rust/docs/dev/lsp-extensions.md

LSP Extensions

This document describes LSP extensions used by rust-analyzer. It's a best effort document, when in doubt, consult the source (and send a PR with clarification ;-) ). We aim to upstream all non Rust-specific extensions to the protocol, but this is not a top priority. All capabilities are enabled via experimental field of ClientCapabilities or ServerCapabilities. Requests which we hope to upstream live under experimental/ namespace. Requests, which are likely to always remain specific to rust-analyzer are under rust-analyzer/ namespace.

Snippet TextEdit

Issue: https://github.com/microsoft/language-server-protocol/issues/724

Client Capability: { "snippetTextEdit": boolean }

If this capability is set, WorkspaceEdits returned from codeAction requests might contain SnippetTextEdits instead of usual TextEdits:

interface SnippetTextEdit extends TextEdit {
    insertTextFormat?: InsertTextFormat;
}

export interface TextDocumentEdit {
	textDocument: VersionedTextDocumentIdentifier;
	edits: (TextEdit | SnippetTextEdit)[];
}

When applying such code action, the editor should insert snippet, with tab stops and placeholder. At the moment, rust-analyzer guarantees that only a single edit will have InsertTextFormat.Snippet.

Example

"Add derive" code action transforms struct S; into #[derive($0)] struct S;

Unresolved Questions

• Where exactly are SnippetTextEdits allowed (only in code actions at the moment)?
• Can snippets span multiple files (so far, no)?

CodeAction Groups

Issue: https://github.com/microsoft/language-server-protocol/issues/994

Client Capability: { "codeActionGroup": boolean }

If this capability is set, CodeAction returned from the server contain an additional field, group:

interface CodeAction {
    title: string;
    group?: string;
    ...
}

All code-actions with the same group should be grouped under single (extendable) entry in lightbulb menu. The set of actions [ { title: "foo" }, { group: "frobnicate", title: "bar" }, { group: "frobnicate", title: "baz" }] should be rendered as

💡
  +-------------+
  | foo         |
  +-------------+-----+
  | frobnicate >| bar |
  +-------------+-----+
                | baz |
                +-----+

Alternatively, selecting frobnicate could present a user with an additional menu to choose between bar and baz.

Example

fn main() {
    let x: Entry/*cursor here*/ = todo!();
}

Invoking code action at this position will yield two code actions for importing Entry from either collections::HashMap or collection::BTreeMap, grouped under a single "import" group.

Unresolved Questions

• Is a fixed two-level structure enough?
• Should we devise a general way to encode custom interaction protocols for GUI refactorings?

Parent Module

Issue: https://github.com/microsoft/language-server-protocol/issues/1002

Server Capability: { "parentModule": boolean }

This request is send from client to server to handle "Goto Parent Module" editor action.

Method: experimental/parentModule

Request: TextDocumentPositionParams

Response: Location | Location[] | LocationLink[] | null

Example

// src/main.rs
mod foo;
// src/foo.rs

/* cursor here*/

experimental/parentModule returns a single Link to the mod foo; declaration.

Unresolved Question

• An alternative would be to use a more general "gotoSuper" request, which would work for super methods, super classes and super modules. This is the approach IntelliJ Rust is takeing. However, experience shows that super module (which generally has a feeling of navigation between files) should be separate. If you want super module, but the cursor happens to be inside an overriden function, the behavior with single "gotoSuper" request is surprising.

Join Lines

Issue: https://github.com/microsoft/language-server-protocol/issues/992

Server Capability: { "joinLines": boolean }

This request is send from client to server to handle "Join Lines" editor action.

Method: experimental/joinLines

Request:

interface JoinLinesParams {
    textDocument: TextDocumentIdentifier,
    /// Currently active selections/cursor offsets.
    /// This is an array to support multiple cursors.
    ranges: Range[],
}

Response: TextEdit[]

Example

fn main() {
    /*cursor here*/let x = {
        92
    };
}

experimental/joinLines yields (curly braces are automagiacally removed)

fn main() {
    let x = 92;
}

Unresolved Question

• What is the position of the cursor after joinLines? Currently this is left to editor's discretion, but it might be useful to specify on the server via snippets. However, it then becomes unclear how it works with multi cursor.

On Enter

Issue: https://github.com/microsoft/language-server-protocol/issues/1001

Server Capability: { "onEnter": boolean }

This request is send from client to server to handle Enter keypress.

Method: experimental/onEnter

Request:: TextDocumentPositionParams

Response:

SnippetTextEdit[]

Example

fn main() {
    // Some /*cursor here*/ docs
    let x = 92;
}

experimental/onEnter returns the following snippet

fn main() {
    // Some
    // $0 docs
    let x = 92;
}

The primary goal of onEnter is to handle automatic indentation when opening a new line. This is not yet implemented. The secondary goal is to handle fixing up syntax, like continuing doc strings and comments, and escaping \n in string literals.

As proper cursor positioning is raison-d'etat for onEnter, it uses SnippetTextEdit.

Unresolved Question

• How to deal with synchronicity of the request? One option is to require the client to block until the server returns the response. Another option is to do a OT-style merging of edits from client and server. A third option is to do a record-replay: client applies heuristic on enter immediatelly, then applies all user's keypresses. When the server is ready with the response, the client rollbacks all the changes and applies the recorded actions on top of the correct response.
• How to deal with multiple carets?
• Should we extend this to arbitrary typed events and not just onEnter?

Structural Search Replace (SSR)

Server Capability: { "ssr": boolean }

This request is send from client to server to handle structural search replace -- automated syntax tree based transformation of the source.

Method: experimental/ssr

Request:

interface SsrParams {
    /// Search query.
    /// The specific syntax is specified outside of the protocol.
    query: string,
    /// If true, only check the syntax of the query and don't compute the actual edit.
    parseOnly: bool,
}

Response:

WorkspaceEdit

Example

SSR with query foo($a:expr, $b:expr) ==>> ($a).foo($b) will transform, eg foo(y + 5, z) into (y + 5).foo(z).

Unresolved Question

• Probably needs search without replace mode
• Needs a way to limit the scope to certain files.

Matching Brace

Issue: https://github.com/microsoft/language-server-protocol/issues/999

Server Capability: { "matchingBrace": boolean }

This request is send from client to server to handle "Matching Brace" editor action.

Method: experimental/matchingBrace

Request:

interface MatchingBraceParams {
    textDocument: TextDocumentIdentifier,
    /// Position for each cursor
    positions: Position[],
}

Response:

Position[]

Example

fn main() {
    let x: Vec<()>/*cursor here*/ = vec![]
}

experimental/matchingBrace yields the position of <. In many cases, matching braces can be handled by the editor. However, some cases (like disambiguating between generics and comparison operations) need a real parser. Moreover, it would be cool if editors didn't need to implement even basic language parsing

Unresolved Question

• Should we return a a nested brace structure, to allow paredit-like actions of jump out of the current brace pair? This is how SelectionRange request works.
• Alternatively, should we perhaps flag certain SelectionRanges as being brace pairs?

Analyzer Status

Method: rust-analyzer/analyzerStatus

Request: null

Response: string

Returns internal status message, mostly for debugging purposes.

Collect Garbage

Method: rust-analyzer/collectGarbage

Request: null

Response: null

Frees some caches. For internal use, and is mostly broken at the moment.

Syntax Tree

Method: rust-analyzer/syntaxTree

Request:

interface SyntaxTeeParams {
    textDocument: TextDocumentIdentifier,
    range?: Range,
}

Response: string

Returns textual representation of a parse tree for the file/selected region. Primarily for debugging, but very useful for all people working on rust-analyzer itself.

Expand Macro

Method: rust-analyzer/expandMacro

Request:

interface ExpandMacroParams {
    textDocument: TextDocumentIdentifier,
    position: Position,
}

Response:

interface ExpandedMacro {
    name: string,
    expansion: string,
}

Expands macro call at a given position.

Inlay Hints

Method: rust-analyzer/inlayHints

This request is send from client to server to render "inlay hints" -- virtual text inserted into editor to show things like inferred types. Generally, the client should re-query inlay hints after every modification. Note that we plan to move this request to experimental/inlayHints, as it is not really Rust-specific, but the current API is not necessary the right one. Upstream issue: https://github.com/microsoft/language-server-protocol/issues/956

Request:

interface InlayHintsParams {
    textDocument: TextDocumentIdentifier,
}

Response: InlayHint[]

interface InlayHint {
    kind: "TypeHint" | "ParameterHint" | "ChainingHint",
    range: Range,
    label: string,
}

Runnables

Method: rust-analyzer/runnables

This request is send from client to server to get the list of things that can be run (tests, binaries, cargo check -p). Note that we plan to move this request to experimental/runnables, as it is not really Rust-specific, but the current API is not necessary the right one. Upstream issue: https://github.com/microsoft/language-server-protocol/issues/944

Request:

interface RunnablesParams {
    textDocument: TextDocumentIdentifier;
    /// If null, compute runnables for the whole file.
    position?: Position;
}

Response: Runnable[]

interface Runnable {
    /// The range this runnable is applicable for.
    range: lc.Range;
    /// The label to show in the UI.
    label: string;
    /// The following fields describe a process to spawn.
    bin: string;
    args: string[];
    /// Args for cargo after `--`.
    extraArgs: string[];
    env: { [key: string]: string };
    cwd: string | null;
}