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Common Capabilities

Common Capabilities are important building blocks for your extensions. Almost all extensions use some of these functionalities. Here is how you can take advantage of them.

Command​

Command is central to how VS Code works. You open the Command Palette to execute commands, bind custom keybindings to commands, and right-click to invoke commands in Context Menus.

An extension could:

Learn more about commands at the Extension Guides / Command topic.

Configuration​

An extension can contribute extension-specific settings with the contributes.configuration Contribution Point and read them using the workspace.getConfiguration API.

Keybinding​

An extension can add custom keybindings. Read more in the contributes.keybindings and Key Bindings topics.

Context Menu​

An extension can register custom Context Menu items that will be displayed in different parts of the VS Code UI on right-click. Read more at the contributes.menus Contribution Point.

Data Storage​

There are five options for storing data:

  • ExtensionContext.workspaceState: A workspace storage where you can write key/value pairs. VS Code manages the storage and will restore it when the same workspace is opened again.
  • ExtensionContext.globalState: A global storage where you can write key/value pairs. VS Code manages the storage and will restore it for each extension activation. You can selectively synchronize key/value pairs in global storage by setting the keys for sync using setKeysForSync method on globalState.
  • ExtensionContext.storageUri: A workspace specific storage URI pointing to a local directory where your extension has read/write access. This is a good option if you need to store large files that are accessible only from the current workspace.
  • ExtensionContext.globalStorageUri: A global storage URI pointing to a local directory where your extension has read/write access. This is a good option if you need to store large files that are accessible from all workspaces.
  • ExtensionContext.secrets: A global storage for secrets (or any information that is sensitive) that will be encrypted. These are not synced across machines. For VS Code desktop, this leverages Electron's safeStorage API. For VS Code for the Web, this uses a Double Key Encryption (DKE) implementation.

The extension context is available to the activate function in the Extension Entry File.

setKeysForSync example​

If your extension needs to preserve some user state across different machines then provide the state to Setting Sync using vscode.ExtensionContext.globalState.setKeysForSync.

You can use the following pattern:

// on activate
const versionKey = 'shown.version';
context.globalState.setKeysForSync([versionKey]);

// later on show page
const currentVersion = context.extension.packageJSON.version;
const lastVersionShown = context.globalState.get(versionKey);
if (isHigher(currentVersion, lastVersionShown)) {
    context.globalState.update(versionKey, currentVersion);
}

Sharing state across machines can help avoid the problem of users seeing multiple instances of a welcome or update page, by sharing dismissed or viewed flags.

Display Notifications​

Almost all extensions need to present information to the user at some point. VS Code offers three APIs for displaying notification messages of different severity:

Quick Pick​

With the vscode.QuickPick API, you can easily collect user input or let the user make a selection from multiple options. The QuickInput sample illustrates the API.

File Picker​

Extensions can use the window.showOpenDialog API to open the system file picker and select files or folders.

Output Channel​

The Output Panel displays a collection of OutputChannel, which are great for logging purpose. You can easily take advantage of it with the window.createOutputChannel API.

Progress API​

You can use the vscode.Progress API for reporting progress updates to the user.

Progress can be shown in different locations using the ProgressLocation option:

  • In the Notifications area
  • In the Source Control view
  • General progress in the VS Code window

The Progress sample illustrates this API.