Support Markdown relative path to folders

[sonofachamp]

If I have a [relative path folder link](path/to/something/interesting) it'd be sweet if clicking that link in Markdown preview opened that folder in the VSCode explorer (not Windows). Right now these types of links work on GitHub, but they don't work when Ctrl + clicking them within the Markdown preview in VSCode.

[vscodebot]

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

• Terminal links should support folders (#29499)
• Help test and implement the markdown custom editor preview (#84520)
• Auto Preview for Markdown File (#85483)

[mjbvz]

Is this the same request as #90956?

[sonofachamp]

@mjbvz I don't think so. The paths being relative to the .md file location is fine, but if I link to a folder instead of a file I'd like that folder to open in the Explorer window within VSCode.

[mjbvz]

Thanks for the clarification. PRs welcome for this

[dormesica]

I would like to help with this.
Can I get some direction on where to start looking?

[mjbvz]

Here's the code the I believe handles this:

vscode/extensions/markdown-language-features/src/commands/openDocumentLink.ts

Line 46 in 2fe62e7

public execute(args: OpenDocumentLinkArgs) {

You likely need to check if the link points to a folder and handle that case. Try debugging through to see if that's the case

[dormesica]

I think I undersand what's happenings there:

vscode/extensions/markdown-language-features/src/commands/openDocumentLink.ts

Lines 50 to 53 in 14b5afc

	return this.tryOpen(targetPath, args, column).catch(() => {
	if (targetPath && extname(targetPath) === '') {
	return this.tryOpen(targetPath + '.md', args, column);
	}

The first call to tryOpen fails because because targetPath points to a folder not a file. Then, there is an attempt to add the .md extension to the path which fails bacause there is not such flie which causes something like unhandled promise rejection.

I didn't find any command that reveals the folder row in the explorer. Using vscode.commands.executeCommand('vscode.open', uri); works but shows a notification error saying "Unable to open ... file is a directory".

[mjbvz]

@isidorn Is there a command that reveals a folder in the explorer?

[isidorn]

@mjbvz no, there is only Reveal Active File in SideBar.

[dormesica]

@isidorn Is it possible to expose such a command? I wouldn't mind giving a hand.

[isidorn]

@dormesica not right now, but we might consider adding it in the future if there appear more use cases for it.

[mjbvz]

Ok, I'm unmarking this as help wanted then and marking as a feature request so we can gauge interest.

Thanks for investigating this @dormesica!

[vscodebot]

This feature request is now a candidate for our backlog. The community has 60 days to upvote the issue. If it receives 20 upvotes we will move it to our backlog. If not, we will close it. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[memark]

@mjbvz This issue still shows up under "Good first issues", which I assume it shouldn't since you removed those tags.