Managing Environments & Apps in VS Code

The Niksphere VS Code Extension includes a dedicated sidebar in the Activity Bar with three primary tree views for managing Niksphere Cloud (Fully Managed) environments, Self-Hosted instances, and app lifecycles.

1. The Niksphere Sidebar Overview

Click the Niksphere icon in the Activity Bar to open the explorer sidebar:

1. Cloud: Manage your Niksphere Cloud connection and view associated cloud instances.
2. Environments: Add, authenticate, monitor, and switch between local and remote Engine environments.
3. Apps: View, install, uninstall, download, and manage app packages on the currently selected environment.

2. Cloud

If your organization uses managed Niksphere Cloud instances:

1. Click Log in to Niksphere Cloud in the Cloud view (or run command Niksphere: Cloud Login).
2. Your browser will open for authentication via the Niksphere Cloud Broker.
3. Once authenticated, all cloud environments belonging to your tenant are listed.
4. Clicking a cloud instance switches the active target in the Environments and Apps views.

3. Environments

Adding an Environment

1. Click the + (Add) icon in the Environments view header.
2. Enter the Engine URL (e.g. http://localhost:3000 or https://engine.internal.company.com).
3. The environment is saved and displayed in the list.

Authenticating against an Environment

• Environments display (Authenticated) with your username when logged in, or (Not Authenticated) when logged out.
• Right-click an environment item and select Login to start the interactive authentication flow.
• Select Logout to invalidate and remove local session tokens from the OS keyring.

Opening the Engine Web UI

• Double-click any environment entry (or right-click $\rightarrow$ Open Frontend) to open the Niksphere Engine Web UI in your default browser.

Live Log Streaming

• Right-click an environment and select View Log (or click the $(output) icon).
• The extension opens the Niksphere Logs output channel and starts real-time log streaming (nik env inspect monitor --stream).

4. Apps

The Apps view displays all application packages registered on the currently active environment.

Status Indicators & Badges

Badge	Color	Meaning
●	Green	The app version is actively installed and running.
●	Blue	The app version is uninstalled, but persistent data/tables exist in the database.
(None)	Default	The package is uploaded to the engine but not installed and holds no database records.

App Actions & Context Menu

Right-click any app or version entry to execute lifecycle commands:

1. Install App (Install)

• Installs the selected version on the engine. If schema changes exist, tables and columns are automatically provisioned.

2. Uninstall App (Uninstall)

• Stops the app and detaches its runtime logic from the engine. Database tables and user records are preserved.

3. Drop App Data (Drop Data)

• Available for uninstalled versions with existing data (blue badge).
• Prompts for confirmation before permanently dropping all tables and columns associated with that app version.

4. Download Package (Download App)

• Downloads the compiled .nikapp binary package to your local filesystem.

5. Upload External Package (Upload)

• Click the + (Upload) button in the Apps header to select and upload any local .nikapp file directly to the engine.

6. Delete Package (Delete)

• Deletes an uninstalled package archive permanently from the engine repository.