---
id: sorbet-uris
title: Working with Synthetic or Missing Files
sidebar_label: sorbet: URIs
---
Note: The Sorbet VS Code extension supports this out-of-the-box. This doc serves as a reference for users of alternative LSP clients to recreate the VS Code extension behavior in their preferred language client.
When typechecking a project, certain files in the project are synthetic. For example: every RBI file which defines the Ruby standard library is not a file on disk, but actually a blob of memory baked into the Sorbet binary executable. Also, some files may be visible to the language server, but missing from the language client.
Sorbet supports a handful of extensions to the language server protocol to enable Go to Definition to work with these files:
The video above shows that Go to Definition on the File.read
method (defined
in an RBI file contained inside Sorbet itself) opens like a normal,
non-modifiable file inside VS Code.
The extensions powering this are:
- The
supportsSorbetURIs
property of theinitialize
request. - A custom
sorbet/readFile
LSP request. - In the Sorbet VS Code extension: a
TextDocumentContentProvider
to present a Virtual Document. - The
--lsp-directories-missing-from-client
command line flag, specifying which extra files the language server knows about, but are not known to the client, which need to be served as virtualsorbet:
URI files. (Uncommon, but available)
As seen above, Sorbet's VS Code extension supports this out of the box.
To configure other language clients to support Go to Definition for these files, follow these steps:
By default, Sorbet produces https://
URIs for synthetic files in its payload,
and normal file://
URIs for all other files (even those which are missing from
the client).
The first step is to request that Sorbet send sorbet:
URIs for these files
instead.
In the initialize
request that starts the Sorbet language server, be sure to
pass the supportsSorbetURIs
property:
"initializationOptions": {
// ...
"supportsSorbetURIs": true,
// ...
}
Different language clients will have
different ways to specify initializationOptions
when starting a language server. Consult the documentation of your editor or
language client for how to pass this option on startup in the initialize
request.
Setting supportsSorbetURIs
to true
informs Sorbet that it can use sorbet:
URIs. Whenever a Go to Definition request would attempt to jump into a synthetic
or missing file, instead of sending an https://
URI or a file://
URI, it
will send a sorbet:
URI.
By default, the language client will not know how to open files with a sorbet:
URI, so the next step is to teach it.
Sorbet implements a custom LSP request method called sorbet/readFile
which
language clients can use to get the text content of a synthetic or missing file:
Request:
- method:
sorbet/readFile
- params:
TextDocumentIdentifier
Response:
- result:
TextDocumentItem
Different language clients have their own way to customize the way files with a certain URI are opened. For example:
- VS Code provides an API called
TextDocumentContentProvider
. - Vim and Neovim provide BufReadCmd and FileReadCmd to customize how files
with certain protocols are read. For more information, see
:help Cmd-event
The best reference for how to use the sorbet/readFile
command is the official
Sorbet VS Code extension's TextDocumentContentProvider implementation:
→ vscode_extension/src/sorbetContentProvider.ts
If you have implemented something which uses the sorbet/readFile
request,
please contribute an edit to this doc which shares a link to your code, so
others can reference it!