API to programatically expand/collapse tree view

[JarrettSpiker]

Request

An API on TreeView which allows extensions to expand or collapse their contributed views within the view container. That is, expand/collapse the view itself, not the items in the view.

Example Use Case

If I have a view container with multiple contributed views, not all views may be relevant all the time. It would be nice to be able to close the irrelevant views, to give more screen real estate to the relevant ones.

For example, maybe one view shows the definition of the currently selected word in the editor: if nothing in the editor is selected, then ideally this view could just be collapsed since it is providing no value to the user. When something is selected, it should be possible for the extension to re-expand the view.

[vscodebot]

(Experimental duplicate detection)
Thanks for submitting this issue. Please also check if it is already covered by an existing one, like:

• Contributed view container: when there is only one view, split view should not be present (#86037)
• Ability to move custom views across containers (#61630)

[ravipal]

In Docker extension we have several views and some of them are used by only the advanced users. So we would like to collapse those views to make room for other commonly used views. We need this feature too.

[asifkareem03]

Hai,

Any one got a solution for this??

[ArturoDent]

Is there no way to programmatically focus the view header? By that I mean the line with the header title and typically a refresh button, etc.

[alexr00]

You can focus the tree, not the view title with the command ${viewId}.focus.

[ArturoDent]

If you could focus the view title, then list.collapse closes that view. You can focus the view title with Shift+Tabs but I don't see how that can be performed in an extension.

[ArturoDent]

More interest in this functionality from SO:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/73345883/how-to-change-visibility-of-views-in-the-sidebar-via-the-vscode-extensions-api/73347770#73347770

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/72170016/i-want-to-collapse-a-vscode-tree-view-programatically/72174813#72174813

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60033807/vscode-collapse-other-sidebar-sectionsviews-viewlets-when-one-is-expanded