How to create elements in vscode extension

Question

Doesn't vscode support creating element and DOM manipulations? I've read the api referrence but cannot figure out how to get the handle of document. I'm looking for something equivalent to workspaceElement = atom.views.getView(atom.workspace) in atom.

Answer 1

VSCode does not expose the DOM, the only DOM manipulations that can be performed are through the API calls like decorations. Here is a sample of the decorator API in action https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-extension-samples/tree/master/decorator-sample

The primary reason for not allowing direct manipulation of the DOM is to improve the speed and stability of the editor.