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Slash commands
Slash commands are commands (mainly for power users) to quickly do some stuff from the compose box. The codebase refers to these as "zcommand"s, and both these terms are often user interchangeably.
Currently supported slash commands are:
/lightand/darkto change the UI theme/pingto ping to server and get back the time for the round trip. Mainly for testing./fluid-widthand/fixed-widthto toggle that setting
It is important to distinguish slash commands from the widget system. Slash commands essentially do not send messages (and could have very well had their own "command prompt" (but don't), since they have nothing to do with message sending), while widgets are special kinds of messages.
Data flow
These commands have client-side support in zcommands.js.
They send commands to the server using the /json/command
endpoint.
In the case of "/ping", the server code in zcommand.py
basically just acks the client. The client then computes
the round trip time and shows a little message above
the compose box that the user can see and then dismiss.
For commands like "/light" and "/dark", the server does
a little bit of logic to toggle the user's dark theme
setting, and this is largely done inside zcommand.py.
The server sends a very basic response, and then
the client actually changes the display colors. The
client also shows the user a little message above
the compose box instructing them how to reverse the
change.
(It's possible that we don't really need a general
/json/zcommand endpoint for these, and we
may decide later to just use custom
API endpoints for each command. There's some logic
in having a central API for these, though, since they
are typically things that only UI-based clients will
invoke, and they may share validation code.)
It is the client's responsibility to correctly detect and process when a user uses a slash command, and not instead send a message with the raw content.
Typeahead
Typeahead for both slash commands (and widgets) is implemented
via the slash_commands object in web/src/composebox_typeahead.ts.