Editor imports

Applies to: Visual Studio Visual Studio for Mac

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

You can import a number of editor services, factories, and brokers that provide your extension with different kinds of access to the core editor. For example, you can import the ITextStructureNavigatorSelectorService to provide you with a ITextStructureNavigator for a given content type. (This navigator allows you perform different kinds of searches on a text buffer.)

To use an editor import, you import it as a field or property of a class that exports a Managed Extensibility Framework component part.

Note

For more information about the Managed Extensibility Framework, see Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF).

Import syntax

The following example shows how to import the editor options factory service.

[Import]
internal IEditorOptionsFactoryService EditorOptions { get; set; }

If you want to import the service as a field and not a property, you should set it to null in the declaration in order to avoid the compiler warnings about not assigning to a variable:

[Import]
internal IEditorOptionsFactoryService m_editorOptions = null;

For more examples of using imports, see the following walkthroughs:

• Walkthrough: Create a margin glyph

• Walkthrough: Customize the text view

• Walkthrough: Highlight text

• Walkthrough: Display QuickInfo tooltips

• Walkthrough: Display Signature Help

• Walkthrough: Display statement completion

• Walkthrough: Display light bulb suggestions

Import the service provider

You can also import a SVsServiceProvider (found in the assembly Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Immutable.10.0) in the same way to get access to Visual Studio services:

[Import]
internal SVsServiceProvider ServiceProvider = null;

See Walkthrough: Access the DTE object from an editor extension for more information.

Services

Editor services are generally single entities that provide a service and are shared across multiple components.

Import	Provides
IFileExtensionRegistryService	The relationship between file extensions and IContentType objects.
IContentTypeRegistryService	The collection of IContentType objects.
IVsFontsAndColorsInformationService	IVsFontsAndColorsInformation objects.
IVsEditorAdaptersFactoryService	Many editor adapter objects: IVsCodeWindow IVsTextBuffer IVsTextBufferCoordinator IVsTextView
IIncrementalSearchFactoryService	An IIncrementalSearch object for a given text view.
ITextBufferFactoryService	An ITextBuffer.
ITextDocumentFactoryService	An ITextDocument.
IDifferenceService	An IDifferenceCollection<T> of differences.
IHierarchicalStringDifferenceService	An IHierarchicalDifferenceCollection of differences.
IProjectionBufferFactoryService	An IProjectionBuffer or an IElisionBuffer.
IBufferGraphFactoryService	An IBufferGraph for a set of ITextBuffer objects.
IClassifierAggregatorService	An IClassifier for a ITextBuffer.
IViewClassifierAggregatorService	An IClassifier for a ITextView.
IClassificationFormatMapService	An IClassificationFormatMap for a ITextView.
IEditorFormatMapService	An IEditorFormatMap for a ITextView.
IClassificationTypeRegistryService	Maintains the collection of IClassificationType objects.
IBufferTagAggregatorFactoryService	An ITagAggregator<T> for a text buffer.
IViewTagAggregatorFactoryService	An ITagAggregator<T> for a text view.
IEditorOptionsFactoryService	The IEditorOptions for the specified scope.
IScrollMapFactoryService	An IScrollMap for a text view.
ISmartIndentationService	An ISmartIndent for a ITextView.
ISmartIndentationService	Gets the automatic indentation through the ISmartIndentProvider objects.
ITextEditorFactoryService	Manages the IWpfTextViewHost for a IWpfTextView.
IFormattedTextSourceFactoryService	An IFormattedLineSource.
IRtfBuilderService	Generates RTF-formatted text from a set of snapshot spans.
ITextAndAdornmentSequencerFactoryService	An ITextAndAdornmentSequencer for an ITextView.
ITextParagraphPropertiesFactoryService	A TextParagraphProperties for formatting text lines in a view.
IEditorOperationsFactoryService	A IEditorOperations object for an ITextView.
ITextSearchService	Searches a text snapshot.
ITextStructureNavigatorSelectorService	An ITextStructureNavigator for an ITextBuffer by IContentType.
IOutliningManagerService	An IOutliningManager for a text view.
IGlyphService	A standard set of glyphs.
IIntellisenseSessionStackMapService	An IIntellisenseSessionStack for a ITextView.
IWpfKeyboardTrackingService	Tracks keyboard handling.
IStandardClassificationService	Standard IClassificationType objects.
ITextUndoHistoryRegistry	Maintains the relationship between text buffers and ITextUndoHistory objects.

Other imports

Provider factories and brokers are generally entities that can have multiple instances in multiple components.

Import	Provides
IErrorProviderFactory	A SimpleTagger<T> of type ErrorTag) for the given buffer.
ITextMarkerProviderFactory	A text marker tagger (a SimpleTagger<T> of type TextMarkerTag).
IToolTipProviderFactory	An IToolTipProvider for a given ITextView.
ICompletionBroker	An ICompletionSession.
IQuickInfoBroker	An IQuickInfoSession.
ISignatureHelpBroker	An ISignatureHelpSession.

See also

• Language service and editor extension points