How to verify if the user is connected?

[afrigge]

Hi,

I'm super-new to all things "VS Code Extension" and "TypeScript", so I've been using GHCopilot and ChatGPT to get started.
I have created an extension that runs zowe commands and I've got it to open up the ZE Jobs tree view as soon as I get the jobid, and all that works great.

The issue I'm trying to solve now is to verify that the user is connected to Zowe, and if not prompt the user to login, just like Zowe Explorer does.
Unfortunately I can't seem to figure it out by myself and the chatbots doesn't seem to understand it.

Does anyone have a good example (typescript) that I can look at to understand how @zowe/zowe-explorer-api works for this?

Cheers!

[zFernand0]

Hey @afrigge,
One way is to perform the desired action and then handle the HTTP 401 error code to prompt for credentials. Otherwise, you may need to find an endpoint that can verify the credentials. For z/OSMF, ideally /zosmf/info would be enough. 😋

[JillieBeanSim]

Hey @afrigge your extension could extend Zowe Explorer and use the Zowe Explorer APIs to adopt already available capabilities. The zFTP & the CICS VS Code extensions are great examples in the open source that can be used to help in the journey along with our wiki page for extenders.

Each profile type has an API file that is used for their specific handling of functionality, including the checking of the server status (zosmf & zftp). The check status only pings the server to see if active but doesn't check credentials. For expired tokens or out of date passwords we do handle the 401 return errors accordingly depending on the authentication method that is being used, unfortunately this functionality is only within Zowe Explorer error handling and not available via the extender APIs.

For any missing functionality you would like to see in the Zowe Explorer API to be available for extenders feel free to open an enhancement request for the communtiy.