[Proposal] Display all properties (inherited or not) of a given class (in TypeScript)

[waderyan]

From @yahiko00 on September 4, 2016 21:56

Visual Studio Code is a fantastic tool and I am really impressed by all its features despite being quite young.

There is a feature that does not still exists in VS Code which could be really convenient when we are forced to deal with big inheritance hierarchies.

This proposal is based on the TypeScript language, but I am quite sure this could apply to other OOP languages VS Code supports.

Overview of the Workflow

Let us assume we have a source file animal.ts like this:

// animal.ts

abstract class Animal {
    private dna: number;
    name: string;

    constructor(name: string) {
        this.dna = Math.random();
        this.name = name;
    }

    abstract shout(): string;
}

This file could be open or not in VS Code, but it is part of the current project.

Let us assume we have another source file bird.ts like this:

// bird.ts

class Bird extends Animal {
    constructor() {
        super();
        this.name = "Hector";
    }
    shout(): string {
        return "Cuicui!"; // sorry it is in French... I do not know how a bird shouts in English ^_^
    }
}

This file is open in VS Code.

What I would like to be able to do in VS Code is displaying all properties, inherited or not, available for the class Bird.

To do so, we could move the cursor on the Bird identifier, press F1 key, and run a new Display all inherited properties command.

This new command would open a new file in a new tab called Bird (all inherited properties).

In this example, the content of this file would be the following:

class Bird {
    private dna: number;
    name: string;

    super.constructor(name: string) {
        this.dna = Math.random();
        this.name = name;
    }

    constructor() {
        super();
        this.name = "Hector";
    }

    shout(): string {
        return "Cuicui!";
    }
}

The content of Bird (all inherited properties) has nothing to do with valid syntax. Its purpose is only informational.

Some informal rules

• Attributes should be displayed first.
• Type anotations should be rendered unchanged.
• Access modifiers public, protected, private should be rendered unchanged.
• Abstract methods which are not overriden should be rendered.
• All versions of an overriden method should be rendered, with a concatenation of super prefixes to distinguish each version in the inheritance hierarchy. For instance super.method() would refer to immediate method()'s parent, whereas super.super.method() would refer to method()'s grand-parent, and so on.
• Method()'s parent should be displayed before the method() itself.
• The same rules for method() apply to constructor().

Copied from original issue: microsoft/vscode#11526

[waderyan]

@dbaeumer this request seems valid to me. Is this something I should feed to TypeScript or is this a feature we would implement on our end (possibly both)?

[waderyan]

From @dbaeumer on September 7, 2016 8:36

@waderyan this needs work on both ends. First the tsserver has to expose a corresponding API and then we need to adopt it. So we need to feed the request to the TS team as well.

[mhegazy]

How this different from completion with this. or new Bird().?

[waderyan]

Ping @yahiko00

[yahiko00]

Well, I am not an expert of TS Services, but I would say completion could help to retrieve property names and signatures (which is nice already), but I am unsure completion would help to retrieve actual code content of methods.

[mhegazy]

but I am unsure completion would help to retrieve actual code content of methods

not sure i understand what you mean by that.

[waderyan]

@yahiko00, @mhegazy's question is, are you not already getting all inherited properties provided by IntelliSense with this.?