Is it possible to improve the completion API?

[ema2159]

I've been improving the company-box package adding support for several company backends such as company-tern or company-anaconda. I also started working with company-irony but I found that I had to do kinda weird workarounds to find out the kind of completion candidate (i.e. if it is a class, a function, a struct, a variable etc). Other modes that provide completion just as anaconda-mode provide a nice API with information that tells you exactly the kind of the candidate (keyword, function, instance, class etc...). Am I missing something? Is there a way to extract that kind of information from company-irony candidates?

[Sarcasm]

I guess it's just a matter of exposing clang_getCompletionParent():

• https://clang.llvm.org/doxygen/group__CINDEX__CODE__COMPLET.html#ga8afa885ca6547c96baa1369179b3b236

Which I think returns this list of possibilities:

• https://clang.llvm.org/doxygen/group__CINDEX__CODE__COMPLET.html#ga547e210f2ea6fc1fb4263b0d4d7e8102

You could try to add this information as a new member of the completion candidates:

• irony-mode/irony-completion.el

  Lines 262 to 280 in c3ae899

  	(defun irony-completion-candidates (&optional prefix style)
  	"Return the list of candidates at point.
  	A candidate is composed of the following elements:
  	0. The typed text. Multiple candidates can share the same string
  	because of overloaded functions, default arguments, etc.
  	1. The priority.
  	2. The [result-]type of the candidate, if any.
  	3. If non-nil, contains the Doxygen brief documentation of the
  	candidate.
  	4. The signature of the candidate excluding the result-type
  	which is available separately.
  	Example: \"foo(int a, int b) const\"
  	5. The annotation start, a 0-based index in the prototype string.
  	6. Post-completion data. The text to insert followed by 0 or
  	more indices. These indices work by pairs and describe ranges
  	of placeholder text.
  	Example: (\"(int a, int b)\" 1 6 8 13)
  	7. The availability (CXAvailabilityKind) of the candidate."

[ema2159]

I guess it's just a matter of exposing clang_getCompletionParent():

• https://clang.llvm.org/doxygen/group__CINDEX__CODE__COMPLET.html#ga8afa885ca6547c96baa1369179b3b236

Which I think returns this list of possibilities:

• https://clang.llvm.org/doxygen/group__CINDEX__CODE__COMPLET.html#ga547e210f2ea6fc1fb4263b0d4d7e8102

You could try to add this information as a new member of the completion candidates:

• irony-mode/irony-completion.el

  Lines 262 to 280 in c3ae899

  	(defun irony-completion-candidates (&optional prefix style)
  	"Return the list of candidates at point.
  	A candidate is composed of the following elements:
  	0. The typed text. Multiple candidates can share the same string
  	because of overloaded functions, default arguments, etc.
  	1. The priority.
  	2. The [result-]type of the candidate, if any.
  	3. If non-nil, contains the Doxygen brief documentation of the
  	candidate.
  	4. The signature of the candidate excluding the result-type
  	which is available separately.
  	Example: \"foo(int a, int b) const\"
  	5. The annotation start, a 0-based index in the prototype string.
  	6. Post-completion data. The text to insert followed by 0 or
  	more indices. These indices work by pairs and describe ranges
  	of placeholder text.
  	Example: (\"(int a, int b)\" 1 6 8 13)
  	7. The availability (CXAvailabilityKind) of the candidate."

This is just what I need. I'll try to explore it and then I'll open a PR.