Codea Air Code

This extension can connect remotely to the Codea iOS application, allowing to modify, tweak and debug Codea projects directly from Visual Studio Code. Auto-completion and documentation features similar to Codea are available while working on the projects.

Table of Contents

• Features
  • Editor
  • Sidebar
  • Debugger
• Installation
• Usage
  • Connection
  • Files and Dependencies
  • Commands
• Requirements
• License
• Change Log

Features

Editor

Once connected to Codea, Visual Studio Code will list all the projets availables with their files and dependencies, allowing modifications even if a project is running.

Auto-Completion

Auto-completion is available for the Codea API as well as symbols defined in the project and its dependencies.

Symbols

Colors

Methods such as background, fill, tint, stroke and color will show a color indicator which can be used to visualize and easily change the assigned color using VSCode's color picker.

Font and Sprites

The font and sprite functions will automatically list the fonts and sprites available for the current project.

Snippets

Snippets make it easier to format the different Lua control structures such as if, for, while and repeat.

Documentation

Types can easily be documented using a triple-slash (---) comment.

Sidebar

The Codea Sidebar gives access to Reference and Parameters sections as shown below.

Reference

The Codea Reference section of the Sidebar contains the full documentation for Codea which can be navigated by clicking on the different chapters and functions.

It is also possible to select and right click a word in a project's code to find the corresponding reference in the documentation (or using the Find reference... command), automatically focusing on the sidebar and opening the corresponding page.

Search

This extension uses a virtual File System Provider to read the files from Codea. However, VSCode does not yet support searching in files provided this way (see this issue).

Until the feature is implemented, the extension provides its own limited version which will search in all files of the currently active project.

Parameters

The second section of the Codea Sidebar will show the current parameters for the running project, if any.

All parameters can be controlled directly from Visual Studio Code even if the parameters are hidden in Codea, making it easier to tweak the projects.

Debugger

With a project running, Visual Studio Code can be used to attach to the running project and then used for debugging.

Some features such as modifying variables are not available yet but will be added in future updates of Codea and the extension.

Conditional Breakpoints

To set a condition on a breakpoint, right click a breakpoint and select Edit Breakpoint...:

Enter a valid Lua expression which must be true for the breakpoint to hit.

Installation

Search for "Codea Air Code" in Visual Studio Code's Marketplace and install the extension.

Usage

Connection

After installing the extension, open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows, ⇧⌘P on Mac), and run the Codea: Connect to Host... command to connect to a running instance of Codea on an iOS device.

After typing Enter or clicking the command, Visual Studio Code will ask for Codea's IP:

To find the device's IP to connect to, use the Air Code icon on the project selection screen in Codea. The default port is 18513.

Fun Fact

The idea for this extension started as a proof-of-concept of a browser based "Remote Console". The idea was to see a Codea project's logs and execute commands directly from a web browser.

Air Code's default port 18513 is actually based on the letters R (18) E (5) M (13), for REMote console.

Multi-window

Air Code does not currently support multiple Codea windows or running projects. For this reason, when running a project from Air Code, all windows will be closed except one before running the project.

Files and Dependencies

Files can be added, removed or renamed in Codea using the corresponding operations in Visual Studio Code.

Dependencies can be added to the active project (based on the current file being edited) using the Add dependency... command.

To remove a dependency, simply delete its corresponding folder in the Explorer.

Commands

All commands included with this extension are prefixed with Codea:.

Requirements

Codea 3.9

License

MIT License

Change Log

See the change log here