AppMap for Visual Studio Code

AppMap for Visual Studio Code

AppMap panel

Instructions

Step-by-step instructions for configuring a project to use AppMap and using the main features.

Once you’ve configured AppMap for a project, commit the file changes to Git so that your colleagues don’t have to do the setup themselves.

AppMaps tree view

The AppMap view shows all AppMaps in your open projects. You can open it from the top level menu (View -> Open view… -> AppMap), with an AppMap action or by clicking on its icon in the side bar.

AppMaps are organized by how they were created (request recording, remote recording, test case recording).

Within the AppMap tree view you can

Click on any AppMap name to open the diagram
Right-click for a context menu

You can also use the tree view buttons to Filter the AppMap tree by name, or search for a specific AppMap. There are also extension commands to do this.

Runtime Analysis

AppMap can find automatically find software design flaws that impact security, performance, stability, and maintainability. When a problem is found, it’s listed here. Click on the problem to get detailed information about it.

Code Objects

All the HTTP server requests, SQL queries, packages, classes, and functions that are present in an AppMap are listed here in a tree view. You can navigate through these code objects to see what’s present in your project. Click on any code object to open the AppMaps that contain it.

Extension actions

To open the list of AppMap extension actions, press CTRL+SHIFT+P or COMMAND+SHIFT+P on macOS and type AppMap.

Most of the command names should be self-explanatory. Here are a few commands which are a bit more complicated:

AppMap: Filter/Find AppMap by name Opens the AppMap side bar view and the filter/find text field
AppMap: Login, AppMap: Logout Some extension functionality requires you to login to the AppMap Server. You’ll be prompted to do this when you setup AppMap for the first time. You can also login and logout using the built-in Accounts feature of VSCode.
AppMap: Touch Out-of-Date Test Files If you have AppMaps that are generated from test cases, this command will determine which tests need to be re-run in order to bring the AppMaps up-to-date. It will then “touch” (update the modified date) of each out-of-date test case. You can use a file watching trigger program like Guard (Ruby), grunt or gulp (JS) to re-run the test cases as they are touched.
AppMap: Copy Out-of-Date Tests to Clipboard Similar to the “Touch Out-of-Date Test Files” command, but places the file names on the clipboard
AppMap: Open Code Object in AppMap Using this command you can find and open AppMaps for any code object (package, class, function, route, etc) in your project.

Remote recording

You can make a remote recording from within the VSCode IDE. First, start your application with remote recording enabled. Exactly how to do this depends the language you’re using - consult the agent reference for details.

To start a recording, click the remote recording button, or use the command AppMap: Start a Remote Recording.

Start remote recording

Interact with your app through its UI or API. Then use the stop remote recording button again, or use the command AppMap: Stop the Remote Recording.

Stop remote recording