Add my own items to Delphi IDE Insight (F6) with in Delphi Open Tools API

Question

I want to use INTAIDEINsightService perhaps AddItem or AddActionList to add an entry to the IDE insight feature in Delphi.

According to the Delphi OTA wiki, INTAIDEINsightService allows you to register your own action. The only reference I can find is here, which mentions the name of the API, and that it exists at all. There is nothing in the Delphi help about it. The ToolsAPI.pas unit in Delphi XE shows two methods in this interface that let you register actions:

function AddActionList(  Actions: TCustomActionList; ... ): Integer;
procedure RemoveActionList(const Index: Integer);

The comments say "Items will be shown as[Description |] Category | TCustomAction.Caption. Contained actions which do not specify a category will not be shown.".

I haven't been able to find any other documentation or samples using actions. A simple "hello world" example where an action, or just an item, is registered with description or category "helloworld", that is then searchable and shows up when you hit F6 would be perfect, but Actions are preferred.

It looks like such a wizard would have to implement INTAIDEInsightItem in order to render itself inside the IDE insight, but I'm not sure if that's "required" for a hello-world sample or not. I'm not really sure if you have to use actions, or if regular "item" adds are sufficient.

(My ultimate goal is to create a new gExperts-style expert to "open any unit in my library path by searching for it by name using IDE insight" but I'll start with adding unit names to the ide insight one item at a time.)

Answer 1

The following shows category 'Hello' under 'Commands':

unit Unit1;

interface

uses
  SysUtils, Classes, ActnList, ImgList, Controls;

type
  TDataModule1 = class(TDataModule)
    ActionList1: TActionList;
    ImageList1: TImageList;
    ActionHello: TAction;
    procedure ActionHelloExecute(Sender: TObject);
  private
  public
  end;

var
  DataModule1: TDataModule1;

implementation

{$R *.dfm}

uses
  ToolsAPI, Dialogs;

procedure TDataModule1.ActionHelloExecute(Sender: TObject);
begin
  ShowMessage('Hello, world!');
end;

var
  Index: Integer = -1;

initialization
  DataModule1 := TDataModule1.Create(nil);
  Index := (BorlandIDEServices as INTAIDEInsightService).AddActionList(DataModule1.ActionList1);

finalization
  if Index <> -1 then
    (BorlandIDEServices as INTAIDEInsightService).RemoveActionList(Index);
  FreeAndNil(DataModule1);

end.

The dfm is simply a datamodule with an action list, image list and an action:

object DataModule1: TDataModule1
  OldCreateOrder = False
  Left = 218
  Top = 134
  Height = 215
  Width = 306
  object ActionList1: TActionList
    Images = ImageList1
    Left = 24
    Top = 16
    object ActionHello: TAction
      Category = 'Hello'
      Caption = 'Hello, World!'
      ImageIndex = 0
      OnExecute = ActionHelloExecute
    end
  end
  object ImageList1: TImageList
    Left = 88
    Top = 16
    Bitmap = {
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  end
end

Here I leave the optional parameters Description and Category of the AddActionList method the default empty strings which ends up as 'Commands' and the value of Category from the action list but you can specify your own values which will override these defaults.