Trigger language auto detection mechanism

[XVincentX]

Some times I'm fetching some content from the web and pasting it into the current active editor.
So far, I didn't find any way to set the current language for the window. Is there any particular API call for that?

Even better, would it be possible to trigger the auto detection mechanism with the API?

[ramya-rao-a]

See Changing language for current file

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[XVincentX]

@ramya-rao-a ??????
Hmm...I am not talking the IDE itself, I'm talking from an extension context. I'm missing an API function to make that happen. Does that clarify?

[XVincentX]

My point is that - it seems that TextEditor class is missing methods to set current language type, or eventually trigger the auto detect mechanism

[ramya-rao-a]

Sorry, I thought you were talking from a user's perspective rather than an extension author. Will look into it and get back to you

[jrieken]

@XVincentX This mostly depends on the filename and 'pasting it into the editor' will miss that information I guess.

[XVincentX]

@jrieken
Is there any plan to provide an API call to trigger the auto detection?
In my use cases, giving I'm providing regexp in languages I support, it would really solve my problem here.

Thanks!

[XVincentX]

@jrieken I started contributing #12035 and I liked it.

Would you be open to an user contribution here?
If you could point out where I should start look, I'd love to give it a try!

[mbana]

Hi,

I am faced with a similar problem/scenario as the original poster. Let's say you're faced with this scenario:

1. Open new a editor.
2. Paste in some content, say, it's JSON.
3. I want the VSCode to auto-detect that it is JSON only and set the langauge accordingly.

Is it this possible, or is it at least something in the pipeline?

From an implementation point of view, I would do:

1. Loop through all the languages.
2. Paste content there and see if it's a match.
3. If match is found, set that as the language.

This is quite crude, but I hope that gets the point across.

---

Regardless +1 for this feature.

[gjsjohnmurray]

@jrieken is the idea to provide new API vscode.languages.detectLanguage(resource: Uri, supportedLanguageIds?: string[]): Thenable<string | undefined> which would get wired through to the detectLanguage method of LanguageDetectionService?

vscode/src/vs/workbench/services/languageDetection/browser/languageDetectionWorkerServiceImpl.ts

Lines 142 to 150 in d23edd2

	async detectLanguage(resource: URI, supportedLangs?: string[]): Promise<string | undefined> {
	const useHistory = this._configurationService.getValue<string[]>(LanguageDetectionService.historyBasedEnablementConfig);
	const preferHistory = this._configurationService.getValue<boolean>(LanguageDetectionService.preferHistoryConfig);
	if (useHistory) {
	await this.resolveWorkspaceLanguageIds();
	}
	const biases = useHistory ? this.getLanguageBiases() : undefined;
	return this._languageDetectionWorkerClient.detectLanguage(resource, biases, preferHistory, supportedLangs);
	}

[mikeburgh]

Adding that new API would be great!

I found you can also call vscode.commands.executeCommand('editor.detectLanguage') which will run the detection on the active editor.. but it's not silent, and if it does not find a match a warning notification is displayed. Would it be easier to add a silent option to that command ?