<cffunction name="getApplicationRootPath" returntype="string" hint="Returns the root path of the acting Application.cfm file." output="false" access="public">
  <cfargument name="base_path" default="./" hint="Normally you want to leave this as default" required="false">
  <cfset var actual_path = ExpandPath(arguments.base_path)>
  <cfif FileExists(ExpandPath(arguments.base_path & "Application.cfm"))>
    <cfreturn actual_path>
  <cfelseif REFind(".*[/\\].*[/\\].*", actual_path)>
    <cfreturn getApplicationRootPath("../#arguments.base_path#")>
  <cfelse>
    <!--- we have reached the root dir, so throw an error not found --->
    <cfthrow message="Unable to determine Application Root Path" detail="#actual_path#">
  </cfif>
</cffunction>

Send to cflib?

Awesome! Thanks! Where were you a few months ago when I really needed one of these?! Just kidding, thanks for sharing.

Pete, nifty little function, thanks, it just saved me some time.

This was a great way for me to determine what environment my application was running in. Thanks!

alternately you could put this in the application file itself

<cfset request.appPath = GetCurrentTemplatePath()>

That will give you a request var with the same info in it (server path to the application)

I know this is an old post, but I modified the script so that I could add it to the CustomTag directory and identify a shared IIS virtual directory on my server that exists outside of the application root. The technique for going down a sub-directory (../) wasn't working as I was using a full path.

I used the "ListReverse" UDF to safely identify and drop the current sub-directory. http://cflib.org/udf/ListReverse

Here's the code: <cffunction name="getScriptsGlobalRootPath" returntype="string" hint="Returns the root path of the shared virtual script directory." output="false" access="public"> <cfargument name="base_path" default="#GetDirectoryFromPath(getBaseTemplatePath())#" hint="Normally you want to leave this as default" required="false"> <cfset var actual_path = arguments.base_path> <cfif DirectoryExists(arguments.base_path & "_globalScripts")> <cfreturn actual_path & "_globalScripts"> <cfelseif listlen(actual_path,":") GT 1> <CFSET arguments.base_path = Request.ListReverse(ListRest(Request.ListReverse(arguments.base_path, "\"),"\"),"\") & "\"> <cfreturn getScriptsGlobalRootPath(arguments.base_path)> <cfelse> <!--- we have reached the root dir, so throw an error not found ---> <cfthrow message="Unable to determine the shared virtual script directory" detail="#actual_path#"> </cfif> </cffunction>