Advanced New File +

Forked from VSCode's Advanced New File extension, this updated version adds the ability to create files anywhere in your workspace with keyboard.

Fork Improvements & Optimizations

This fork introduces several enhancements and optimizations over the original extension:

• Better handling of ignored paths

  Thanks to node-ignore the extension now faithfully follows gitignore semantics, including negation (!), which wasn't respected in the original version, making rules like this correctly handled:

  wp-content/*
  !wp-content/themes/
  

• Modern UI and improved creation flow

  Replaced the InputBox with QuickPick for a more streamlined experience. Files can now be created directly without selecting a base directory first. Non-existent base directories are also supported and will be created automatically.

• Removed lodash dependency

  Reduced bundle size from ~1.74 MB to under 300 KB, eliminating unnecessary library bloat. All sorting and utility functions now use native JavaScript.

• Other minor touch-ups

  Updated dependencies, simplified logic, and improved typings for safer and more maintainable code.

These changes make the extension lighter, faster, and more accurate when scanning workspace paths for file creation.

Features

• Fuzzy-matching autocomplete to create new file relative to existing path (thanks to JoeNg93 for making it faster)
• Create new directories while creating a new file
• Create a directory instead of a file by suffixing the file path with / as in somedirectory/ to create the directory (thanks to maximilianschmitt)
• Ignores gitignored and workspace files.exclude settings.
• Additional option of adding advancedNewFile.exclude settings to workspace settings just like native files.exlude except it explicitly effects AdvancedNewFile plugin only. (thanks to Kaffiend)
• Control the order of top convenient options ("last selection", "current file", etc) via config setting advancedNewFile.convenienceOptions
• Brace expansion - expand braces into multiple files. Entering index.{html,css} will create and open index.html and index.css. (thanks to chuckhendo and timlogemann)

Configuration Example

"advancedNewFile.exclude": {
  "node_modules": true,
  "node_modules_electron": true,
  "dev": true,
  "dist": true
},
"advancedNewFile.showInformationMessages": true,
"advancedNewFile.convenienceOptions": ["last", "current", "root"],
"advancedNewFile.expandBraces": false

Usage

• Command palette: "Advanced New File"
• Keyboard shortcut: ⌘ ⌥ N (Mac), Ctrl Alt N (Win, Linux)

Keybindings

You can add your own keybinding in your keybindings.json

{
  "key": "ctrl+n", // "cmd+n" on mac
  "command": "extension.advancedNewFile",
}

Contributing

1. Clone the repo
2. npm install
3. Add your feature or fix (in src/) with test coverage (in test/)
4. Launch the extension and do some manual QA (via Debug > Launch Extension)
5. npm test
6. Run the linter: npm run lint
7. Open a PR