ImpactLens — Salesforce Dependency Analyzer

Fast, intelligent search and impact analysis for Salesforce DX projects — right inside VS Code.

Demo

Search → Results → Impact Analysis — all in one click.

Features

🔍 Advanced Search Panel

Search across your entire Salesforce project with a fast, full-featured webview panel.

• 30 metadata types — Apex Classes, Triggers, LWC, Aura, Flows, Validation Rules, Workflow Rules, Custom Objects, Custom Fields, Custom Metadata, Permission Sets, Profiles, Layouts, Reports, Email Templates, Named Credentials, Platform Events, Visualforce Pages & Components, Custom Labels, Static Resources, FlexiPage, Approval Processes, Sharing Rules, Record Types, Quick Actions, Global Value Sets, Custom Settings
• Filter presets — one-click All, Source (Apex + LWC + Aura + Flows), Metadata (Objects + Permissions + Labels), or Clear Filters
• Exact match toggle — switch between fuzzy/smart and strict whole-word matching
• Term highlighting — matched words highlighted in file names and code previews
• Live summary pills — Total / Visible / Page range / Exact Mode indicator
• Smart tokenization — understands camelCase, PascalCase, __c, and dot-separated API names
• Fuzzy + prefix matching — finds results even with partial names or minor typos

📄 Results Table

• Column sorting — click any header to sort asc/desc; indicator arrow shown
• Table filter — live narrow across all columns simultaneously
• Click-to-open — click any filename to jump directly to that line in the editor
• Pagination — numbered page buttons ‹ 1 … 4 5 6 … 20 › with First/Last and jump-to-page
• Page size — 10 / 50 / 100 results per page
• State persistence — sort, filter, page, and all toggle states survive panel hide/show cycles

⚡ Impact Analysis & Risk Scoring

Analyze the blast radius of changing a field, object, class, or any metadata element.

• Multi-hop traversal — follows transitive dependencies up to 5 hops deep (configurable via sfSearch.impactDepth)
• Cycle detection — automatically detects and reports circular dependencies
• Risk scoring (0-100) — composite score based on reference count, file spread, depth, and type-weighted severity; mapped to Low / Medium / High / Critical levels
• Color-coded risk badge in the sidebar summary (green → orange → red → error)
• Export reports — CSV, JSON, or Markdown via ImpactLens: Export Impact Report command
• Sidebar tree view with click-to-navigate, rich tooltips, and dependency depth tracking
• Test classes weighted at 0.3× to avoid inflating production risk scores

🔎 CodeLens & Hover

• CodeLens — reference counts shown above Apex class/trigger/interface declarations and LWC/Aura component files; click to run impact analysis. Controlled by sfSearch.enableCodeLens.
• Hover — hover over any Salesforce API name to see a mini impact summary (reference count, file count, metadata types) with clickable Search and Analyze Impact links.

🌲 Sidebar Tree Views

Two Activity Bar panels give you persistent visibility without opening the webview:

Search Results tree

• Groups results by metadata type, sorted by match count (largest group first)
• Color-coded icons per type (blue = Apex, green = LWC, orange = Triggers, purple = Flows, …)
• Rich Markdown tooltip: file, line, object, relevance score, relative path, snippet
• Friendly "Run a search to see results here" placeholder

Impact Analysis tree

• Root node → dependency chain expandable to any depth
• Type-aware icons resolved from the node's metadata type string
• Smart child sort: deeper dependency chains first, then by reference count
• Reference count + line number shown in VS Code's description field

⚡ Performance

• Worker thread indexing — file parsing runs on a background thread; UI stays responsive
• MiniSearch full-text index with custom camelCase/underscore tokenizer
• Dual-strategy search — precise reference-graph lookup merged with full-text recall, deduplicated by filePath:line
• Persistent cache — index saved to context.globalStorageUri/search-index.json and reloaded on restart (no re-parse on every open)
• Incremental updates — FileSystemWatcher triggers targeted re-index; mtime check prevents redundant work
• Debounced file watching — configurable delay prevents index churn during batch saves

⌨️ Keyboard Shortcuts (Search Panel)

Requirements

• VS Code 1.74+
• A Salesforce DX project with sfdx-project.json in the workspace root

Getting Started

1. Open a Salesforce DX project folder in VS Code
2. The extension activates automatically when sfdx-project.json is detected
3. Watch the status bar — indexing runs in the background (first run may take a few seconds)
4. Press Cmd+Shift+P (macOS) / Ctrl+Shift+P (Windows/Linux) → ImpactLens: Open Search Panel
5. Type any field name, class name, object API name, or keyword and press Enter

Commands

Quick Reference

Detailed Usage

🔍 Open Search Panel

Cmd+Shift+P → ImpactLens: Open Search Panel — or click the ImpactLens status bar item.

Opens the full-featured search webview. Type any Salesforce API name, field, class name, or keyword and press Enter. Refine results with the filter presets and the match-mode toggles:

• Precise (default) — matches the whole identifier or any dot/underscore segment. Account matches Account and Account.Name, but not AccountService.
• Broad (contains) — matches any name that contains your query (wider recall, noisier).
• Exact match — case-insensitive equality only.

Results are displayed in a sortable, filterable table with click-to-open navigation.

🔍 Search Selection or Word at Cursor

Right-click in editor → ImpactLens: Search Selection or Word at Cursor — or via Command Palette.

Grabs your selected text, or the word/dotted name (e.g., Account.Status__c) under the cursor, and opens the search panel with results pre-populated.

Example: Place the cursor on Status__c → right-click → Search Selection or Word at Cursor → see every Apex class, flow, validation rule, and layout that references that field.

⚡ Analyze Impact

Cmd+Shift+P → ImpactLens: Analyze Impact — right-click in any editor — click a CodeLens reference count — or click Analyze Impact in a hover tooltip.

Analyzes the blast radius of a metadata element from multiple entry points:

• CodeLens click: analyzes the class/component where the CodeLens appears.
• Hover link click: analyzes the API name you hovered over.
• Editor / Command palette: uses selection → word at cursor → input box (smart fallback chain).

Results appear in the Impact Analysis sidebar tree with risk scoring, reference counts, and a color-coded risk badge.

Example: Select Account.Industry in an Apex class → right-click → Analyze Impact → see all files that reference that field across your project.

♻️ Rebuild Index

Cmd+Shift+P → ImpactLens: Rebuild Index — or click the ↻ button in the Search Results view toolbar.

Forces a full re-index of all Salesforce metadata files. Use this if:

• You pulled new metadata from your org
• The index seems stale or incomplete
• You switched branches with significant changes

📤 Export Impact Report

Cmd+Shift+P → ImpactLens: Export Impact Report — or click the ↓ button in the Impact Analysis view toolbar.

Exports the last impact analysis as Markdown, CSV, or JSON. Opens the exported content in a new editor tab — save it to share with your team.

Prerequisite: Run an impact analysis first (the command will tell you if no report exists).

📤 Export Search Results

Cmd+Shift+P → ImpactLens: Export Search Results — or click the ↓ button in the Search Results view toolbar.

Exports the current search results as Markdown, CSV, or JSON. Useful for documentation, code reviews, or sharing findings.

📜 Search History

Cmd+Shift+P → ImpactLens: Search History

Shows a quick-pick list of your recent searches with result counts and timestamps. Select any entry to re-run that search instantly.

🔎 CodeLens (Automatic)

When editing Apex classes, triggers, LWC, or Aura components, you'll see a reference count above each declaration:

  ▶ $(references) 12 references    ← click to run impact analysis
  public class AccountService {

Controlled by sfSearch.enableCodeLens setting. Disable if you find it distracting.

💬 Hover Tooltips (Automatic)

Hover over any Salesforce API name (Account, Status__c, MyApexClass) to see:

• Reference count — how many times it's referenced
• File count — how many files reference it
• Types — which metadata types reference it
• Clickable Search and Analyze Impact links

Extension Settings

Architecture

src/
├── extension.ts              # Activation, command registration, provider wiring
├── models/
│   ├── searchResult.ts       # MetadataType, RiskLevel, ExportFormat enums; interfaces
│   ├── dependencyNode.ts     # DependencyNode, DependencyEdge, DependencyGraph types
│   └── index.ts              # Re-exports
├── indexing/
│   ├── fileParser.ts         # Regex + XML reference extraction (Apex, LWC, Aura, VF, Flow)
│   ├── tokenize.ts           # Shared tokenizers (full-text recall + precise lookup)
│   ├── indexWorker.ts        # Worker thread entry point
│   └── metadataIndexer.ts    # Orchestrator: file discovery, parsing, MiniSearch + lookup index
├── search/
│   ├── searchEngine.ts       # Dual-strategy search, export, search history
│   └── impactAnalyzer.ts     # Multi-hop impact analysis, risk scoring, export
├── services/
│   └── salesforceService.ts  # SF CLI (execFile), Tooling API, parallel org cache
└── ui/
    ├── searchPanel.ts        # Webview panel (HTML/CSS/JS, ~1600 lines)
    ├── resultsView.ts        # TreeView sidebar: search results grouped by type
    ├── impactView.ts         # TreeView sidebar: impact dependency tree + risk badges
    ├── codeLensProvider.ts   # Reference count CodeLens for Apex/LWC/Aura
    └── hoverProvider.ts      # Mini impact summary hover for SF API names

Release Notes

See CHANGELOG.md for full version history.

3.1.0 — Precise-by-default search (with Broad & Exact toggles), O(1)-style reference lookups for faster search/CodeLens/Hover on large orgs, debounced index persistence, impact-analysis accuracy fixes (no more false positives/inflated risk), sidebar fixes for org results, commands consolidated 12 → 7, sfSearch.enableHover setting, one-click Connected-Org enablement, and a Vitest test suite.

3.0.0 — Multi-hop impact analysis (up to 5 hops), cycle detection, risk scoring (Low/Medium/High/Critical), CodeLens & Hover providers, Visualforce parser, 6 new metadata types, export (CSV/JSON/Markdown), search history, security hardening (execFile), parallel org cache.

2.0.0 — Org search via Salesforce Tooling API, SalesforceService layer, CLI detection, org cache with per-type progress, search mode toggle.

1.1.0 — Major UI polish: filter presets, exact match toggle, term highlighting, numbered pagination with jump-to-page, state persistence, color-coded sidebar icons, rich Markdown tooltips, impact analysis sidebar overhaul.

1.0.0 — Initial release with full-text search, impact analysis, worker-thread indexing, and persistent cache.

License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.