How do I locate a custom tag instantiation in a coldFusion App

Question

I am migrating a very old app (currently running in CF8) to Lucee. But I am running into a problem with what appears to be a custom tag of some sort.

I have tried to make sure that all the virtual directories are the same in IIS for both the old and the new installs. And made sure the mapping and custom tag paths in both the CFIDE and the Lucee Admin are the same.

But I am getting this error. And can't figure out how this cflink is being instantiated.

I have found the location of the erroring code on line 300 the utils.cfc file

I haven't used custom tags in a long time but thought they were generally called with an underscore and the code should like more like <cf_link pageid="#LinkPageID#" Init="start"> if this was being called as a custom tag.

If I go the the current CF server that is running this app I can find that a cfclass files HAS been created From a file called cflink.cfm in a directory called "tags" even though there seems to be no mapping for the "tags" directory nor is is listed under "custom tags paths" in the administrator.

This App was start in 2003 and as you can imagine has grown into a mis-match of spaghetti code and no one from the beginning is around to ask how this tag is instantiated.

Does anyone with experience in legacy code has any other ideas where I should be looking to try to get this to work? The currently has only a production environment and if I can get it to work on Lucee it will not only be a dev environment that hasn't existed here in 10 years but will be a great way for me to be able to continue showcasing Lucee as a great CFML engine

Adding addition info

Leigh had asked if the init might be a jar reference but in the cflink.cfm file I see this code:

    <cfif Attributes.Init IS "start">
        <cfset Request.PageID = Attributes.PageID>
        <cfset Request.Page_Width = Variables.qParentInfo.Page_Width>
        <cfset Request.Page_Height = Variables.qParentInfo.Page_Height>
        <cfset Request.Page_TypeID = Variables.qParentInfo.Page_TypeID>
        <cfset Request.AddPath = "">
        <cfif IsDefined("Attributes.Anchor")>
            <cfset Request.Anchor = Attributes.Anchor>
        <cfelse>
            <cfset Request.Anchor = "">
        </cfif>
        <cfset Request.IsInternalLink = false>
        <cfexit method="EXITTAG">
    </cfif>

There are also references to cflink in the code inside tags\cflink.cfm

<cfif Len(Variables.qParentInfo.ParentID) GT 0>
    <!--- Add the page title to the end of the path --->
    <cfset Request.AddPath =  ReplaceNoCase(Variables.qParentInfo.Nav_Title," ","_","ALL") & "/" & Request.AddPath>
    <cflink init="working" pageid="#Variables.qParentInfo.ParentID#" popcode="#Attributes.popcode#">
<cfelse> ......</cfif>

Although this may be recursion given it was written in 2004 I kind of doubt it

Adding screen shots of searches

Answer 1

If anyone else runs into this. In CF8, and presuming earlier versions, you could put a cfm file into the ColdFusion8\wwwroot\WEB-INF\cftags Directory and that file in this case ColdFusion8\wwwroot\WEB-INF\cftags\link.cfm Then acts as any other cftag.

I was able to find the person who originally build this app in 2004 and he told me that they did it this way to avoid typing the underscore that they would have typed if they'd done it as a custom tag.

I kind of get it since this tag is used everywhere in the app, literally hundreds of times. Bit boy with a bitch to find.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to move it to the Lucee world in a similar fashion. So it instanciates the same way.

Thanks @Leigh for all your help, you are always amazing!

Adding more information

if there are files in the WEB-INF\lucee\library\tag the corresponding Lucee directory is WEB-INF\lucee\library\tag. These files are read on load and then able to be used as any other cf tag.

For example if you have file WEB-INF\lucee\library\tag\link.cfm it can be called by `cflink'.

Seems like a cool idea but a bit of a bitch for someone to find 10 years after the fact