CFLock Name Is Case-Insensitive In ColdFusion

This is a quick sanity check to see if the name attribute of the CFLock tag is case-sensitive in ColdFusion. I've never thought about this since my application code is always in control of the lock names. However, I do sometimes have a workflow in which the name attribute is partially driven by the URL scope. Which means that — in rare cases — part of the name attribute is "technically" considered user-provided content.

To test this, I created two templates that attempt to acquire an exclusive lock on the same name. In one template, the lock name is all uppercase (NAME-CASING-TEST):

<cfscript>

	lock
		name = "NAME-CASING-TEST"
		type = "exclusive"
		timeout = 30
		{

		sleep( 10 * 1000 );

	}

</cfscript>

And, in the other template, the same lock name is all lowercase (name-casing-test):

<cfscript>

	startedAt = getTickCount();

	lock
		name = "name-casing-test"
		type = "exclusive"
		timeout = 30
		{

		writeOutput( "Lock acquired in... #( getTickCount() - startedAt )#ms" );

	}

</cfscript>

With these two templates in place, I then invoke the first one followed quickly by the second one. If the name attribute is case-sensitive, both locks should be acquired immediately. However, if the name attribute is case-insensitive, the second lock will have to block-and-wait for a few seconds while the first lock finishes its sleep() command.

And so, when we run this experiment, we get the following output:

When the two CFML templates are run concurrently, the second one has to block-and-wait for the first one to finish sleeping:

Lock acquired in... 8,713ms

This confirms that the CFLock tag's name attribute is case-insensitive.

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Short link: https://bennadel.com/4893