Installing Fusebox

Your installation of the Fusebox framework is comprised of two components:

  1. Fusebox Core files
  2. Fusebox Skeleton Application

The Core Files are what makes Fusebox, Fusebox. If you already have an older version (5.0+) and need to upgrade, you would simply download the core files and overwrite your old ones. For the purposes of this discussion, the assumption is that this is the first time using Fusebox, so not only are the Core files necessary, but the skeleton files are also a must.

The skeleton files comprise a complete system for working within Fusebox except that they don't contain the Core Files. The skeleton archive follows an MVC (Model/View/Controller) Design Pattern, which many of us have found extremely useful for developing applications. Currently, there are two versions of Fusebox skeleton files: Traditional, and CFC based skeleton application files.

Within the skeleton archive, there are a number of files and directories that are required for fusebox to work. If you are interested in the skeleton application and want to know more about it, you can read a brief discussion of the directory structure.

There are several alternatives to installing the core files and the skeleton files. One caveat is that unless you are creating a mapping (both ColdFusion and web) the core files can be placed in the following areas:

  • In a shared directory that several applications can share. (This will require a web site mapping)
  • Within an application and inside the web root (Some shared servers only give you the web root).
  • Within an application, but above the web root.

Note that you may not place the core files on a network drive. The core files must be on the same physical computer that your application resides on.

Depending on your application, your server and your hosting situation, you might at some time want to use fusebox in any or all of these scenarios. Fusebox 5.0 corefiles have been developed to support Multiple Applications via one set of corefiles.

Installing to a Shared Directory

This is probably the simplest installation. The purpose of this installation is to allow multiple fusebox applications on the same host to share the same set of core files. This works fine when you have total control over your environment and upgrades are easily done across the board. This setup requires that the skeleton directory needs to be individually extracted into every application. (Sorry, the skeleton files are per application and are not shareable.

To install, simply copy the fusebox5 subdirectory to your application server and create a virtual directory called /fusebox5 in your web server environment. We will access these files when setting up Fusebox in the next section.

Be sure to check out:

  1. web site mapping
  2. Multiple Applications

Installing within your Web Root

On some host environments, you are given access to the web root and thats it. Depending on your coding preferences, you can place the fusebox5 directory in the zip file anywhere in the web root.

Installing the Fusebox Core files in your webroot is the easiest, but will then require multiple copies of the core files.

Additional Information

External Links