SDK
Shells

Shells

Shells is an important component of the CodeSandbox SDK. To give you the best possible developer experience working with shells we abstracted them into the following concepts:

Commands

Just run a single command in a shell which you can wait for output. It is intended to be used for short running commands.

const sandbox = await sdk.sandboxes.create()
const session = await sandbox.connect()
 
const output = await session.commands.run("npm install");

Terminals

Terminals are a shell that you can interact with. It can live beyond the immediate session of the user. Use the session.terminals.getAll() method to retrieve any existing terminals.

const sandbox = await sdk.sandboxes.create()
const session = await sandbox.connect()
 
// Create a new terminal (bash is default)
const terminal = session.terminals.create()
 
// Open the terminal to get its current output. Required to get output events.
const output = await terminal.open();
 
// Listen to terminal output
const onOutputDisposer = terminal.onOutput((output) => {
    console.log(output);
});
 
// Write input, from for example xTerm
await terminal.write("hello");
 
// Run commands
await terminal.run("echo 'Hello, world!'");
 
// Kill the terminal when done
await terminal.kill();

Tasks

Tasks are defined by the project and runs shells with the global user. Any ports opened by the shells are bound to the task. You can retrieve a task by name and it is shared by all sessions.

const sandbox = await sdk.sandboxes.create()
const session = await sandbox.connect()
 
const task = session.tasks.get("dev")
const output = await task.open()
 
// Listen to task output
const onOutputDisposer = task.onOutput((output) => {
    console.log(output);
});
 
// Restart the task
task.restart()

Setup Steps

When handling the setup of Sandbox the setup steps are also shells.

const sandbox = await sdk.sandboxes.create()
const session = await sandbox.connect()
 
const steps = await session.setup.getSteps()
 
for (const step of steps) {
    console.log(`Step: ${step.name}`);
    console.log(`Command: ${step.command}`);
    console.log(`Status: ${step.status}`);
 
    const output = await step.open()
 
    output.onOutput((output) => {
        console.log(output)
    })
 
    await step.waitUntilComplete()
}
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