Introduction

tip

Manuals and usages are available in User Manual.

For most general script programming languages such as python, builtin types/classes/functions (for example len) and standard library (for example datetime) are shipped with interpreters. Javascript runtime plays a similar role, the difference is the js engine is provided by a third-party library, i.e. the V8 js engine. Js engine covers ECMA-262 standard, while js runtime provides a standard library, schedules async tasks within event loop, fills in many other gaps. The standard library mainly includes:

• Web APIs: Most popular javascript-based runtimes share a compatible implementations today.
• Runtime APIs: Different runtimes provide have their own specific APIs, i.e. browsers such Chrome/Firefox provide the document DOM tree APIs, server-side runtimes such as node/deno provide their own APIs to manage the operating systems.

This chapter references all the APIs provided by the Rsvim editor.

1. ECMAScript Standard Built-in APIs

ECMAScript's standard built-in APIs are defined by ECMA-262, natively implemented by the V8 engine embedded in Rsvim. These APIs are "global objects" that are available without import any additional modules. For example globalThis, encodeURI()/decodeURI(), Number, RegExp, etc.

Please reach out to MDN | Standard built-in objects - JavaScript for detailed built-in API references.

2. Web Platform APIs

Besides the ECMA standard, a large number of web APIs are also been widely implemented by most javascript-based runtimes: chrome/firefox browsers, node/deno runtimes, etc. The full list of all web APIs and interfaces can be found in MDN | Web APIs, and the WinterTC community group come up with the Minimum Common Web Platform API specification, which defines a minimum set of standard web platform APIs for both browser and non-browser javascript-based runtimes. Rsvim tries to follow WinterTC standard, but (maybe) only covers a subset due to the development effort.

The web APIs are also "global objects" just like ECMA standard built-in APIs.

3. Rsvim APIs

Similar to node/deno, Rsvim provides a set of APIs to help users manipulating both editor and operating system. The APIs can be divided into two groups: editor related and general purposed.

2.1. Editor APIs

Editor APIs are for the text editor itself, including windows, buffers, cursors, commands, etc. They can be accessed via the global object Rsvim, similar to the vim lua global namespace in Neovim.

2.2. General APIs

General APIs are similar to a standard library in other programming languages. But Rsvim focus on text editing, the existence of all APIs only serves this purpose, they are mostly related to file system, network/http, date time, IPC/RPC and child process management, etc. For web and browser related APIs, they will not be provided.

These APIs also share the same global object Rsvim.

warning

Rsvim editor exposes the rust implemented APIs to the JavaScript world by binding them to the __InternalRsvimGlobalObject global object, which should never be directly used. The Rsvim is a thin wrapper on it.