What steps are required to make ColdFusion websockets work on an Azure VM behind Cloudflare?

Question

We are attempting to use websockets in ColdFusion (2018.0.13.329786) in an app we have running on Azure VMs behind Cloudflare. However, we are continually getting this error on the client side:

WebSocket connection to 'wss://www.*************.com/cfws' failed: 
CFWebSocketWrapper.open @   cfwebsocketCore.js:21
init    @   cfwebsocketChannel.js:49
_cf_websockets_init_6539553945348401    @   strategies-for-devel…ing-with-impact:175
fire    @   cfajax.js:1214
$E.windowLoadHandler    @   cfajax.js:1321

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set properties of undefined (setting 'readyState')
    at WebSocket.wsConnection.onerror (cfwebsocketCore.js:54:29)
wsConnection.onerror    @   cfwebsocketCore.js:54
error (async)       
CFWebSocketWrapper.open @   cfwebsocketCore.js:53
init    @   cfwebsocketChannel.js:49
_cf_websockets_init_6539553945348401    @   *************:175
fire    @   cfajax.js:1214
$E.windowLoadHandler    @   cfajax.js:1321
load (async)        
$E.onWindowLoad @   cfajax.js:1297
cfinit  @   cfajax.js:1332
(anonymous) @   cfajax.js:1834

We have a cfc that's called when a message is posted to a channel that writes to a log file on the server, and this log file never gets updated. This is unsurprising as it appears that something is preventing the connection altogether.

From a configuration perspective, we run these updates when the VM is created:

webSocketObj= createObject("component","cfide.adminapi.websocket");
webSocketObj.setProperty(propertyName="EnableWebSocketServer", propertyValue="true");
webSocketObj.setProperty(propertyName="EnableProxyPort", propertyValue="8581");

and then via cfExecute:

#server.coldfusion.rootdir#/lib/wsproxyconfig.jar -ws IIS -site All -host localhost -port 8581

and then the CF service and IIS are restarted.

We have also enabled the websocket 'switch' in Cloudflare.

This should be the same as going into CF Admin, going to the websockets tab, and then ticking "Use Proxy", and then using the default port of 8581. This should send everything through IIS on port 443 from the client perspective.

Cloudflare and Azure say that no special configuration is needed. And we can see that CF has port 8581 open.

The most infuriating thing is that we worked on this in our Dev environment last year and after much trial and error got it working. However, our notes from that time were not good and when we did the above to try to get this working in our QA environment it did not work. We're obviously missing a step somewhere, but have not been able to figure it out.

Can anyone who has gotten this working explain what steps are required to make ColdFusion websockets work on an Azure VM behind Cloudflare?

user_762721 · Answer

We solved this issue. Hopefully this will help anyone else who runs into the same problem:

Per this doc, we realized that the wsproxyconfig was supposed to be creating an 'application' (like a virtual folder) in IIS called cfws pointing to /config/wsproxy/1. However, it was not doing so. Once that application was created, everything started working as expected.

Upon further testing we found that it created this application only if it was run as administrator. Otherwise, it reported success and provided no warnings or failures, but did not create the application.

We were running wsproxyconfig from the command line via CFExecute, so it was running under an administrative user, but that was apparently not sufficient. So we moved the wsproxyconfig call to one of our PowerShell scripts and had it run with administrative privileges and that solved our problem.

This had apparently worked in our dev environment originally because we ran wsproxyconfig manually.

What steps are required to make ColdFusion websockets work on an Azure VM behind Cloudflare?

1 Answers