cfhttp Considerations
While cfhttp is
extremely powerful, it is worth mentioning some limitations in the
various versions of ColdFusion. If you plan to make heavy use of
cfhttp, you should carefully consider the issues
discussed here.
JRE-Related Issues in ColdFusion MX
Depending on the JRE
you are using with ColdFusion MX, there are several issues you need
to be aware of that have the potential to affect your use of the
cfhttp tag:
The IBM JRE does not properly support SSL connections. If you need to make an SSL connection, consider using the SUN JRE instead.
The SUN JRE does not always return a 404 status code when an attempt is made to GET or POST a nonexistent page.
As mentioned earlier, the
timeoutattribute of thecfhttptag is not supported in versions of the SUN JRE prior to version 1.4.0.
Authentication
cfhttp
supports Basic (plain text),
Digest, and NTLM Authentication. This means you can use
cfhttp to access password-protected pages and
files residing on remote servers. Authentication is performed by
entering a valid username and password in the
username and password
attributes of the cfhttp tag, as shown here:
<cfhttp method="method" URL="url_to_server" username="username" password="password">