Workshop

Getting Started with BoxLang!

Introduction

Embark on an immersive journey into the foundational elements of BoxLang runtimes through this comprehensive, hands-on workshop experience. Throughout the session, you'll gain practical knowledge on how to effectively set up, meticulously configure, and strategically optimize BoxLang runtimes across a diverse spectrum of applications, ranging from command-line interface tools to sophisticated server-based implementations.

This workshop caters to participants across all skill levels - whether you're taking your first steps into BoxLang development or seeking to deepen your existing expertise. By participating in this session, you'll acquire the essential skills and in-depth understanding needed to leverage the complete capabilities of this versatile and powerful JVM language, enabling you to build more efficient and robust applications.

Objective

The objective of this hands-on workshop is to provide participants with a comprehensive understanding of BoxLang runtimes, including setup, configuration, and practical implementation. By the end of the session, attendees will be able to:

• Configure and optimize BoxLang runtimes for different applications
• Understand core architecture and framework design principles
• Work effectively with BoxLang's CLI tools and IDE capabilities
• Develop and manage modules within the BoxLang ecosystem
• Create and deploy applications using MiniServer and CommandBox

Audience

This workshop is designed for developers at all levels who want to learn BoxLang, including:

• Beginners looking to start with BoxLang development
• CFML developers transitioning to BoxLang
• Experienced developers seeking to optimize BoxLang applications
• Team leaders and architects evaluating BoxLang for their projects

Outline

1. Introductions
2. BoxLang Overview
   1. Architecture
   2. Framework Design
   3. File Types
   4. Basics & Tooling
      1. Differences From CFML
      2. IDE Capabilities Overview
      3. CLI Tools
         1. CFML Audit
         2. CFML Tranpsiler
         3. Compiler
   5. Modules
      1. Core Modules Overview
      2. Custom Modules Overview
3. OS Runtime
   1. Configuration File
   2. REPL
   3. BoxLang Home
   4. Exercises
4. IDE Introduction
   1. Basic Usage
   2. Running Files
   3. Running MiniServers
   4. Debugging
   5. Exercises
5. Scripting
   1. Classes, Scripts, Templates, Schedulers
   2. CLI Framework
   3. Examples
   4. Exercises
6. MiniServer
   1. IDE Usage
   2. Configuration
   3. Examples
   4. Exercises
7. CommandBox
   1. Configuration
   2. CFConfig
   3. Examples
   4. Exercises
8. Q&A

Prerequisites

The following are the workshop requirements for this workshop:

• A laptop computer with suitable resources and the following packages installed
  • Java 21
  • CommandBox
  • VSCode
    • BoxLang Extension Installed
  • A local database (MySQL, MSSQL, etc)