Feature Request: Open new file buffer via API

[Jakobud]

• VSCode Version: 1.5.2
• OS Version: OSX 10.10.5, Win 7 x64

Is it possible to open a new file buffer via the API? Essentially, when you use your mouse (or keyboard shortcuts) and goto File menu > New File, it creates a new Untitled file buffer in the workspace. When you Save the file, it opens a Save File dialog where you choose where to save it along with the filename. Is it possible to create a new file buffer in this same manner via the API? If not, can this feature be added?

I have messed around with the API quite a bit in this area and if it is currently possible, it's not clear in the documentation.

I know you can do this:

window.openTextDocument(Uri.parse("untitled:c:\\project\\myfile.txt"))
  .then((document) => {
    window.showTextDocument(document);
  });

But this requires that you specify the file path for this new "untitled" file. When you hit save, it forces the file to be saved at "c:\project\myfile.txt". The user is not given the chance to specify where to save the file or what filename to give it.

To make a long story short, I essentially want the same functionality as going to File menu > New File. Does that make sense?

[jrieken]

@bpasero is working on this

[bpasero]

@jrieken the one (little) challenging thing is that in ensureDocumentData we seem to need the URI upfront, but if we have untitled:// the URI is only known at a later point. I would need to return the URI from $tryOpenDocument but that code runs async because it needs to talk to the main side where the untitled URI is basically being created.

[jrieken]

Yeah, we could check if only the scheme is set and then immediately call another method that simply creates a new document. Tho saying that makes me think if we should just expose that directly
on the API. Something like createTextDocument(language:string, ...)? That will be easier to understand than the scheme-only uri's

[bpasero]

@jrieken I like the more explicit createTextDocument without URI, let me try to sketch something up so we can discuss further via PR.

[llali]

@bpasero your proposal in #17917 sounds great. The only question would be the name of the file when the language is specified. The untitled document command right now creates documents as "Untitled-1", Untitled-2" ...
it would be nice to have an option to have different names for untitled document if it has specific language. For example for SQL documents it would be "SQLQuery-1", "SQLQuery-2" ...

[bpasero]

Not sure about that to be fair.

[jrieken]

@bpasero re #12283 (comment) there is one catch it forget to mention. We have a rule that createXYZ-functions are ctor replacements for interfaces we own. The consequence is that they must return sync and cannot return a promise with the result. That might make things more complicated and if it becomes to hard we should thing another overload of openTextDocument

[bpasero]

A new overload was added to the openTextDocument method that allows to open an untitled document with optional language. For example you can call:

openTextDocument({ language: 'xml' })

To create a text document with XML as language. If you leave out the language options, it will just create a text document with plain text language.

[llali]

@bpasero so the openTextDocument gets an uri now which has to be a valid path even if it's untitled. is it going to be the same or with the new option if I don't pass any uri it would be untitled?

[bpasero]

@llali with the new API you no longer pass in a URI and you end up exactly in the same spot as if a user would have hit CtrlCmd+N to open a new untitled file. The optional language ID can be used to define the language of that document upfront.

[bpasero]

• To verify:
  A new overload was added to the openTextDocument method that allows to open an untitled document with optional language. For example you can call:

openTextDocument({ language: 'xml' })

To create a text document with XML as language. If you leave out the language options, it will just create a text document with plain text language.