How to access URL params from the context of a vscode extension?

[protozoo]

I am developing a vscode extension intended to run in the browser with codeserver. I need to access the browser's url params (window.location.search). Specifically, I need to read the "folder" param. the vscode module doesn't seem to expose any relevant object for that purpose. Any hints on this? Thanks in advance

[code-asher]

code-server puts the last used query params in ~/.local/share/code-server/coder.json so you could read that but it is not an official API.

However if you just need the current folder/workspace(s) you could try https://code.visualstudio.com/api/references/vscode-api#workspace.workspaceFolders

[protozoo]

thanks a lot for your reply @code-asher. Unfortunately I don't seem to have a code.json file in that location, I only see a folder named "coder-logs" with a couple of log files.

I am now using the workspaceFolders as you suggested, which I think works well enough for my use case, although it can be problematic when a user adds more folders to the workspace (I am only interested in the "main" one, meaning the one being set by the "folder" query param.

[code-asher]

Oh weird, coder.json should be there since v4.0.1 I believe. It defaults to the data directory, do you have it set to something else? If not then I am not sure where it could be. It might not exist until code-server is accessed via the browser at least once.

Thinking about it more though, using folder will not work anyway. There are two query parameters that determine what VS Code will open: folder and workspace. folder always means one folder and workspace means one or more.

1. When the user clicks "add folder to workspace" VS Code redirects, removing folder and adding workspace, so there would not even be a folder to use.
2. When opening a workspace there is no way to tell which the user thinks is most important so you probably have to handle them all.
3. In the case where both folder and workspace exist in the URL (the only way is if the user types this manually) then it looks like VS Code will take the last one, so even if folder is set it might not even be what is actually opened in the editor, since it might not be part of workspace.

[protozoo]

I see... Ok no prob, I think our current implementation works for our use case by using folder naming convention. Thanks a lot for your help, it's much appreciated :)