Is it possible to call commands between extensions in VSCode?

Question

For example, there are two VSCode extensions:

extension1 has registered command exCommand1
extension2 has registered command exCommand2

According to documentation, a VSCode extension can call commands (ref: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/extensionAPI/vscode-api)

executeCommand<T>(command: string, ...rest: any[]): Thenable<T | undefined>

If API Doc is correct then

extension1 can call exCommand2 provided by extension2
extension2 can call exCommand1 provided by extension1

But, VSCode's extensions are lazily loaded, so how does one call a command from another extension that may not already be loaded?

Alex · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-16 15:34:40Z

34

I know this is an old post, if you still have the same requirement or for others googling, this is how I have done it.

var xmlExtension =  vscode.extensions.getExtension( 'DotJoshJohnson.xml' );

// is the ext loaded and ready?
if( xmlExtension.isActive == false ){
    xmlExtension.activate().then(
        function(){
            console.log( "Extension activated");
            // comment next line out for release
            findCommand(); 
            vscode.commands.executeCommand("xmlTools.formatAsXml");
        },
        function(){
            console.log( "Extension activation failed");
        }
    );   
} else {
    vscode.commands.executeCommand("xmlTools.formatAsXml");
}


// dev helper function to dump all the command identifiers to the console
// helps if you cannot find the command id on github.
var findCommand = function(){
    vscode.commands.getCommands(true).then( 
        function(cmds){
            console.log("fulfilled");
            console.log(cmd);
        },
        function() {
            console.log("failed");
            console.log(arguments);
        }
    )
};

edited Jan 16, 2019 at 15:34

Alex

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answered Sep 1, 2017 at 13:36

Mesh

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2 Comments

zanedp Over a year ago

A brief stumbling block for me was figuring out what exactly to pass to vscode.extensions.getExtension(). To get a list of extension IDs, you can use vscode.extensions.all.map(x => x.id). They are of the form <extension publisher>.<extension name>.

Alex Over a year ago

I'm not the one that answered the question. You can try to pass them as a second parameter vscode.commands.executeCommand("xmlTools.formatAsXml", HERE); but no idea if it works between extensions.

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