Extensions filter for publisher should be exact

[aquarion]

Does this issue occur when all extensions are disabled?: Yes/No

• VS Code Version: 1.62.3
• OS Version: Windows 10

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Go to an extension by a verified publisher in the extensions view, example: "GitHub Pull Requests and Issues"
2. Click the publisher name next to the shiny tick star to see other extensions by "this" publisher.
3. Note the inclusion of any publisher with the original publisher in the name. For example "Github Octo", "Correia GitHub Gruvbox".
4. This could confuse an unwary user into installing an unverified extension thinking it was by a trusted publisher.

Suggestion for fixing: Publisher filter should be an exact, not partial, match.

[sandy081]

CC @isidorn

[isidorn]

I agree this is a bug, and we should fix this. For reference here's the image.

[prashantvc]

We are tracking all search related issue at microsoft/vsmarketplace#154

[SaiKanth007]

Similar to categories filter, marketplace also provides support for publisherName filter, which can be leveraged to search for extensions belonging to a specific publisher.

@sandy081 VSCode can map to this filter for filtering on publisherName (filterType=18)

[sandy081]

Thanks @SaiKanth007. I am not aware of this filter type. Moving this to VS Code repo to support it.

[isidorn]

@SaiKanth007 thanks for letting us know. Might there be some other filters we are not using and we should? Thanks

[SaiKanth007]

@isidorn currently we don't have any public documentation of the API to list down the different filterTypes we support. So sharing you the details on the teams chat.

[sandy081]

@SaiKanth007 Does this filter takes publisher id or publisher display name?

[SaiKanth007]

It accepts publisher id.

I just saw that filtering on publisher id works as expected when there is no search text. (Unlike other VSCode calls which hit AzureSearch/Marketplace cache this hits marketplace DB - could become expensive as the load for this scenario increases)

Also, it breaks when we provide search text along with publisherId filtering (which I guess is what users eventually need). I will create an issue for both of this on our side and track it.

We are working on migrating search scenarios to our new platform, and I will check if this can be fixed there. Otherwise, we will try to fix it in the existing code.

[sandy081]

It accepts publisher id.

@isidorn It means this breaks when publisher name is Microsoft because not all Microsoft extensions have same publisher id.

[isidorn]

@sandy081 that sucks. That would be worse than the current state of things.
@SaiKanth007 is there some way to do the filtering based on publisher display name due to the case Sandeep described.

[prashantvc]

As user user, I expect:

1. publisher filter should accept both lower case or upper case text (i.e case insensitive)
2. publisher filter must return exact match for publisher display name, or publisher ID
3. If publisher display name includes multiple words, they should be put into double quotes.
   
   for example, publisher:"microsoft devlabs".

[prashantvc]

This is fixed in the latest Insiders. @aquarion Could you try it?

[usernamehw]

Is publisher title unique? For example, clicking on the publisher title in VSCode:

Publisher id still doesn't work:

Version: 1.73.0-insider (user setup)
Commit: 266ff5b

[isidorn]

Yes, unfortunately the display name is not unique.
@prashantvc ideally we would make this unique. Not sure if this is possible or planned?

[prashantvc]

We do make sure that Display Name is unique for enterprises and well-known publishers. But, not for everyone, this is something we have on the backlog but not planned

[isidorn]

Closing this as no further plans to improve here I think.