howdoi/docs/extension_dev.md

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?

1. 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[]
}

1. 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

1. 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 remove node-modules folder. You can do this by adding the script in your package.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.