13.0: Compatibility, Concurrency, and Formatter Maturity

Author (1)

Cristobal Escobar

BoxLang 1.13.0 is a stability-first release with deep compatibility work and runtime hardening. This build closes 48 issues, with the majority focused on CFML compatibility edge cases, concurrency correctness, formatting parity, and miniserver/runtime reliability under real production loads.

While this release is bug-fix heavy, it still introduces several meaningful features and quality-of-life improvements: character-aware trimming, class metadata lookup by absolute path, process environment control in SystemExecute(), SOAP headers, new query column rename capabilities, and safer miniserver routing/security defaults.

New Features

Three additions that materially expand what the runtime can do.

Character-Aware Trimming — trim(), ltrim(), rtrim()

The string trimming BIFs now accept an optional chars argument. Strip arbitrary character sets without reaching for rereplace().

"**Urgent**".trim( "*" )       // "Urgent"
"000123".ltrim( "0" )          // "123"
"report....".rtrim( "." )      // "report"
"//path/to/dir//".trim( "/" )  // "path/to/dir"

Each character in chars is treated as an independent trim target — the same behavior you'd expect from Python or JavaScript. One less regex workaround.

getClassMetadata() by Absolute Path

Class metadata can now be loaded directly from a filesystem path, bypassing the class loader and import resolution entirely.

meta = getClassMetadata( "/opt/apps/models/User.bx" )
writeDump( meta.name )        // "User"
writeDump( meta.properties )  // array of property definitions
writeDump( meta.functions )   // array of function signatures

This is a cornerstone API for tooling. Linters, IDE integrations, documentation generators, and migration scanners can now inspect .bx and .cfc files without booting them into the runtime, firing onApplicationStart, or wrestling with import edge cases. The kind of unglamorous primitive that makes an ecosystem possible.

SystemExecute() Environment Controls

Two new arguments give you deterministic control over the environment of spawned child processes:

• inheritEnvironment (boolean, default true) — when false, the child starts with a clean slate
• environment (struct) — an explicit map of variables to inject

  result = systemExecute(
      name               = "env",
      arguments          = "",
      inheritEnvironment = false,
      environment        = {
          APP_ENV   : "production",
          DB_HOST   : "internal.db.example.com",
          FEATURE_X : "true"
      }
  )
  
  writeOutput( result.output )
  

Before 1.13.0, every systemExecute() call inherited the full parent environment — including secrets, tokens, and internal config. Security-conscious deployments now have an explicit, auditable way to lock that down.

The BoxLang Formatter Goes Production-Ready

This is a flagship moment. The formatter graduates from experimental to production-grade and lands with a complete CI/CD integration surface.

The outcome you actually care about: when formatting is enforced in CI, pull requests stop being about whitespace and start being about logic again. For mixed BoxLang/CFML codebases, the legacy .cfformat.json compatibility path means you can adopt the formatter on legacy code today and migrate to BoxLang-native defaults on your own timeline.

Capabilities:

• In-place formatting — boxlang format --input ./ formats an entire project tree
• CI check mode — boxlang format --check --input ./ exits non-zero on any unformatted file (drop straight into GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins)
• Stdout mode — boxlang format --overwrite false --input ./models/User.cfc for diff-friendly previews
• Multi-extension — .bx, .bxs, .bxm, .cfm, .cfc, .cfs in a single pass

Config discovery fallback chain:

• .bxformat.json — BoxLang-native config (Ortus gold-standard defaults)
• .cfformat.json — legacy CFFormat config, auto-converted with migration-safe defaults
• Built-in defaults — sensible behavior with zero config

Migration tooling built in:

# Generate a fresh .bxformat.json with defaults
boxlang format --initConfig

# Convert an existing .cfformat.json to .bxformat.json
boxlang format --convertConfig --input ./

Async & Concurrency Hardening

Concurrency bugs are the worst kind of bug — intermittent, non-deterministic, catastrophic when they hit production. 1.13.0 closes several long-standing race conditions and lifecycle issues across the async subsystem and threading layer.

API surface normalization. Missing async methods are restored: all(), allApply(), thenAsync(), delay(), and shutdownAndAwaitTermination() now exist with correct signatures. Positional spread arguments (...args) are supported in calls — unblocking a common functional-programming pattern.

args     = [ "Ada", "Lovelace" ]
fullName = formatName( ...args )

BoxFuture() lifecycle. A BoxFuture created during an HTTP request used to throw scope-access errors if the parent request completed before the future resolved. The context lifecycle is now properly decoupled — background work survives request teardown without touching stale scopes.

Concurrent array iteration. for/in loops over arrays no longer throw ConcurrentModificationException when the array is mutated from another thread.

Atomic class file writes. Class generation now uses a temp-file-then-atomic-rename pattern. No more transient zero-byte .class artifacts surfacing under parallel compilation — a race condition that produced some genuinely painful ClassNotFoundException reports in production.

MiniServer: Security & Reliability

The headline: a misconfigured miniserver no longer accidentally serves your source code or configuration over HTTP. The static-serving security filter now blocks hidden files and dotfiles, framework config artifacts (.boxlang.json, boxlang.json), and source files (.bx, .cfc) when not routed through the engine.

Pass predicate is now configurable through three channels — pick whichever fits your deployment model:

# CLI
boxlang server start --pass-predicate "/api/*"

// boxlang.json
{
  "web": {
    "passPredicate": "/api/*"
  }
}

# Environment variable
export BOXLANG_PASS_PREDICATE="/api/*"

Transfer reliability fixes:

• Chunked encoding truncation fixed for large file responses (above the default buffer size)
• Empty text-file uploads no longer throw illegal-state errors
• content-length headers correctly computed across all response paths

Compatibility Wins

CFML compatibility is a continuous workstream, not a one-time port. This release closes a handful of high-impact gaps that real applications were tripping over.

SOAP header support. Consumers can now include optional <Header> blocks for WS-Security, transactional metadata, and routing.

soapService.call(
    method  = "processOrder",
    headers = { Security : { UsernameToken : { Username : "admin" } } }
)

query.setColumnNames(). Query objects now support column renaming through a dedicated method, matching the Adobe CF and Lucee API.

q = queryNew( "fname,lname", "varchar,varchar", [ [ "Ada", "Lovelace" ] ] )
q.setColumnNames( [ "firstName", "lastName" ] )
writeDump( q.columnList )  // "firstName,lastName"

CLI .box.env support. The CLI now reads ~/.box.env on startup, loading user-level environment variables that persist across sessions.

# ~/.box.env
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_PORT=5432

Runtime Hardening
The unsexy stuff that matters. A condensed view of the deeper fixes shipped in this release:

Changelog Highlights

New Features

BL-2348: trim(), ltrim(), rtrim() gain chars argument
BL-2349: getClassMetadata() accepts absolute filesystem path
BL-2390: SystemExecute() gains inheritEnvironment and environment arguments

Improvements

BL-2078: SOAP header support for auth and security blocks
BL-2333: query.setColumnNames() compatibility API
BL-2354: Miniserver pass predicate configurability (CLI, JSON, env var)
BL-2355: Miniserver security handler upgrades
BL-2378: CLI reads ~/.box.env on startup
BL-2393: Chunked encoding truncation fix for large file responses
BL-2398: BoxLang-native formatting defaults aligned with Ortus conventions

Notable Bug Fixes

BL-2269: Missing async methods and signatures restored
BL-2336: Abort semantics corrected in web runtime try/catch boundaries
BL-2360: Positional spread arguments supported in calls
BL-2372: Concurrent modification exception fixed for array for/in
BL-2373: Class-file write race fixed with atomic write pattern
BL-2376: BoxFuture() context lifecycle fix after HTTP request completion
BL-2382: Binary write path fixed for valid downloaded ZIP output
BL-2386: QoQ nested-parentheses predicate parsing corrected
BL-2394: Custom-tag context no longer leaks incorrect this scope

View the full release report

BoxLang 1.13.0 is available now. Head to boxlang.io to get started, dig into the docs, and join us on the Ortus Community Slack to share what you're building.

• BoxLang
• Developer Tools
• DevOps
• Java
• Performance
• Release Notes
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Cristobal Escobar

Author

Development and promotion of BoxLang, a modern dynamic JVM language deployable on various platforms, including all operating systems, web servers, Java application servers, AWS Lambda, iOS, Android, web assembly, and more.