FolderPicker

for Visual Studio Code

⚠ This module is built as the core functionality of my New Folder Visual Studio Code extension and is still under active development, use at own risk, if needed.

✨ Current major version v.2.x.x contains breaking changes.

Provides a custom Folder Picker API + UI for Visual Studio Code.

The module exposes a single function showFolderPicker() which provides a custom QuickPick UI rather than the built-in Visual Studio Code QuickPick UI.

Currently, its functionalities are tightly-coupled with my extension New Folder but I will make the module more generic in the future.

🙋‍♂️ The necessity for this module?

💬 When I started my beforementioned New Folder extension for Visual Studio Code my goal was to implement a simple UX for creating new folders when opening a new/blank instance of Visual Studio Code since that behavior is not built-in. I started with the built-in vscode.window.showSaveDialog() function which works great when you set the option files.simpleDialog.enable to true but that is a global preference and not everyone - including myself - wants to change the whole UX for file/folder opening just for that. Then I reached out to our friends at @microsoft/vscode and posted a feature request #127201 to override this behavior but they closed the feature request as that is by-design. Another issue that was present is that the original code only allowed to create a single-level child folder (no nested/recursive folder creation) due to limitations of the native vscode.window.showSaveDialog() function. Upon closure I decided to build my own UI/logic for that and this project and module are what I managed to achieve so far. 🤗

Usage

Install it by running

npm i "@igor.dvlpr/vscode-folderpicker"

API

enum ResponseSpeed

Used for controlling the response speed of the InputBox of the QuickPick. Since v.2.0.0 callbacks for generating Actions are throttled/debounced when necessary and the picker now waits for the user to finish their input before generating available Actions for performance reasons. Throttling provided by Zep().

Available values are: Instant, Fast, Normal (default), Lazy.

Note: setting the property responseSpeed in the options parameter of showFolderPicker() to Instant will disable throttling!

showFolderPicker(directory: string, options?: FolderPickerOptions): void

Parameters

directory: string - the initial directory to show in Folder Picker UI, if none is specified default to user home directory, options: FolderPickerOptions - additional options to pass and where you should place your callbacks, will most likely change in the near future. All properties are optional and callbacks are not defined.

Available properties/callbacks:

FolderPickerOptions

• [dialogTitle]: string = 'Pick a Folder' - the Folder Picker title, shown at the top of the picker,

• [showIcons]: boolean = true - indicates whether icons will be shown in the Folder Picker. When this property is set to false all/any icons you set will be ignored,

Icons - grouped together for brevity

• [iconFolder]: string = '' - icon to use for folder entries,
• [iconFolderUp]: string = '' - icon to use for the folder up entry,
• [iconCreate]: string = '' - icon to use for Create folder Action,
• [iconNavigate]: string = '' - icon to use for Navigate to... Action,
• [iconPick]: string = '' - icon to use for Pick current directory Action.
• [iconClear]: string = '' - icon to use for Clear Action, available when the folder name is not valid.

Be aware that the term icon is used here as a descriptive one, this property expects a single emoji or a single ThemeIcon which is a string as well, to see the list of available ThemeIcons, look at the official Visual Studio Code documentation, here,

• [responseSpeed]: ResponseSpeed = ResponseSpeed.Normal - used for controlling the response speed of the InputBox of the QuickPick. See ResponseSpeed,

• [ignoreFocusOut]: boolean = true - whether the UI should stay open even when loosing UI focus. Defaults to true,

• [showConfigButton]: boolean = false - whether to show a Config button in the top-right corner of the Picker. Defaults to false,

• [autoNavigate]: boolean = false - whether to auto navigate to a child folder when creating new child folders. Defaults to false,

• [canPick]: boolean = false - whether to enable picking of current folder in the Picker. Defaults to true,

• [onCreateFolder]: (folderPath: string) => void - called when the New Folder action is triggered, here you should put your logic for folder creation,

• [onNavigateTo]: (folderPath: string, ui: vscode.QuickPick) => void - called when the user is navigating to an arbitrary absolute path.

• [onGoUp]: (folderPath: string, ui: vscode.QuickPick) => void - called when the user has clicked on the parent folder entry, that navigates one folder up the directory tree.

• [onPickFolder]: (folderPath: string) => void - called when the user has picked a folder.

• [onError]: (error: Error) => void - called when an error has occurred.

• [onClose]: () => void - called when the user has closed the picker, either by picking a folder, creating a new one, removed focus from the UI - if applicable - ignoreFocusOut = false, or pressing Esc.

• [onConfigButton]: () => void - since v.2.0.0 a Config button is shown at the top right corner of the UI. This callback will be invoked when clicking on it.

• [onFetch]: () => void - called before the picker fetches directory entries. Most likely this callback will be removed.

• [onUnspecifiedAction]: (ui: vscode.QuickPick) => void - called when there is no action specified. This callback might be triggered in some rare cases - might be removed.

Example

then call it inside your extension's code,

// some magic code 🔮

showFolderPicker(directory, {
  iconFolder: '⚡',
  iconFolderUp: '🔼',
  ignoreFocusOut: true,
})

// even more magic code ✨

Demo

Actions

🎯 Create

🎯 Navigate