ObjectScript Search — Full-Text Server-Side Search for VS Code, Right Now

If you have ever dug through a large IRIS namespace looking for where a particular string, method call, or pattern was used, you know the pain: there was no built-in way to do a grep-style search across your server-side ObjectScript code from VS Code — at least not without jumping through some hoops.

That is what ObjectScript Search fixes.

Try it today with a simple install from the VS Code Marketplace. If you don't like it, uninstalling is just as easy. But I think you will like it — it is a huge quality-of-life improvement for anyone doing ObjectScript development in VS Code.

Why This Extension Exists

The official vscode-objectscript extension does have search capability, but enabling it currently requires either waiting on a proposed VS Code API to be finalised and applying a special manual install of a custom build of the extension. Neither option is great for everyday developers who just want things to work out of the box.

ObjectScript Search is a temporary, standalone extension that bridges that gap right now. It delivers full-text server-side search through a dedicated panel in the InterSystems activity bar, no special builds or proposed APIs required. Once the official extension ships search as a first-class feature, this extension will have served its purpose — but until then, it is here and it works.

What It Does

ObjectScript Search adds a Search view directly to the InterSystems sidebar. From there you can search inside:

• Classes (.cls)
• Routines (.mac, .bas, .int)
• Include files (.inc)
• Web / CSP files

across any connected IRIS namespace, with the following capabilities:

How It Works Under the Hood

The extension talks directly to the InterSystems Atelier REST API:

• On IRIS API v6+ it queues an asynchronous search job via POST /api/atelier/v6/{ns}/work and polls until complete, yielding result batches progressively so the UI is never blocked.
• On older servers it falls back to GET /api/atelier/v2/{ns}/action/search, issuing one request per selected document-type mask.

In regular-expression mode the query is automatically wrapped to align with IRIS regex semantics, so what you type is what gets matched.

Results open read-only through the objectscript:// URI scheme provided by vscode-objectscript, so you get full syntax highlighting and can jump straight to the matched line.

Screenshots

No active connection — the panel guides you to configure objectscript.conn:

Ready to search — once connected, click to open the search picker:

Search picker with history — previous queries are shown instantly; results stream in as you type:

Options panel — toggle document types and match behaviour:

Search results — classes and routines with per-file match counts and highlighted snippets:

Click to go to line — jump straight to the matched line in the file:

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Install the two required companion extensions (they are listed as dependencies and install automatically):

Configure your server

// .vscode/settings.json
{
  "intersystems.servers": {
    "my-iris": {
      "webServer": {
        "host": "localhost",
        "port": 52773,
        "scheme": "http"
      },
      "username": "SuperUser"
    }
  },
  "objectscript.conn": {
    "active": true,
    "server": "my-iris",
	// Or
	"host":"localhost",
	"port":52773,
    "username": "_IRIS_USERNAME_",
    "password": "_IRIS_PASSWORD_",
    // Or
    "docker-compose": {
        "service": "iris",
        "internalPort": 52773
     },
    "ns": "USER"
  }
}

Then click the InterSystems icon in the Activity Bar and expand the Search section. That is it.

Extension settings

Install

The extension is available on the VS Code Marketplace and on Open VSX.

Source code is on GitHub: https://github.com/grongierisc/vscode-objectscript-search

Acknowledgements

A huge thank you to @John Murray, @Dmitry Maslennikov , and @Brett Saviano for building and maintaining the official vscode-objectscript extension — without their work none of this would be possible. The objectscript:// document provider, the server connection infrastructure, and the overall architecture that this extension builds on are all theirs.

A special extra thank you to John Murray for the line-match algorithm that makes it possible to jump the cursor to the exact matched line when you click a result.

This extension stands on the shoulders of giants. Once the official extension ships search natively, please migrate to it — it will be the right long-term home for this feature.

Happy searching!