This question came in this morning. Looking at the code below, see if you can determine the issue. (Of course, the title of the blog entry is a bit of a give away.)

<cffunction name="onRequestStart" returntype="boolean" access="public"> <cfargument name="url" required="true" type="string"> <cfif StructKeyExists(url, "init")> <cfset onSessionStart()> </cfif> <cfreturn true> </cffunction>

This is a fairly simple onRequestStart - and one based on a pattern I use quite a bit - specifically the init URL hook to restart something (normally the Application, but in this case the Session). When run, this gives the following error:

You have attempted to dereference a scalar variable of type class java.lang.String as a structure with members.

So what's the issue? By accident, the user named the argument to onRequestStart the same as one of ColdFusion's built-in scopes. By telling ColdFusion to pass the requested page as "url", it blew away the URL scope. Instead of a structure, URL was now a simple string.

Easy enough mistake to make - and I swear I looked at it for five minutes before I noticed it.