DolphinDB VSCode Extension

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VSCode is a lightweight, high-performance and highly extensible code editor developed by Microsoft. It provides a powerful plugin framework, developers can extend the functionality of the VSCode editor by writing extensions, and even support new programming languages.

DolphinDB has developed this VSCode extension for the DolphinDB database, adding support for the self-developed DolphinDB scripting language in VSCode, allowing users to write and execute scripts to operate the database or view the data in the database.

Features

• Code highlighting
• Code completion for keywords, constants, built-in functions
• Documentation hints, parameter hints for built-in functions
• The terminal can display the results of code execution and the messages output by the print function
• Display data structures such as tables, vectors, matrices, etc. in tabular form in the bottom panel
• Manage multiple database connections in the side panel, showing session variables
• Display table in browser popup

Getting Started

1. Install or upgrade VSCode to the latest version (above v1.68.0)

https://code.visualstudio.com/

2. Install this extension

Search for dolphindb in the VSCode plugin panel, click install

If the installation fails due to network reasons, you can go to the page below to manually download the plugin with the suffix .vsix, and drag it to the VSCode plugin panel after downloading.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=dolphindb.dolphindb-vscode

Click on Version History to download the latest version locally

After installing the plugin, please completely quit all windows of VSCode and reopen VSCode, otherwise you may not be able to view the variables in the browser (see below)

3. View and edit server connection configuration

Connections can be viewed in the DOLPhinDB area of the EXPLORER panel on the left side of the VSCode editor

After the plugin is successfully installed, the DOLPHIDB area below will be added to the EXPLORER panel

Edit connections

Click File > Preferences > Settings in the menu bar or press the shortcut Ctrl + Comma to open the VSCode settings
Enter dolphindb in the search box, click edit in settings.json below, and edit the dolphindb.connections configuration item in the settings.json configuration file jumped to.
The dolphindb.connections configuration item is an array of objects.
There are four connection configurations by default. You can modify or add connection objects according to the situation. name and url attributes are required (different connection objects must have different name), by default the admin account is automatically logged in.
Move the mouse over an attribute to view the description of the corresponding attribute.

4. Open or create a DolphinDB script file

• If the script file name is suffixed with .dos (short for DolphinDB Script), the plugin will automatically recognize the DolphinDB language, and automatically enable syntax highlighting, code completion, and prompts
• If the script file name is not .dos suffix, such as .txt suffix, you need to manually associate the DolphinDB language, the method is as follows:

Click the language selection button in the status bar in the lower right corner of the VSCode editor, as shown below
Enter dolphindb in the language selection pop-up box and press Enter to switch the language associated with the current file to the DolphinDB language

5. Press the shortcut key Ctrl + E to execute the code

In the opened DolphinDB script file, you can press the shortcut key Ctrl + E to send the code to the DolphinDB Server for execution. When the code is executed for the first time, it will automatically connect to the selected connection in the DOLPhinDB area

• If there is currently selected code, the selected code will be sent to DolphinDB Server for execution
• If there is no currently selected code, the line where the current cursor is will be sent to DolphinDB Server for execution

After the code is executed, there will be text-based output in the terminal below the VSCode editor. If the last statement of the executed code returns a table, array, or matrix, it will be displayed in the form of a table in the DolphinDB area of the lower panel of the VSCode editor. Data structures such as tables, vectors, matrices, etc. It is recommended to drag the content of the DolphinDB tab to the right side of the terminal, as shown below

If there is a server connection error (eg: ws://192.168.1.111:8848 errored), you can first try to access the corresponding server address with a browser http://192.168.1.111:8848
If you can open the web page and use it normally, check again:

• Execute the version() function, the returned version of DolphinDB Server should not be lower than 1.30.16 or 2.00.4
• If there is a configured system proxy, the proxy software and proxy server need to support WebSocket connections, otherwise please turn off the proxy in the system, or add the DolphinDB Server IP to the exclusion list, and then restart VSCode

VSCode has a memory limit of about 1 GB. It is recommended to use limit to limit the number of returned records; or assign the result to a variable, such as a = select * from, then click the button next to the sidebar variable to perform paging lazy loading, and retrieve a single page of data as needed

(If you need to customize the shortcut keys, you can also modify them in File > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts in VSCode, enter dolphindb, find execute, double-click, and enter the shortcut key you want)

(In order to display data in the browser, each VSCode window will start a local HTTP server, whose ports can be configured through dolphindb.ports configuration. The default is8321-8420. Suspend mouse on ports to view detailed explanation.)

6. Switch connections and view session variables for connections in the DOLPHIDB area of the EXPLORER panel on the left side of the VSCode editor

As shown in the figure below, it has the following functions:

• Switch the connection used to execute the code (the original connection will not be disconnected)
• Click the button to the right of the connection to manually disconnect
• View the value of the session variable
• Variables other than scalar, pair have two icons to the right
  • Click the icon on the left to view the variables in the DolphinDB area of the lower panel of the editor
  • Click the icon on the right to directly open a browser pop-up window and view the variables in the pop-up window (you need to configure the browser to allow the pop-up window, see later). The popup function requires an open DolphinDB Data Browser tab in the browser (the URL may be http://localhost:8321/). If this tab is missing, the plugin will automatically open this page first.

Please configure your browser to allow this website to display pop-ups

7. Expand function documentation

When entering a DolphinDB built-in function in the VSCode editor, click the arrow to the right of the function to expand the function's documentation

After the function input is complete, hover the mouse over the function name to view the function documentation

User Manual

https://github.com/dolphindb/Tutorials_EN/blob/master/vscode_extension.md