Extension development
Extension development¶
You can integrate howdoi as a code editor extension. For this, you need to edit the files within the extension/code-editor-integration folder. To improve the Visual Studio Code howdoi extension, edit the files within the extension/vscode-howdoi folder and republish the extension.
How to integrate howdoi as a code editor extension?¶
- The Code Editor Integration plug-in runs when you call
runHowdoi
function which takes in a user’s query(type = string). The parameter is encapsulated by a single line comment and is formatted as :// howdoi query
runHowdoi
function returns and Object which looks like :
{
Question: string
Answer : string[]
Link : string[]
}
-
What are these object values?
-
question : it contains the user’s query encapsulated by a single line comment
- answer : contains the three possible answers to the user’s query.
-
link : link contains the three possible links to the answer encapsulated by a single line comment
-
To start with development, you need to first install howdoi on your machine. Steps to do that lie here.
Development¶
Next, install all important packages by running npm install
- To compile the script, run
npm run compile
- To run the script , run
npm start
- To compile and run the script, run
npm run build
- To run the testing script, run
npm test
- Now, to utilize the plug-in to create a howdoi extension, you need to do the following
Integration¶
To use the plug-in to create a howdoi extension, follow these steps:
- Copy the
code-editor-integration
folder in your workspace and removenode-modules
folder. You can do this by adding the script in yourpackage.json
file and running it. But, first you will need to install ncp and rimraf.:
"copy": "ncp ../code-editor-integration/ src/code-editor-integration/"
"clean": "rimraf ./src/code-editor-integration/node_modules"
- Import the
plugin.ts
file into your main file. - Call the
runHowdoi
function.
Visual Code Extension development¶
To begin the development for Visual Studio Code extension, install all the necessary packages:
npm install
Then precompile the extension :
npm run precompile
To run and test extension, utilize the Visual Studio Code’s debugging tools.