Microservices With ColdFusion: API Gateway Pattern, Service Discovery, and Inter-Service Auth

ColdFusion fits a microservices architecture as the service implementation — each service is a ColdFusion REST API (native REST since CF10, or via Taffy/ColdBox/FW/1) — while the surrounding infrastructure handles the cross-cutting patterns. The API gateway is the single entry point: it terminates TLS, validates the caller’s JWT once, applies rate limiting and routing, and forwards the request to the right ColdFusion service with the validated identity injected as headers (e.g., X-User-Id, X-User-Role) — so your CFML never validates JWT signatures and your signing secret never lives in application code. Service discovery solves "where is service B?" without hardcoding IPs: services register with a registry (Consul, Eureka, etcd) or use Kubernetes' built-in DNS-based discovery, and callers look up healthy instances by name. Inter-service authentication secures service-to-service calls behind the gateway: mutual TLS (mTLS, e.g., via Consul Connect's service mesh) so each side proves its identity, or short-lived service tokens (client-credentials OAuth2), always over TLS. The key architectural insight: ColdFusion writes the business logic; the gateway, registry, and service mesh are infrastructure that ColdFusion services plug into — most run in containers/Kubernetes alongside your CF instances. This guide covers each pattern and how ColdFusion participates.
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