SAS Extension for Visual Studio Code

Welcome to the SAS Extension for Visual Studio Code! This extension provides support for the SAS language, including the following features:

• SAS Extension for Visual Studio Code
  • Installation
  • Features
    • SAS Syntax Highlighting
    • Color Themes
    • Code Completion
    • Pop-up Syntax Help
    • Snippets
    • Code Folding and Code Outline
    • Configuring the SAS Extension
    • Profiles
      • Profile Anatomy
      • Add New SAS Profile
      • Delete SAS Profile
      • Switch Current SAS Profile
      • Update SAS Profile
    • Running SAS Code
  • Support
    • SAS Communities
    • SAS Programming Documentation
    • FAQs
    • GitHub Issues
  • Contributing to the SAS Extension
  • License

Installation

To install the SAS extension, open the Extensions view by clicking the Extensions icon in the Activity Bar on the left side of the Visual Studio Code window. Search for the 'Official' SAS extension, and click the Install button. Once the installation is complete, the Install button changes to the Manage button.

Features

SAS Syntax Highlighting

The SAS extension highlights these syntax elements in your program, just as they would appear in a SAS editor:

• Global statements
• SAS procedures
• SAS procedure statements
• Data step definition
• Data step statements
• SAS data sets
• Macro definition
• Macro statements
• Functions
• CALL routines
• Formats and informats
• Macro variables
• SAS colors
• Style elements and style attributes
• Comment
• Various constants
• Options, enumerated option values, sub-options and sub-option values for various procedure definitions and statements

Color Themes

You can choose among three SAS-related color themes that control the color of the application and syntax elements. The SAS Light, SAS Dark and SAS High Contrast options mirror the themes available in SAS Studio.

To specify the color theme:

• Select File > Preferences > Color Theme and select the theme, by name. The image below demonstrates the process changing from SAS Light to SAS Dark.

Code Completion

The SAS extension includes automatic code completion and pop-up syntax help for SAS keywords. The autocomplete, or code completion, feature in the code editor can predict the next word that you want to enter in your SAS program. See code completion in action below.

To use the autocomplete feature:

• Start typing a valid SAS keyboard. Scroll through the pop-up list of suggested keywords by using your mouse or the up and down arrow keys.

Pop-up Syntax Help

The syntax help gets you started with a hint about the syntax or a brief description of the keyword. You can get additional help by clicking the links in the syntax help window.

To view the syntax help:

• Move the mouse pointer over a valid SAS keyword in the code.

In the following example, the help panel displays syntax help for the DATA= option in the PROC PRINT statement.

Tip: Click the links in the syntax help window to navigate to the SAS online help.

Snippets

Snippets are lines of commonly used code or text that you can insert into your program. The SAS extension includes snippets for SAS functions and procedures to facilitate writing your SAS programs.

To access the list of snippets for a function or procedure:

• Type the name of a function or procedure in your SAS program. This example shows a snippet for the PROC DS2.

Code Folding and Code Outline

Regions of code are identified in your SAS program as blocks of code that can be collapsed and expanded. You can also view an outline of your program that identifies DATA steps, procedures, macro sections, and user-defined regions of code.

Tip: You can define a custom region by adding /*region*/ and /*endregion*/ tags to the start and end of the block of code.

Configuring the SAS Extension

Before running SAS code, you must configure the SAS extension to access a SAS Viya server. You must license SAS Viya to run SAS code.

1. When first configuring, open up a file with the SAS language. "No Profile" can be located on the Status Bar located at the bottom left of your VSCode window

   

2. Either select the "No Profile" Status Bar Item or open the command palette (F1, or Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows or Linux, or Shift+CMD+P on OSX) and locate SAS: Add New Connection Profile

3. Please refer to the Add SAS Connection Profile section below to add a profile

4. After a profile is created, the Status Bar Item will be changed from "No Profile" to the name of the new profile.

   

5. If you do not want to generate results in HTML format, clear the Enable/disable ODS HTML5 output setting. This option is enabled by default.

Profiles

Profiles are easy ways to switch between multiple Viya deployments and Compute Contexts. There is no limit to the amount of profiles that can be stored.

Profiles will be stored into the VSCode settings.json file, and can be modified by hand, if needed.

The following commands are supported for profiles:

Profile Anatomy

Add New SAS Profile

Open the command palette (F1, or Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows or Linux, or Shift+CMD+P on OSX). After executing the SAS.addProfile command, complete the prompts to create a new profile. Depending on your SAS version, the values for the prompts differ slightly.

• For SAS Viya 2022.11 and later, you can leave Client ID and Client Secret prompts empty and simply press Enter. (The built-in Client ID vscode will be used.)
• For SAS Viya 2022.10 and before (including SAS Viya 3.5), you need to provide a Client ID and secret.

For more information about Client IDs and the authentication process, please see the blog post Authentication to SAS Viya: a couple of approaches. A SAS administrator can follow the Steps 1 and 2 in the post to register a new client.

Delete Connection Profile

After executing the SAS.deleteProfile command:

1. Select profile to delete from the list of profiles
2. A notification message will pop up on successful deletion

Switch Current Connection Profile

After executing the SAS.switchProfile command:

1. If no profiles can be found, the extension will ask to create a new profile
2. Select profile to set active from the list of profiles
3. The StatusBar Item will update to display the name of the selected profile

Update Connection Profile

Update profile gives the ability to modify existing profiles, including updating from password to token flow and vice versa.

After executing the SAS.updateProfile command:

1. Select profile to update from the list of profiles
2. Complete the prompts to update profile

To update the name of a profile, please delete and recreate it.

Running SAS Code

After configuring the SAS extension for your SAS environment, run your SAS program and view the log and results.

To run a SAS program:

1. Click the running man icon in the upper right corner of your SAS program window. For a secure connection to SAS Viya we use authorization code for authentication. Complete these steps to connect.

   1.1. VS Code may prompt you about opening an external web site. Click 'Open'.

   1.2. This will take you to a SAS Logon prompt. Log in with your SAS credentials.

   1.3 SAS returns an authorization code. Copy this code.

   1.4 Paste the authorization code in VS Code where indicated at the top of the screen.

2. VS Code connects to SAS Viya and runs the code.

3. The results are displayed in the application.

4. The SAS output log and error information are displayed in the applicaiton.

Note: You do not need a new authorization code for every command you run. The connection will persist and you can run more commands using the same connection.

To run a piece of SAS code:

• The Run Selected or All SAS Code command (F3) will automatically run selected code when there's a selection, and run all code when there's no selection.
• When there're multiple selections, The Run Selected or All SAS Code command will combine the code from the selections in the order in which they were selected, and then submits the combined code.
• The Run All SAS Code command (F8) will always run all code regardless of selection.

Notes:

• A new session must be created the first time you run SAS code. Connection time will vary depending on the server connection.
• Currently, only HTML output is supported. By default, the ODS HTML5 statement is added to the submitted code. Clear the Enable/disable ODS HTML5 output option in the Settings editor for the SAS extension to disable this output.
• When you click Run, the code in the active tab in the editor is submitted. Make sure that the correct tab is active when you run your program.
• To reset your connection to the SAS Viya server, run the Close Current Session command in VS Code or click the Close Current Session button next to the Run button.

Support

SAS Communities

Ask, Find, and Share on the VS Code SAS Extension on the SAS Programmers Community site.

SAS Programming Documentation

SAS Programming documentation

FAQs

Please check the FAQ page for some common questions.

GitHub Issues

See the SUPPORT.md file for information on how to open an issue against this repository.

Contributing to the SAS Extension

We welcome your contributions! Please read CONTRIBUTING.md for details on how to submit contributions to this project.

License

This project is subject to the SAS Code Extension Terms, a copy of which is included as Code_Extension_Agreement.pdf