ColdFusion + React/Vue Frontend: The Decoupled Architecture Pattern That Works in 2026

The decoupled (or “headless”) pattern pairs ColdFusion as a JSON API backend with a React or Vue single-page application on the front end. ColdFusion keeps doing what it’s good at — business logic, database access, authentication, integrations — and exposes that as REST endpoints; React or Vue owns the entire user interface and talks to ColdFusion over HTTP. It works well, and ColdFusion (Adobe ColdFusion and Lucee) is genuinely suited to it because it can serve JSON, handle JWT authentication, manage CORS, and cache responses. But three ColdFusion-specific details decide whether it’s smooth or painful: ColdFusion’s JSON type-coercion behavior (fixed in CF 2018+ but still a trap on older versions), its query serialization format (use the struct format, not the default, so React/Vue get clean arrays of objects), and disciplined CORS + JWT handling on the API. This guide covers the pattern, the gotchas, and when not to use it.
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