GitHub - alythobani/vscode-region-helper: A Visual Studio Code extension for navigating, visualizing, and managing code regions in your files.

Region Helper

A Visual Studio Code extension for navigating, visualizing, and managing code regions.

⚡️ Features

• 📁 Regions View – Interactive tree for viewing and navigating regions.
• 🏛 Full Outline View – Like VSCode's builtin Outline view, but incorporates regions.
• 🐇 Quick Navigation – Jump, search, and select regions with commands and keyboard shortcuts.
• ⚠️ Diagnostics – Detects unmatched region boundaries.

📖 Table of Contents

1. ⚡️ Features
2. 📖 Table of Contents
3. 🔬 Detailed Features
   1. 📂 Regions View
   2. 🏛 Full Outline View
   3. ⚠️ Region Diagnostics
   4. 🔍 Go to Region...
   5. 🐇 Go to Region Boundary
   6. ⏭ Go to Next / Previous Region
   7. 🎯 Select Current Region
4. ⚙️ Settings
   1. 🙈 Show/Hide Views
   2. 🔄 Toggling Auto-Highlighting in Views
   3. 🔧 Custom Region Patterns
5. 📡 Extension API
6. 🚀 Installation
7. 🚧 Known Limitations
8. ❤️ Contributing & Feedback

🔬 Detailed Features

📂 Regions View

• Displays a structured tree view of all regions in the current file.
• Automatically reveals and highlights the cursor’s active region (this can be toggled on/off with commands/settings).
• Click a region to instantly navigate to it.

🏛 Full Outline View

• Combines all regions and language symbols (classes, methods, variables, etc) into a unified tree view for the current file.
• Just like the Regions View, the cursor's active region/symbol is automatically revealed and highlighted, and this behavior can be toggled on/off.
• Click any item to instantly navigate to it.

⚠️ Region Diagnostics

• Detects unmatched region boundaries and adds warnings in both the editor (blue squiggles) and the Problems panel, helping you catch incomplete or misplaced regions quickly.

🔍 Go to Region...

• Like VSCode’s built-in "Go to Symbol...", but for regions:
  • Opens a fuzzy-searchable dropdown to jump to any region in the current file.
• 📌 Default Keybinding:
  • Windows/Linux: Ctrl + Shift + R
  • Mac: Cmd + Shift + R

🐇 Go to Region Boundary

• Like VSCode’s built-in "Go to Bracket", but for regions:
  • Jumps between matching start and end region boundaries.
  • Jumps to the next region if the cursor is not already inside a region.
• 📌 Default Keybinding: Alt + M

⏭ Go to Next / Previous Region

• Jumps to the next or previous region in the file.
• 📌 Default Keybindings:
  • Next Region: Ctrl + Alt + N
  • Previous Region: Ctrl + Alt + P

🎯 Select Current Region

• Selects the entire active region containing the cursor.
• 📌 Default Keybinding: Alt + Shift + M

⚙️ Settings

🙈 Show/Hide Views

To quickly show or hide the Regions or Full Outline views, you can use the following commands and associated settings:

• Show/Hide Region View
  • Commands: Show Regions View / Hide Regions View
  • Setting: regionHelper.shouldShowRegionsView
• Show/Hide Full Outline View
  • Commands: Show Full Outline View / Hide Full Outline View
  • Setting: regionHelper.shouldShowFullOutlineView

🔄 Toggling Auto-Highlighting/Revealing in Tree Views

• By default, the Regions and Full Outline views will automatically reveal and highlight the cursor's active region or symbol as you navigate the editor.
• If you ever want to disable this auto-revealing behavior (e.g. for a more stable scroll position), you can use the {Stop/Start} Auto-Highlighting Active {Region/Item} commands, or click the tree view's title bar action to toggle it on/off:

🔧 Custom Region Patterns

• Supports 50 languages out of the box, including:
  • C, C++, C#, Java, Python, JavaScript, JSX, TypeScript, TSX, PHP, Ruby, Swift, Go, Rust, HTML, XML, Markdown, JSON/JSONC, YAML, SQL, and more.
• Define your own custom region patterns, or adjust the existing default patterns, to customize how regions are parsed.
  • Setting: regionHelper.regionBoundaryPatternByLanguageId
    • Note: you may need to restart the extension after changing this setting for it to take effect.

📡 Extension API

Region Helper provides an API for accessing parsed code regions and full outline symbols programmatically. You can use it to build your own VSCode region extension without worrying about writing a region parser from scratch!

See the full API documentation for details and examples.

🚀 Installation

1. Install Region Helper from the VSCode Marketplace.
2. ???
3. Profit!

(Really, things should work out of the box. Let me know if they don't!)

🚧 Known Limitations

• 🔍 Go to Region... only supports camelCase matching (not full fuzzy search) due to a VSCode API limitation.
• The 📁 Regions and 🏛 Full Outline tree views always highlight the cursor's last active item, even when outside any region/symbol (another VSCode API limitation).

❤️ Contributing & Feedback

I may have limited availability, but bug reports, suggestions, and contributions are always welcome! Feel free to:

• File an issue for bugs or feature requests.
• Browse issues open to PRs and submit one if you'd like to help.
• Leave a review to share your thoughts or overall feedback.

Hope you enjoy using Region Helper! Have a great day, and try to make someone else's day great too. 😊