Ok, so i realised there are many coldFusion developers on macs now and if you are like us then you love getting notifications of everything via Growl!

So we thought how cool would it be to be able to send growl notifications from any CF app, like sending the mac-using CEO a growl notification each hour with a sales summary, etc...

We also noticed there were a few implementations already (in ruby, php, python, java) but none in our favourite language (and the java implementation was bloated with a growl listener client included... where as we want a fast coldFusion native easily modifiable sending solution only + you don't need to do no funky installations)

Ok, so after a long night, using the other examples as reference, i've got a working alpha prototype that allows you to setup as easily as:

then add some available notification types:

then add client hosts to receive the notifications:

then broadcast a new notification:

so the code is attached, and we've only tried it currently with static IPs in an intranet environment, so it may need tweaking to work with firewalls, not entirely sure about that, or you could target with port forwarding a single mac machine that using growl network options can relay broadcast to all local machines... something to look at in future anyway.

you need to make sure you've got "listen for incoming notifications" and "allow remote application registration" checked in the network options tab in system preferences, and enter a server password, that you then enter when you add your IP and password as a new host.

also i read that snarl client for PC plans on being able to consume growl notifications in near future so this could soon be an even cooler cross platform solution

i'll make a riaforge project out of this if people show interest to further develop features (like writing hosts out to an XML file so they aren't lost on application restart), otherwise just our office will have the coolest coldfusion app notifications in the world ;)