How do devs find out about private members of native Obsidian classes?

Developers: Plugin & API
1

I have recently started using Obsidian and decided to try writing some plugins. I started by examining existing community plugin files, such as nldates-obsidian by Argentina Ortega Sáinz. In it, I found that the devs are using private properties and methods of native Obsidian classes, like app.vault.getConfig() or EditorSuggest.suggestions, which I assume are used as shortcuts for otherwise public APIs.

Since they are neither covered by the docs nor the type declarations, how do devs find out about these private APIs?

2

There are many ways.

Personally I learned about app.vault.getConfig from Liam Cain’s website. (warning: some contents are outdated)

I encountered EditorSuggest.suggestions when reading the source code of Various Complements.

Playing around in the console

For example, in the dev console type this: app.vault.

Then you’ll see suggestions like this:

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Some functions or classes are not directly accessible from console, but you can interact them in the console by, for example, writing

// in constructor of a subclass of EditorSuggest
(window as any).suggest = this

in your plugin.

Reading app.js etc

You can read app.js where the public & private API functions are defined from dev tools > Source. (but it’s a little bit hard to read because it’s minified)

obsidian-ex.d.ts

There is an unofficial type definition file called obsidian-ex.d.ts maintained by a community member. It’s not perfect but is really helpful.

Searching or asking in Discord

The plugin-dev channel is often helpful.

2 Likes
3

Thank you! I also realized some of those methods might stem from CodeMirror, so I will dive into those docs as well.

4

Yeah, learning CodeMirror is a little bit time-consuming but definitely fun. Enjoy!