Document When Extension Commands Are Called With Arguments and What Those Arguments Are...

[busticated]

hi there :wave:

in certain circumstances commands provided by an extension are called with arguments. for example:

"editor/context": [
    {
        "command": "extension.myCommand",
        "when": "resourceLangId == cpp",
        "group": "my-tests"
    }
]

within your extension manifest (package.json) creates a context menu item for myCommand. when a user invokes that menu item by right-clicking and selecting it from the context menu, myCommand is called with a single argument: the uri for the file where the context menu was clicked.

my understanding just from poking around is that commands exposed via explorer/context, editor/title, and editor/title/context have similar behavior (though in some cases they are called with more and / or different arguments).

it would be nice if all of these cases were documented - specifically: when a command will be called with additional arguments and what those arguments will be

thanks :pray::+1:

[gregvanl]

Hi @busticated I think this information is covered in the Contribution Points article in a Note for contributes.menu. https://code.visualstudio.com/api/references/contribution-points#contributes.menus. Are there other cases besides context menus where you've seen arguments being passed to commands?

[busticated]

hi @gregvanl thanks for taking a look 👍

if you are referring to:

Note: When a command is invoked from a (context) menu, VS Code tries to infer the currently selected resource and passes that as a parameter when invoking the command. For instance, a menu item inside the Explorer is passed the URI of the selected resource and a menu item inside an editor is passed the URI of the document.

i don't think that's sufficient. for one, there are different arguments provided depending on the contribution point. also, it's not clear that this is the only scenario where arguments are provided - e.g. keyboard shortcuts? command palette in special cases? other? 🤷‍♂️

edit

Are there other cases besides context menus where you've seen arguments being passed to commands?

missed this part, sorry. short answer is: i'm not sure.