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FCKEditor in Coldfusion

August 26, 2009

I began using FCKEditor long before it was included with Coldfusion. I’ve continued to use my own implemenation even after the release of Coldfusion 8.

There was a vulnerability found in the included FCKEditor:
http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb09-09.html

I applied the patch to my server and it also broke my own FCKEditor instance. I received “403 Access Denied” errors when using the FCKEditor file browser. After much time and effort the solution is pretty simple:

Add this to your JVM args in jvm.config:

-Dcoldfusion.fckupload=true

***CAREFUL about copying and pasting the text above. Hidden carriage returns will cause CF to fail on startup.***

Even if you are not using the Coldfusion FCKEditor you still need to enable FCKEditor uploads. The updated JAR must have a built-in request filter for “filemanager”.

13 Comments

Jamal Pilger
Jamal PilgerMay 25, 2011 at 4:06:32 pm

Dude, you rock! I've been searching Google for a couple hours trying to figure out why the file browser on every instance of FCKEditor on our server was broken.

Your fix worked beautifully. Thanks!

Dee
DeeSeptember 30, 2011 at 4:46:14 pm

Doesn't seem to help on ColdFusion 9. Help!

Jason Holden
Jason HoldenSeptember 30, 2011 at 4:51:04 pm

@Dee - Just had to implement this on a CF9 server. The FCKEditor in this instance is not the built-in CF9 HTML editor. Might be able to help if you can give some more specifics about your configuration.

Terry T
Terry TDecember 9, 2011 at 2:50:00 pm

Jason,
Is there any way you could email me a coply of your
fckeditor folder so I can see what you've changed to
get the file manager to work. I do not allow uploading
period within FCKeditor, but do want to allow browsing
of a predefined IMAGE directory to view/insert images.
I have tried all sorts of fixes but still cannot get it to
work. I am good with Coldfusion, just not to swift with
Java and Jaqvascript.

Jason Holden
Jason HoldenDecember 9, 2011 at 5:10:06 pm

@Terry

Not sure I still have an instance of FCKEditor sitting around. I've upgraded all my instances to CKEditor (http://ckeditor.com/). I'd be happy to pass along the CF based file browser I made to operate with CKEditor.

Terry T
Terry TDecember 9, 2011 at 5:56:51 pm

I would really like to have that if you can find the time to shoot it my way.

Thank You

Todd
ToddMarch 21, 2012 at 12:19:28 pm

Jason I hate to ask this, but when it comes to the inner workings of CF I am absolutely ignorant. Could you please describe what one would need to do to replace FCKeditor, with the new version of ckeditor? I too would love to have your CF based file browser for operate with CKEditor, however I need to get the new version of ckeditor installed first. I know this responsibility doesn't rest on your shoulders, I would even ask without attempting but either my google-foo is weak at the moment, or there doesn't seem to be very many articles in replacing FCK with ck for CF9.

Jason Holden
Jason HoldenApril 12, 2012 at 12:58:23 pm

@Todd: To my knowledge and experience there is no way to directly replace the built-in FCKEditor that is used with the CFTEXTAREA. Since I usually do not use the built-in CF tags for inputs that was not an issue. What I've done is a very manual process in that each instance must be setup for each page(s). Happy to share my code and lend a hand if I can.

@coldFusion Sucks
@coldFusion SucksOctober 23, 2012 at 2:54:18 pm

God bless you
this was driving me nuts
This tells me how Coldfusion Sucks and its time to convert to .NET

Jason Holden
Jason HoldenOctober 31, 2012 at 9:45:02 am

@Coldfusion Sucks - Not sure I'd go that far, but it can get frustrating. Frustration often leads me to wonder why I keep using it. The truth is you should use the tool that allows you to be the most productive. That said I would not advocate a wholesale "conversion" of anything but a very simple application.

Cary Molyneux
Cary MolyneuxMay 4, 2013 at 4:14:30 pm

This is exactly what I was looking for. It was the only thing I had to add and restart the server and FCKeditor's image upload worked again. Thank you.

Stephen Williams
Stephen WilliamsDecember 27, 2013 at 2:30:32 pm

I added the JVM argument on ColdFusion 10 and had no further problems. Very helpful, was an oversight when configuring our new CF10 server. -Dcoldfusion.fckupload=true

You have to go directly to the jvm.config file as the coldfusion administrator modifies the file in some ways that change it considerably. Be careful and do not change it in the administrator.

Brody
BrodyNovember 26, 2014 at 8:03:55 am

Thanks a lot! This worked for me!

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An information technology professional with twenty four years experience in systems administration, computer programming, requirements gathering, customer service, and technical support.