Visual Studio Code integration with Dapr

• 1: Dapr Visual Studio Code extension overview
• 2: How-To: Debug Dapr applications with Visual Studio Code
• 3: Developing Dapr applications with Dev Containers

1 - Dapr Visual Studio Code extension overview

Dapr offers a preview Dapr Visual Studio Code extension for local development which enables users a variety of features related to better managing their Dapr applications and debugging of your Dapr applications for all supported Dapr languages which are .NET, Go, PHP, Python and Java.

Open in VSCode

Features

Scaffold Dapr debugging tasks

The Dapr extension helps you debug your applications with Dapr using Visual Studio Code’s built-in debugging capability.

Using the Dapr: Scaffold Dapr Tasks Command Palette operation, you can update your existing task.json and launch.json files to launch and configure the Dapr sidecar when you begin debugging.

1. Make sure you have a launch configuration set for your app. (Learn more)
2. Open the Command Palette with Ctrl+Shift+P
3. Select Dapr: Scaffold Dapr Tasks
4. Run your app and the Dapr sidecar with F5 or via the Run view.

Scaffold Dapr components

When adding Dapr to your application, you may want to have a dedicated components directory, separate from the default components initialized as part of dapr init.

To create a dedicated components folder with the default statestore, pubsub, and zipkin components, use the Dapr: Scaffold Dapr Components Command Palette operation.

1. Open your application directory in Visual Studio Code
2. Open the Command Palette with Ctrl+Shift+P
3. Select Dapr: Scaffold Dapr Components
4. Run your application with dapr run --resources-path ./components -- ...

View running Dapr applications

The Applications view shows Dapr applications running locally on your machine.

Invoke Dapr applications

Within the Applications view, users can right-click and invoke Dapr apps via GET or POST methods, optionally specifying a payload.

Publish events to Dapr applications

Within the Applications view, users can right-click and publish messages to a running Dapr application, specifying the topic and payload.

Users can also publish messages to all running applications.

Additional resources

Debugging multiple Dapr applications at the same time

Using the VS Code extension, you can debug multiple Dapr applications at the same time with Multi-target debugging.

Community call demo

Watch this video on how to use the Dapr VS Code extension:

2 - How-To: Debug Dapr applications with Visual Studio Code

Manual debugging

When developing Dapr applications, you typically use the Dapr CLI to start your daprized service similar to this:

dapr run --app-id nodeapp --app-port 3000 --dapr-http-port 3500 app.js

One approach to attaching the debugger to your service is to first run daprd with the correct arguments from the command line and then launch your code and attach the debugger. While this is a perfectly acceptable solution, it does require a few extra steps and some instruction to developers who might want to clone your repo and hit the “play” button to begin debugging.

If your application is a collection of microservices, each with a Dapr sidecar, it will be useful to debug them together in Visual Studio Code. This page will use the hello world quickstart to showcase how to configure VSCode to debug multiple Dapr application using VSCode debugging.

Prerequisites

• Install the Dapr extension. You will be using the tasks it offers later on.
• Optionally clone the hello world quickstart

Step 1: Configure launch.json

The file .vscode/launch.json contains launch configurations for a VS Code debug run. This file defines what will launch and how it is configured when the user begins debugging. Configurations are available for each programming language in the Visual Studio Code marketplace.

In the case of the hello world quickstart, two applications are launched, each with its own Dapr sidecar. One is written in Node.JS, and the other in Python. You’ll notice each configuration contains a daprd run preLaunchTask and a daprd stop postDebugTask.

{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
       {
         "type": "pwa-node",
         "request": "launch",
         "name": "Nodeapp with Dapr",
         "skipFiles": [
             "<node_internals>/**"
         ],
         "program": "${workspaceFolder}/node/app.js",
         "preLaunchTask": "daprd-debug-node",
         "postDebugTask": "daprd-down-node"
       },
       {
         "type": "python",
         "request": "launch",
         "name": "Pythonapp with Dapr",
         "program": "${workspaceFolder}/python/app.py",
         "console": "integratedTerminal",
         "preLaunchTask": "daprd-debug-python",
         "postDebugTask": "daprd-down-python"
       }
    ]
}

If you’re using ports other than the default ports baked into the code, set the DAPR_HTTP_PORT and DAPR_GRPC_PORT environment variables in the launch.json debug configuration. Match with the httpPort and grpcPort in the daprd tasks.json. For example, launch.json:

{
  // Set the non-default HTTP and gRPC ports
  "env": {
      "DAPR_HTTP_PORT": "3502",
      "DAPR_GRPC_PORT": "50002"
  },
}

tasks.json:

{
  // Match with ports set in launch.json
  "httpPort": 3502,
  "grpcPort": 50002
}

Each configuration requires a request, type and name. These parameters help VSCode identify the task configurations in the .vscode/tasks.json files.

• type defines the language used. Depending on the language, it might require an extension found in the marketplace, such as the Python Extension.
• name is a unique name for the configuration. This is used for compound configurations when calling multiple configurations in your project.
• ${workspaceFolder} is a VS Code variable reference. This is the path to the workspace opened in VS Code.
• The preLaunchTask and postDebugTask parameters refer to the program configurations run before and after launching the application. See step 2 on how to configure these.

For more information on VSCode debugging parameters see VS Code launch attributes.

Step 2: Configure tasks.json

For each task defined in .vscode/launch.json , a corresponding task definition must exist in .vscode/tasks.json.

For the quickstart, each service needs a task to launch a Dapr sidecar with the daprd type, and a task to stop the sidecar with daprd-down. The parameters appId, httpPort, metricsPort, label and type are required. Additional optional parameters are available, see the reference table here.

{
    "version": "2.0.0",
    "tasks": [
        {
            "label": "daprd-debug-node",
            "type": "daprd",
            "appId": "nodeapp",
            "appPort": 3000,
            "httpPort": 3500,
            "metricsPort": 9090
        },
        {
            "label": "daprd-down-node",
            "type": "daprd-down",
            "appId": "nodeapp"
        },
        {
            "label": "daprd-debug-python",
            "type": "daprd",
            "appId": "pythonapp",
            "httpPort": 53109,
            "grpcPort": 53317,
            "metricsPort": 9091
        },
        {
            "label": "daprd-down-python",
            "type": "daprd-down",
            "appId": "pythonapp"
        }
   ]
}

Step 3: Configure a compound launch in launch.json

A compound launch configuration can defined in .vscode/launch.json and is a set of two or more launch configurations that are launched in parallel. Optionally, a preLaunchTask can be specified and run before the individual debug sessions are started.

For this example the compound configuration is:

{
   "version": "2.0.0",
   "configurations": [...],
   "compounds": [
      {
        "name": "Node/Python Dapr",
        "configurations": ["Nodeapp with Dapr","Pythonapp with Dapr"]
      }
    ]
}

Step 4: Launch your debugging session

You can now run the applications in debug mode by finding the compound command name you have defined in the previous step in the VS Code debugger:

You are now debugging multiple applications with Dapr!

Daprd parameter table

Below are the supported parameters for VS Code tasks. These parameters are equivalent to daprd arguments as detailed in this reference:

Related Links

• Visual Studio Code Extension Overview
• Visual Studio Code Debugging

3 - Developing Dapr applications with Dev Containers

The Visual Studio Code Dev Containers extension lets you use a self-contained Docker container as a complete development environment, without installing any additional packages, libraries, or utilities in your local filesystem.

Dapr has pre-built Dev Containers for C# and JavaScript/TypeScript; you can pick the one of your choice for a ready made environment. Note these pre-built containers automatically update to the latest Dapr release.

We also publish a Dev Container feature that installs the Dapr CLI inside any Dev Container.

Setup the development environment

Prerequisites

• Docker Desktop
• Visual Studio Code
• VS Code Remote Development extension pack

Add the Dapr CLI using a Dev Container feature

You can install the Dapr CLI inside any Dev Container using Dev Container features.

To do that, edit your devcontainer.json and add two objects in the "features" section:

"features": {
    // Install the Dapr CLI
    "ghcr.io/dapr/cli/dapr-cli:0": {},
    // Enable Docker (via Docker-in-Docker)
    "ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/docker-in-docker:2": {},
    // Alternatively, use Docker-outside-of-Docker (uses Docker in the host)
    //"ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/docker-outside-of-docker:1": {},
}

After saving the JSON file and (re-)building the container that hosts your development environment, you will have the Dapr CLI (and Docker) available, and can install Dapr by running this command in the container:

dapr init

Example: create a Java Dev Container for Dapr

This is an example of creating a Dev Container for creating Java apps that use Dapr, based on the official Java 17 Dev Container image.

Place this in a file called .devcontainer/devcontainer.json in your project:

// For format details, see https://aka.ms/devcontainer.json. For config options, see the
// README at: https://github.com/devcontainers/templates/tree/main/src/java
{
	"name": "Java",
	// Or use a Dockerfile or Docker Compose file. More info: https://containers.dev/guide/dockerfile
	"image": "mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/java:0-17",

	"features": {
		"ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/java:1": {
			"version": "none",
			"installMaven": "false",
			"installGradle": "false"
		},
        // Install the Dapr CLI
        "ghcr.io/dapr/cli/dapr-cli:0": {},
        // Enable Docker (via Docker-in-Docker)
        "ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/docker-in-docker:2": {},
        // Alternatively, use Docker-outside-of-Docker (uses Docker in the host)
        //"ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/docker-outside-of-docker:1": {},
	}

	// Use 'forwardPorts' to make a list of ports inside the container available locally.
	// "forwardPorts": [],

	// Use 'postCreateCommand' to run commands after the container is created.
	// "postCreateCommand": "java -version",

	// Configure tool-specific properties.
	// "customizations": {},

	// Uncomment to connect as root instead. More info: https://aka.ms/dev-containers-non-root.
	// "remoteUser": "root"
}

Then, using the VS Code command palette (CTRL + SHIFT + P or CMD + SHIFT + P on Mac), select Dev Containers: Rebuild and Reopen in Container.

Use a pre-built Dev Container (C# and JavaScript/TypeScript)

1. Open your application workspace in VS Code
2. In the command command palette (CTRL + SHIFT + P or CMD + SHIFT + P on Mac) type and select Dev Containers: Add Development Container Configuration Files...
   
3. Type dapr to filter the list to available Dapr remote containers and choose the language container that matches your application. Note you may need to select Show All Definitions...
   
4. Follow the prompts to reopen your workspace in the container.
   

Example

Watch this video on how to use the Dapr Dev Containers with your application.