RSpade

Rapid Single Page Application Development Environment.

rspade.org · Documentation · GitHub

RSpade is a batteries-included framework for building B2B web applications on PHP and Laravel. This repository is not an empty skeleton — clone it, start it, and you have a running multi-tenant SaaS with authentication, a client portal, file handling, background jobs, live-updating pages and a component library, which you then turn into your product.

It is deliberately opinionated: one way to build a page, one way to load a record, one way to declare who may see it. There is no build step, no watcher and no configuration layer — you edit a file and refresh the browser.

What this extension does

RSpade finds classes by name, not by path. There are no imports, no namespace declarations you write by hand, and no PSR-4 directory mapping — the framework builds a manifest of everything in your project and resolves symbols from it at runtime.

That is what makes RSpade pleasant to write and what makes a stock PHP setup useless for reading it. Your editor sees a use statement that isn't there, a class referenced from a JavaScript file that lives in PHP, and a method nothing appears to call. It flags correct code as wrong and offers no navigation.

This extension asks the running RSpade server the same questions the framework asks itself. Instead of guessing from file paths, it queries the live manifest — so navigation and formatting are as accurate as the framework's own resolution, and stay accurate as you move files around.

It activates only in an RSpade project, and it is silent everywhere else.

Navigate

Go to Definition works across the language boundary. F12 on almost any identifier resolves through the manifest:

Resolution is ordered per context — inside a .jqhtml file a bare class name tries components first, then JavaScript, then PHP, because that is the order the framework itself would resolve it in.

A file opened through a symlink redirects to its real path. system/rsx/ is a symlink to rsx/ that the framework needs; opening a file through it silently sends you to the real one, so you never edit a copy that looks right and saves to the wrong place. Any symlink inside the workspace behaves the same way - the redirect is resolved with the real path on disk, not from a list of known names.

Read

Framework attributes are highlighted — #[Ajax_Endpoint], #[Route], #[Auth], #[Auth_Realm], #[Task], #[Schedule], #[OnEvent], #[Api_Endpoint], #[Relationship] and the rest of the declarative surface are the load-bearing declarations in an RSpade class, and they read as declarations rather than as comments. A name that is not coloured is a name nothing reads.

Documentation references are clickable. rsx:man tasks in a comment, or rspade:background-tasks, is highlighted amber and F12 opens the page or the skill. It works inside the man pages themselves too, SEE ALSO rows included. Resolution is local to the workspace, so it needs no server; a topic that does not exist gets no colour, which makes a wrong reference visible as you write it.

Convention methods stop looking dead. on_app_ready(), on_app_init() and the rest of the boot chain are called by name at runtime, so every "unused method" warning about them is wrong. They get their own semantic colour and a hover explaining when the framework calls them.

jqhtml lifecycle methods are checked for the right shape. on_create(), on_render(), on_load(), on_ready() and on_stop() each have a fixed contract — some must be async, some must not be — and getting it wrong fails at runtime in ways that are tedious to trace. Declare one incorrectly and the hover tells you immediately.

that is highlighted as the convention it is, so the const that = this pattern reads distinctly from an ordinary local.

The use block is collapsed when a file opens. RSpade resolves classes by name through the manifest, so the import list is maintained for you and carries nothing you act on — in a framework class it is often longer than the code beneath it. Expand it and it stays expanded. Turn it off with rspade.foldUseStatements.

Folder colours mark rsx/ — your code — apart from system/, which is the framework and which you do not edit.

system/ is read-only. It is a git submodule that every framework update resets hard, so an edit there is destroyed on the next pull with nothing to show for it. The extension adds system/** to the workspace's files.readonlyInclude, puts a banner at the top of any framework file you open, and badges the directory FW in the explorer. Everything you want to change is changed in rsx/, with a class override. A framework-developer checkout — one whose .env carries IS_FRAMEWORK_DEVELOPER=true — is exempt, because there system/ is the source being written.

Write

PHP and Blade formatting on save, performed by the server using the project's own formatter. The result is identical to what the framework's own tooling produces, because it is the framework's own tooling — there is no second formatter configuration to keep in agreement.

Namespaces follow files that move. Drag a class in the explorer and its namespace is rewritten to match where it landed. RSpade resolves classes by name, so a stale namespace is not a compile error — it is a class that quietly stops being found. This closes that gap.

Optional: filenames follow classes. With auto_rename_files enabled in config/rsx.php, saving a file renames it to match its class name, @rsx_id or <Define:> tag, following RSX naming conventions. Off by default; files marked @FILENAME-CONVENTION-EXCEPTION are skipped.

Refactor

Three project-wide refactors, run by the framework's AST tooling rather than by find-and-replace, from the editor context menu:

• Rename class — every reference, including Rsx::Route() strings that name the controller
• Rename method — across PHP and JavaScript call sites alike
• Sort class methods — reorders a class into RSpade's conventional order

Copy Relative Path from Project Root (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+C) copies the path the framework refers to a file by, which is the one worth pasting into a comment, config or prompt.

Live git status

Files are coloured in the explorer by their git state, read from the server. On a containerised project the git history lives where the code lives, so the status is correct without a local git installation or a checkout on your own machine.

Works with the container stopped

The extension keeps track of whether the RSpade server is reachable, and pauses only the features that need it — formatting, definitions, git status, refactors. Highlighting, hovers, lifecycle checks and folder colours are computed locally and keep working.

A status bar item appears when the connection drops and reconnects on click; the extension also retries on its own. Nothing spams you with errors while the container is down.

Companion extension

Install JQHTML alongside this one for .jqhtml template syntax highlighting. The two are aware of each other: component navigation from Blade and JavaScript files uses the jqhtml extension's index when it is present.

Requirements

An RSpade project, and the RSpade development server running for the server-backed features. The extension finds the project and the server on its own — there is nothing to configure.

_{rspade.serverUrl exists as an override for unusual setups, and rspade.enableFormatOnMove turns off namespace-on-move. Neither is normally needed.}

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