What is cfdns?

The cfdns project is a ColdFusion enhancement that allows a developer to make DNS queries easily. It is a CFC wrapper for the dnsjava library, and uses JavaLoader to dynamically load the Java library, thus it does not require that you change your server's JVM classpath.

The cfdns.DNS component should be created at application initialization, say by ColdSpring for example, and then kept in a persistent scope. The timeout, retries, and servers options can be changed at any time; a new resolver is created internally for each query using the current state. If no server is specified, the component uses the local system's name resolution configuration and cache.

Accompanying the component is a tag library that assists in the output of information gathered from a query. This isolates the code implementing the view from knowing about the Java classes created by the underlying library.

The software is released under the BSD License. You are encouraged to examine the source code and make your own modifications and announce your changes so they may be incorporated into future versions of the project.

What's with the grasshopper?

The venerable O'Reilly DNS and BIND publication used the grasshopper as its front cover artwork.