Add items (like Mailpit or tailing logs) to the CommandBox Tray

I’ve always been a fan of the tray that’s available when CommandBox launches. On the Mac, it appears as a menu bar icon in the top menu (first icon below).

It has some very convenient built-in options:

Servername
├── Stop Server
├── Restart Server
├── Open...
│   ├── Webroot
│   ├── Server Home
│   ├── Site Home
│   └── Server Admin
├── Info
│   ├── Engine: adobe 2023.0.17+330864
│   ├── Webroot: /Path/to/website/
│   ├── URL: https://127.0.0.1:8443
│   ├── PID: 99999
│   └── Heap: Not set

I frequently need to access Mailpit and various log files as I work through the development process on a current project. This got me wondering if I could add some of my own frequently accessed items to the tray. It turns out you can add quite a few different things.

Enable the tray

First, enable the tray in the server.json file for the site.

"trayEnable": true,

Next, let’s start simple and add a single item to open Mailpit in a browser. The trayOptions setting accepts an array of objects. Each object should contain a label, an action, and one of [url, path, command]. The label is the text that appears in the tray. The action tells CommandBox what to perform (openbrowser, openfilesystem, runAsync, etc.). The [url, path, command] values provide the URL of the site, the filesystem path, or the command to execute, respectively.

Setting the tray options

"trayOptions": [
    {
        "label": "Mailpit Web Interface",
        "action": "openbrowser",
        "url": "http://localhost:8025"
    }
]

Let’s dive a little deeper with some other options.

Add a “divider” of blank space between CommandBox’s built-in options and the ones we are adding.

{
    "label": " ",
    "disabled": true
}

Open a folder on the filesystem.

{
    "label": "Open Log Folder",
    "action": "openfilesystem",
    "path": "${serverinfo.serverHomeDirectory}/WEB-INF/cfusion/logs"
}

Tail the last 100 lines of mailsent.log (macOS only as written, but adaptable for Linux or Windows).

{
    "label": "Tail mailsent.log",
    "action": "runAsync",
    "command": "tmpfile=$(mktemp -t tail-mailsent).command; printf '#!/bin/zsh\nprintf \"\\e]0;Tail mailsent.log\\a\"\nclear\ntail -n 100 -f \"%s\"\n' '${serverinfo.serverHomeDirectory}/WEB-INF/cfusion/logs/mailsent.log' > \"$tmpfile\"; chmod +x \"$tmpfile\"; open -a Terminal \"$tmpfile\""
}

Explanation of the tail command

Add some icons using emojis.

🛠 Development Tools
📬 Mailpit Web Interface
📂 Logs

Putting it all together

"trayEnable": true,
"trayOptions": [
    {
        "label": " ",
        "disabled": true
    },
    {
        "label": "🛠 Development Tools",
        "items": [
            {
                "label": "📬 Mailpit Web Interface",
                "action": "openbrowser",
                "url": "http://localhost:8025"
            },
            {
                "label": "📂 Logs",
                "items": [
                    {
                        "label": "Open Log Folder",
                        "action": "openfilesystem",
                        "path": "${serverinfo.serverHomeDirectory}/WEB-INF/cfusion/logs"
                    },
                    {
                        "label": "Tail application.log",
                        "action": "runAsync",
                        "command": "tmpfile=$(mktemp -t tail-application).command; printf '#!/bin/zsh\nclear\ntail -n 100 -f \"%s\"\n' '${serverinfo.serverHomeDirectory}/WEB-INF/cfusion/logs/application.log' > \"$tmpfile\"; chmod +x \"$tmpfile\"; open -a Terminal \"$tmpfile\""
                    },
                    {
                        "label": "Tail exception.log",
                        "action": "runAsync",
                        "command": "tmpfile=$(mktemp -t tail-exception).command; printf '#!/bin/zsh\nclear\ntail -n 100 -f \"%s\"\n' '${serverinfo.serverHomeDirectory}/WEB-INF/cfusion/logs/exception.log' > \"$tmpfile\"; chmod +x \"$tmpfile\"; open -a Terminal \"$tmpfile\""
                    },
                    {
                        "label": "Tail mailsent.log",
                        "action": "runAsync",
                        "command": "tmpfile=$(mktemp -t tail-mailsent).command; printf '#!/bin/zsh\nprintf \"\\e]0;Tail mailsent.log\\a\"\nclear\ntail -n 100 -f \"%s\"\n' '${serverinfo.serverHomeDirectory}/WEB-INF/cfusion/logs/mailsent.log' > \"$tmpfile\"; chmod +x \"$tmpfile\"; open -a Terminal \"$tmpfile\""
                    }
                ]
            }
        ]
    }
]

Explanation of the tail command

This command creates a temporary shell script, makes it executable, and opens it in Terminal. Reminder: this version is macOS only as written because it uses zsh, mktemp, and open -a Terminal.

"command": "tmpfile=$(mktemp -t tail-mailsent).command; printf '#!/bin/zsh\nprintf \"\\e]0;Tail mailsent.log\\a\"\nclear\ntail -n 100 -f \"%s\"\n' '${serverinfo.serverHomeDirectory}/WEB-INF/cfusion/logs/mailsent.log' > \"$tmpfile\"; chmod +x \"$tmpfile\"; open -a Terminal \"$tmpfile\""

What it does

• mktemp -t tail-mailsent
  • Creates a uniquely named temporary file.
• printf '#!/bin/zsh ...'
  • Writes a small shell script into the temporary file.
• printf "\e]0;Tail mailsent.log\a"
  • Sets the Terminal window title.
• clear
  • Clears the Terminal window before output begins.
• tail -n 100 -f
  • Displays the last 100 lines of the log file and continues following new entries in real time.
• chmod +x
  • Makes the temporary script executable.
• open -a Terminal
  • Opens the script in the macOS Terminal application.

Next Steps

There are all kinds of other tasks that could be added to the tray such as:

• Ping a server
• Flushing DNS
• Open the hosts file to edit
• Open the site’s Git repo

Good luck!