launch-editor

Open file with line numbers in editor from Node.js.

The main functionality is extracted from react-dev-utils with slight modifications so that it can be used as a standalone package. The original source code is licensed under MIT.

Why

There are also a few other existing packages with the same purpose:

• lahmatiy/open-in-editor
• sindresorhus/open-editor

However, both expects env variables like EDITOR to be set in order to open files. This package infers the editor to open by checking current running processes before falling back to env variables.

On the other hand,react-dev-tools includes many other utilities and dependencies and is thus not suitable for standalone usage.

Usage

const launch = require('launch-editor')

launch(
  // filename
  'foo.js',
  // lineNumber
  13,
  // try specific editor bin first (optional)
  'code',
  // callback if failed to launch (optional)
  (fileName, errorMsg) => {
    // log error if any
  }
)

Middleware

An express/webpack-dev-server compatible middleware is also available:

const launchMiddleware = require('launch-editor-middleware')

app.use('/__open-in-editor', launchMiddleware())

The middleware factory function accepts two optional arguments:

1. a specific editor bin to try first.
2. a callback when it fails to launch the editor.

To launch files, send requests to the server like the following:

/__open-in-editor?file=src/main.js:13