Create Visual Studio user prompts

User prompts are a simple UI mechanism for prompting the user to make a selection. Prompting the user creates a dialog box with a message, one to three buttons for the choices, and a dismiss button.

Common examples are requesting confirmation with an OK/Cancel prompt, or asking the user to choose among a small set of options (no more than three).

The user always has the option of dismissing the prompt without making a selection.

The choices presented to the user are mapped to return values of the type defined in the TResult type parameter.

Parts of a user prompt

1. Message
2. Choice Buttons
3. Dismiss Button

Get started

To get started, follow the create the project section in the Getting Started section.

Work with user prompts

This guide covers the following scenarios for working with User Prompts:

• Display a user prompt
• Use built-in options
• Create a prompt with custom options

Display a user prompt

Creating a user prompt with the new Extensibility Model is as simple as calling the ShowPromptAsync method from the ShellExtensibility helpers and passing in your options.

ShellExtensibility.ShowPromptAsync<TResult>()

The ShowPromptAsync method takes three parameters:

Example

The following code inside a Command shows a user prompt with a simple message and an OK button.

public override async Task ExecuteCommandAsync(IClientContext context, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
    await this.Extensibility.Shell().ShowPromptAsync("This is a user prompt.", PromptOptions.OK, cancellationToken))
}

Use built-in options

Several sets of predefined PromptOptions are available in the SDK.

OK

OKCancel

RetryCancel

Example

Create a prompt with a single "OK" choice.

public override async Task ExecuteCommandAsync(IClientContext context, CancellationToken ct)
{
    // Asking the user to confirm an operation.
    if (!await this.Extensibility.Shell().ShowPromptAsync("Continue with executing the command?", PromptOptions.OKCancel, ct))
    {
      return;
    }
    
    ...
}

If the user clicks "OK", ShowPromptAsync returns true when awaited. If the user clicks the dismiss button, it returns false.

Change the default choice of a built-in option to "Cancel"

public override async Task ExecuteCommandAsync(IClientContext context, CancellationToken ct)
{
  // Asking the user to confirm an operation.
  if (!await this.Extensibility.Shell().ShowPromptAsync("Continue with executing the command?", PromptOptions.OKCancel.WithCancelAsDefault(), ct))
  {
    return;
  }
  
  ...
}

Create a prompt with custom options

In addition to the built-in options, you can customize the choices presented to the user and the return value mapped to each.

Instead of using the sets defined in PromptOptions, create a new instance of PromptOptions<TResult> and pass it to ShowPromptAsync.

Example

Start by creating a value type to define the return values:

public enum TokenThemeResult
{
  None,
  Solarized,
  OneDark,
  GruvBox,
}

Then create the PromptOptions<TResult> instance and pass it to ShowPromptAsync along with the required message and cancellationToken arguments:

public override async Task ExecuteCommandAsync(IClientContext context, CancellationToken ct)
{
  // Custom prompt
  var themeResult = await this.Extensibility.Shell().ShowPromptAsync(
    "Which theme should be used for the generated output?",
    new PromptOptions<TokenThemeResult>
    {
      Choices =
      {
        { "Solarized Is Awesome", TokenThemeResult.Solarized },
        { "OneDark Is The Best", TokenThemeResult.OneDark },
        { "GruvBox Is Groovy", TokenThemeResult.GruvBox },
      },
      DismissedReturns = TokenThemeResult.None,
      DefaultChoiceIndex = 2,
    },
    ct);

  Debug.WriteLine($"Selected Token Theme: {themeResult}");
}

The Choices collection maps the user choices to values in the TokenThemeResult enum. DismissedReturns sets the value that is returned if the user clicks the dismiss button. DefaultChoiceIndex is a zero-based index into the Choices collection that defines the default choice.

Next steps

The following samples demonstrate how to work with user prompts:

• UserPromptSample
• MarkdownLinter