cfexecute

Executes a CFML developer-specified process on a server computer.

<cfexecute name="">

cfexecute(name="");

Attribute Reference

name string
Required

Absolute path of the application to execute.

On Windows, you must specify an extension; for example,
C:\myapp.exe.

arguments any

Command-line variables passed to application. If specified
as string, it is processed as follows:
* Windows: passed to process control subsystem for parsing.
* UNIX: tokenized into an array of arguments. The default
token separator is a space; you can delimit arguments
that have embedded spaces with double quotation marks.
If passed as array, it is processed as follows:
* Windows: elements are concatenated into a string of
tokens, separated by spaces. Passed to process control
subsystem for parsing.
* UNIX: elements are copied into an array of exec()
arguments

outputfile string

File to which to direct program output. If no outputfile or
variable attribute is specified, output is displayed on
the page from which it was called.

If not an absolute path (starting a with a drive letter and
a colon, or a forward or backward slash), it is relative
to the CFML temporary directory, which is returned
by the GetTempDirectory function.

variable string

Variable in which to put program output. If no outputfile
or variable attribute is specified, output is displayed on
page from which it was called.

timeout numeric
Default: `0`

Length of time, in seconds, that CFML waits for
output from the spawned program.

errorVariable string

The name of a variable in which to save the error stream output.

errorFile string

The pathname of a file in which to save the error stream output. If not an
absolute path (starting a with a drive letter and a colon, or a forward or backward slash), it is
relative to the ColdFusion temporary directory, which is returned by the GetTempDirectory
function.

terminateOnTimeout boolean
Default: `false`

Lucee 4.5+ Terminate the process after the specified timeout is reached. Ignored if timeout is not set or is 0.

directory string

Lucee 5.3.8+ The working directory in which to execute the command

Compatibility

ColdFusion:

Version 4.5+ terminateOnTimeout is not supported in Adobe ColdFusion

Examples
Sample code using the cfexecute tag

Script syntax

If you want to execute a script (.sh,.cmd,.bat), use bash (linux) or cmd.exe (windows) as the command and the script as argument for the shell interpreter.

cfexecute( name="bash", arguments="/opt/jq.sh #cmdArgs#", variable="standardOut" , errorVariable="errorOut" , timeout="10");

Script syntax with terminateOnTimeout

Printing a PDF using lpr

cfexecute(
	name="lpr",
	arguments="-P 'My Print Job Name' 'C:/Users/devguy/Documents/server/mynewfile.pdf'",
	timeout="5",
	terminateOnTimeout="true"
	);

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