ColdFusion Developer's Guide

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CHAPTER 16
Using ColdFusion Threads
You can use threads in ColdFusion to simultaneously run multiple streams of execution in a
ColdFusion page or CFC.
Contents
About ColdFusion threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
Creating and managing CF threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
Using thread data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444
Working with threads. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .448
Using ColdFusion tools to control thread use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
Example: getting multiple RSS feeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
About ColdFusion threads
Threads are independent streams of execution. Multiple threads on a page or CFC can
execute simultaneously and asynchronously, letting you perform asynchronous processing in
CFML.
Threads are useful for two broad types of activities:
■ Where multiple actions can occur simultaneously.
■ Where you do not have to wait for one action to complete before starting the next action.
Some typical uses for threads include the following examples:
■ An application that aggregates information from multiple external sources that might take
significant times to respond could have the code that gets information from each source in
a separate thread. This way, the application starts all requests quickly and has to wait only
until the last response is received, instead of having to wait for a response to each request
before the next request can start. One example of such usage is an RSS or Atom feed
aggregator.
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