Interact with the running vscode Language Server

[ams1]

Hi 👋,

Big THANK YOU for maintaining our essential tooling! 🫡

Context:
Although I love and heavily use commands like Find All References, Show Call Hierarchy etc., OFTEN, for documentation purposes I feel the need to EXTRACT those results I see in the references tab in a way that I can do further processing outside vscode: ex. as from - to pairs (function from invokes function to) - so I could build a graph-like document (using graphviz etc.).

My question:
Is there a 'simple' way to access the running vscode server instance attached to my current vscode project and programmatically send it commands/be able to capture some json output - instead of interacting with it from the menu?

By 'simple' I mean for example curl or maybe a short extension.

If there is no simple way, could you please point me to where I should start digging regarding the normal way 😄 - some examples?
At first glance it seems extensions are focused more on the language server side - I don't want to maintain the server itself - the one I have running does a great job already - I just want to be able to interact with it programmatically.

Hope I made a good job describing my problem and hope this is a good place to pose the question. 🤗

Thank you.

[ams1]

Hi, me again 😄

In the meantime I found a way (not sure if it's the best) using an extension and the following commands from https://code.visualstudio.com/api/references/commands:

vscode.prepareCallHierarchy - Prepare call hierarchy at a position inside a document

• uri - Uri of a text document
• position - A position in a text document
• (returns) - A promise that resolves to an array of CallHierarchyItem-instances

vscode.provideIncomingCalls - Compute incoming calls for an item

• item - A call hierarchy item
• (returns) - A promise that resolves to an array of CallHierarchyIncomingCall-instances

vscode.provideOutgoingCalls - Compute outgoing calls for an item

• item - A call hierarchy item
• (returns) - A promise that resolves to an array of CallHierarchyOutgoingCall-instances

A working snippet (maybe it helps others).

import * as vscode from 'vscode';

async function logOutgoingCalls(item: vscode.CallHierarchyItem) {
	const outgoingCalls: vscode.CallHierarchyOutgoingCall[] = await vscode.commands.executeCommand('vscode.provideOutgoingCalls', item);

	// iterate over outgoingCalls
	for (const outgoingCall of outgoingCalls) {
		console.log(item.name, '-[:invokes]->', outgoingCall.to.name);

		// recursively log outgoing calls
		// TODO: handle cycles
		await logOutgoingCalls(outgoingCall.to);
	}
}

async function logIncomingCalls(item: vscode.CallHierarchyItem) {
	const incomingCalls: vscode.CallHierarchyIncomingCall[] = await vscode.commands.executeCommand('vscode.provideIncomingCalls', item);

	// iterate over incomingCalls
	for (const incomingCall of incomingCalls) {
		console.log(incomingCall.from.name, '-[:invokes]->', item.name);

		// recursively log incoming calls
		// TODO: handle cycles
		await logIncomingCalls(incomingCall.from);
	}
}

export function activate(context: vscode.ExtensionContext) {
	console.log('Congratulations, your extension is now active!');

	let disposable = vscode.commands.registerCommand('extension.logCallHierarchy', async () => {
		if (vscode.window.activeTextEditor) {
			const position = vscode.window.activeTextEditor.selection.active;
			const uri = vscode.window.activeTextEditor.document.uri;

			const items: vscode.CallHierarchyItem[] = await vscode.commands.executeCommand('vscode.prepareCallHierarchy', uri, position);
			if (items) {
				for (const item of items) {

					// log incoming calls
					console.log('Incoming calls of ', item.name);
					await logIncomingCalls(item);

					// log outgoing calls
					console.log('Outgoing calls of ', item.name);
					await logOutgoingCalls(item);
				}
			}
		}
	});

	context.subscriptions.push(disposable);

	let statusBarItem = vscode.window.createStatusBarItem(vscode.StatusBarAlignment.Right, 100);
	statusBarItem.command = 'extension.logCallHierarchy';
	statusBarItem.text = "Log Call Hierarchy";
	statusBarItem.show();
	context.subscriptions.push(statusBarItem);
}

export function deactivate() { }

From my point of view this can be closed - thank you.