alexa-presentation-language-preview

VSCode extension for previewing APL document https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=YoshiakiYamada.alexa-presentation-language-preview

What is it

This extension is for previewing the doument that is written by Amazon Presentation Language (APL).

This extension supports live preview updating. So you can edit and check APL easily.

How to use it

Generate new directive from template

Call Create new APL directive and preview window command from Command Palette. Then generate new untitled file with the template directive.

Show preview of the APL directive file

Open APL document json file on the VSCode, then call Preview Amazon Presentation Language command from Command Pallete.

You can change viewport size by selecting viewport on the status bar.

Refresh preview

APL Preview will refresh each time when you save json file. So if you want to debug onMount or other commands which are called when show the document, just save json file again.

APL Document component tree

You can see APL DOCUMENT TREE and APL COMPONENT DETAILS tree view in EXPLORER tab. APL DOCUMENT TREE shows component structure of the document. And APL COMPONENT DETAILS shows properties of the component you selected on the APL DOCUMENT TREE

usage-of-apl-component-tree-view.mp4

Local package import

This extension supports to import APL package from local directory.

If you don't know about APL package, please read this document at first. https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/alexa-presentation-language/apl-package.html

You can import APL package from local directory by setting path to source property. For example, extension will import your-own-package from ./your-own-package.json. You can set full path for source also. Now don't support ~/ like expression. Will support in the future.

{
  "import": [
    {
      "name": "your-own-package",
      "source": "./your-own-package.json",
      "version": "1.0"
    },
    {
      "name": "alexa-layouts",
      "version": "1.5.0"
    }
  ]
}

This is the detail document of import section. https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/alexa-presentation-language/apl-document.html#import

Extension just read file contents and integrate to original APL json file. So it may not same as actual import mechanism of APL. Please remain it if something happens.

Demo

You can see demo only in https://github.com/ysak-y/alexa-presentation-language-preview

movie.mp4

Future works

• Refactor AplPreviewWebviewPanel to extract some logics from configureDidReceiveMessageCallback