How to get the Multi Selected files from the File Explorer in an extension command - visual-studio-code

Question

In package.json you can add a command to the File Explorer context menu.
In File Explorer you can select multiple files but my command only gets the last selected file URI as argument.
Can I get a list of all the selected files in the File Explorer?

Answer 1

You could look at my extension Find and Transform to see how I parse multiple files when an explorer context menu command is triggered. [There is some extra code in there because that command can be triggered by a keybinding or explorer/editor/tab menus so they have to be handled differently.]
let contextMenuCommandFile = vscode.commands.registerCommand('find-and-transform.searchInFile', async (...commandArgs) => {
let args = {};
if (commandArgs?.length === 1 && !(commandArgs[0] instanceof vscode.Uri)) { // if from keybinding
let argsArray = Object.entries(commandArgs[0]).filter(arg => {
return searchCommands.getKeys().includes(arg[0]);
});
Object.assign(args, Object.fromEntries(argsArray));
}
args.filesToInclude = await parseCommands.parseArgs(commandArgs, "file");
args.triggerSearch = true;
searchCommands.useSearchPanel(args);
});
context.subscriptions.push(contextMenuCommandFile);
You might be missing this async (...commandArgs) => { to get all available passed arguments into an array.
...commandArgs will be of length 1 if coming from a keybinding and length 2 if trigggered from the context menu no matter how many files were selected in the Explorer before right-clicking on one and choosing the command.
commandArgs[0] is the single file (i.e., the last file) on which I right-clicked.
commandsArgs[1] is itself an array of all the selected files in the explorer.
I then send that commandArgs array to be parsed (since I just need a comma-separated list of the files selected) to parseCommands.parseArgs() [okay, strangely-named function!).
The operative bit there is:
else if (commandArgs[1][0] instanceof vscode.Uri) { // explorer/context
for (const resource of commandArgs[1]) {
const thisResource = vscode.workspace.asRelativePath(resource.fsPath);
resources += `${ thisResource }, `;
}
resources = resources.substring(0, resources.length - 2); // strip ', ' off end
return resources;
}