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Victor Campos

November 18, 2025

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Are you tired of staring at endless, unreadable stack traces when exceptions hit your ColdBox app? There’s a better way to handle exceptions, especially during development, and it’s called Whoops!

Whoops offers a clean, interactive way to track and navigate exceptions in your ColdBox applications, making debugging much easier. Let’s dive into how you can enable it in your app.

Step 1: Enable Whoops in Development Mode

First, head over to your config/ColdBox.cfc file and look for the development() environment configuration. You’ll want to add the following setting to tell ColdBox to use Whoops for exception tracking

function development(){
    coldbox.customErrorTemplate = "/coldbox/system/exceptions/Whoops.cfm";
}

This tells ColdBox to trigger the Whoops UI whenever an exception is detected. You’ll get a beautiful, interactive stack trace to help you troubleshoot more effectively!

Step 2: What Does Whoops Do?

Whoops gives you a clean UI stack trace that allows you to:

  • Navigate each file in the stack.
  • Jump to the exact line number where the exception occurred.
  • Integrate with your IDE for instant editing of the problematic file!

No more scrolling through long, convoluted error logs—you can see exactly where things went wrong, and fix them faster.

Step 3: Configure Your IDE for Whoops

Whoops is even more powerful when it integrates directly with your IDE. By default, Whoops is set up for Visual Studio Code (vscode), but you can configure it to use a different editor if that’s your preference.

In the same development() block, add the following configuration to set your preferred IDE

function development(){
    coldbox.exceptionEditor = "vscode-insiders";
}

Here are some valid options for the exceptionEditor setting:

  • vscode (Default)
  • vscode-insiders
  • sublime
  • textmate
  • emacs
  • macvim
  • idea
  • atom
  • espresso

Pick your favorite, and Whoops will let you open the files and jump directly to the line number where the exception occurred!

Conclusion

By enabling Whoops and configuring your IDE, you’ll get a smoother, faster, and more enjoyable exception-tracking experience. Say goodbye to those frustrating debugging sessions and hello to a more streamlined development workflow!

Learn More ColdBox Tips and Tricks

Stay tuned for more ColdBox tips in our ongoing series. if you want to learn more than 10 free tips and tricks make sure to get your “ColdBox 102 tips and tricks book” We have a variety of formats you can choose from.

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