The Ballerina extension for Visual Studio Code

The Ballerina extension for Visual Studio Code provides a set of rich language features along with an enhanced user experience.

It offers easy development, execution, debugging, and testing for the Ballerina programming language. The Ballerina language possesses a bidirectional mapping between its syntaxes and the visual representation. You can visualize the graphical representation of your Ballerina source further via the extension.

Quick start

Follow the steps below to get the Ballerina VS Code extension up and running.

1. Install the extension.
2. Run a program.

Features

The main functionalities of the extension are listed below.

Code editing

Use the following features of this extension to edit Ballerina code via the VS Code extension.

• IntelliSense
• Code navigation
• Code actions
• Diagnostics
• Commands

Visual programming

The VS Code extension allows you to visualize a program written in Ballerina as a graphical representation of the code. This graphical view displays the logic and network interaction of a function or a service resource, which makes it easy to understand the source.

• Sequence Diagram
• Architecture Diagram
• Data Mapper
• HTTP API Designer
• GraphQL Designer
• Type Diagram

Debugging capabilities

Use the following features to debug your Ballerina programs via the VS Code extension.

• Debug using CodeLens
• Debug using configurations
• Set up debugging configurations
• Use the debugging features

Notebooks

Use the following features to work with Ballerina notebooks via the VS Code extension.

• Create a notebook
• Execute the code
• Edit the code
• View variables
• Debug notebooks

Configure the extension

You can configure the Ballerina VS Code extension to get a custom user experience. For more details, see Configure the extension.

Troubleshoot

For troubleshooting, see the Ballerina output. To view the Ballerina output tab, click View, click Output, and select Ballerina from the output list. It provides additional information if the plugin fails to detect a Ballerina distribution.

You can also enable the debug logs from the Ballerina extension settings to view any issues arising from the extension features.

Documentation

The Ballerina VS Code Extension Documentation describes the functionalities of this extension in detail.