[Dev support]: Why does the app.messageExtensions.query handler use `Query<TParams>` instead of a `MessageExtensionQuery` type?

[therealjohn]

Question

Code snippets

https://github.com/microsoft/teams-ai/blob/main/js/packages/teams-ai/src/MessageExtensions.ts#L317

This makes it harder to re-use existing code or autocomplete for understanding what comes from the query. For example, the MessageExtensionQuery type in the Bot Framework SDK has clear properties for parameters that make it simpler to learn the API.

Compared to this in the AI SDK makes it difficult to use:

app.messageExtensions.query("searchCmd", async (context, state, query) => {
  const searchQuery = query.parameters.queryText;
  // Other handling
  // e.g. Create search / action cards

[corinagum]

@therealjohn We flatten the object from MessageExtensionQuery later in the code: https://github.com/microsoft/teams-ai/blob/main/js/packages/teams-ai/src/MessageExtensions.ts#L333 but I'm not recalling why.

@Stevenic do you have insight on this? I realize it was a decision made a while ago at this point, but it would be good to know if there's reasons to avoid switching to MessageExtensionQuery

[Stevenic]

@therealjohn we were trying to unify all of the various query structures across the SDK. There are 2 or 3 different patterns that basically do the same thing so the goal was to get that down to one unified pattern. You're still free to ignore our unified query parameter and just use the activity directly.

Can you elaborate on the intelisense issues as that shouldn't really be impacted.

[corinagum]

Closing as answered. Please feel free to add info on discussions held in chat for other developers' info.