Visual Studio Code Providers for language extension - visual-studio-code

Question

I am trying to learn how to implement some of the helper providers: autocomplete, signature help and hover.
I am doing it for a framework that, as far as I know, it cannot be executed outside its main application, so one way I thought to go about this (get the objects types, methods and docs) is by parsing its documentation.
For example the Hover provider; once the cursor is hovering the word, I can search for it in the documentation and display the result:
class HSHoverProvider implements vscode.HoverProvider {
public provideSignatureHelp(
document: vscode.TextDocument,
position: vscode.Position,
token: vscode.CancellationToken
): vscode.SignatureHelp {
// get current word/line under the cursor and find a match inside the docs
...
return new vscode.Hover(data);
}
}
...
context.subscriptions.push(
vscode.languages.registerHoverProvider("lua", new HSHoverProvider())
);
This works fine when the action is directly on the initial declaration. I can parse directly the line and find what I need with a regex.
-- hovering over `application`, I check the context with a regex.
local app = hs.application('Code')
However, I am having a hard time when it comes to a "reference". Searching the document for the declaration of app with a regex approach leads to many edge cases, mainly because of the declaration scope:
Example:
-- declaration target
local app = hs.application('Code')
local function foo()
local app = hs.pasteboard()
end
local function bar()
if 'foo' then
local app = hs.alert()
end
do local app = hs.window.focusedWindow() end
-- a regex will have a hard time to understand which declaration is correct
print(app:title())
end
This lead me thinking that a regex is not the appropriate solution. I also thought that implementing vscode.DefinitionProvider will give me some insight but it did not.
I've tried to look at other extensions that do already the same thing (mainly Lua Language Server by sumneko), but I am not able to understand how they went for it (besides they are using the language server approach).
How would I go for something like this? Do I need an AST tree and inspect from there? Would using the language server be a better choice? Am I missing a bigger picture or I just need a more robust document parser?
Any insight is appreciated. Thanks in advance

Answer 1

The usual approach in such cases is to create a symbol table. You start by parsing the code for which you want to provide the tooling. From the parse tree (or syntax tree, depending on the parser tool used) you generate your symbol table, which holds the informations you need, including the nesting of blocks and symbols, the type of symbols (e.g. object name or object reference) and the scope for which a symbol is valid.