Please provide autocomplete for <reference> and import paths

[NoelAbrahams]

Hi,

Visual Studio (2013 Ultimate) provides intellisense for the src attribute for script elements, by reading the file system and displaying available files or folders.

It will be quite useful if similar functionality can be provided for <reference> and import statements:

 <reference path="foo/    <--- here

import foo = require('foo/   <--- and here

[basarat]

👍

[basarat]

@NoelAbrahams btw resharper will do that for you :

[NoelAbrahams]

@basarat, interesting. Never used resharper and don't think that's going to change. So for anti-third party tool people like myself I hope this will go into the VS plugin. 😄

[DanielRosenwasser]

👍

[basarat]

@NoelAbrahams btw atom-typescript will complete your references : https://github.com/TypeStrong/atom-typescript#relative-paths

and even autocomplete external module "name" and "./path"s 🌹

[DanielRosenwasser]

I don't know whether @ahmad-farid has actually gotten the chance to start on this, but @basarat, is this functionality something you think you could potentially contribute to TypeScript itself, or is it more tightly coupled to atom-typescript?

[basarat]

is it more tightly coupled to atom-typescript

Tightly coupled in that I do poor tokenization to detect these :
https://github.com/TypeStrong/atom-typescript/blob/d5fb4707b989f15d3be8d57cfa28d88af50b4702/lib/main/atom/typescriptGrammar.ts#L68-L76

The code to get these results is a bit simpler

• relative paths for reference / imports : https://github.com/TypeStrong/atom-typescript/blob/d5fb4707b989f15d3be8d57cfa28d88af50b4702/lib/main/lang/projectService.ts#L865-L871
• external modules names lookup : I actually asked and got this simple function : Question: Lookup external module names #2593 (comment)

Doesn't have to be tightly coupled. But that's just how I wrote it as a TypeScript consumer and there can't be a copy paste PR.

If someone were to PR this they would do the am I in a reference comment/import string? detection on getCompletionInfo and then do the lookups there.

Also more possible hoops : #2173 (comment)

[gautamsi]

Can you not drag and drop for that seems far easier.

for import autocomplete I would suggest having another feature like "Copy Import Reference" in solution explorer right click on file and then paste this in file which would write like 'import fileName = require("../dir/filename");'. This should keep track of relative paths and file name casing.

if someone can guide me where should I look for it in this source, I can try to add on.

[danquirk]

The Visual Studio related code you would need to modify to make changes like this aren't open source at the moment.

We actually had drag and drop /// reference generation at some point but it's highly undiscoverable and doesn't scale very well (do you really want to drag and drop 5+ items from disparate parts of your solution in folders that may be closed in solution explorer?).

In any case, those sorts of interactions would be nice but it should also be easier to do in a keyboard focused workflow which autocomplete would help with.