Published on

My Personal Collection of Code Snippets

My Code Snippet

I have to admit I'm a fairly lazy person — I don't want to type the same code a third time, so I automate as much as possible. With that in mind, I've built up a collection of code snippets.

Syncing code snippets can be a challenge, but there are two main approaches:

  1. Use ACCodeSnippetRepositoryPlugin to manage code snippets.
  2. Use github for version control and create symbolic links locally. This is the approach I use.

Notes:

  • You can use the script build_snippets.sh:
$ ./build_snippets.sh
done

  • The Completion Shortcut (autocomplete shortcut key) is the most important setting. Once you configure a keyword, typing it in the editor will bring up autocomplete suggestions. Without it, code snippets can only be dragged into the editor. The Title and Summary are displayed in the autocomplete popup. Specifying a Language and Completion Scopes restricts the snippet to specific contexts. When you drag a snippet to create it, Xcode will automatically infer these based on where you dragged from.

  • Placeholders in code snippets can be added in the format <#placeholder hint#>.

  • Completion shortcut keys can include a small number of special symbols — known ones include @ $. Other symbols besides @, while they can be entered, will cause the shortcut to stop working from that character onward (for example, if the shortcut is $+, after typing $ and seeing the suggestion appear, typing + will dismiss it).

  • User-defined code snippets are stored in ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/UserData/CodeSnippets.

  • Some shortcut examples:

//Title : Property Assign
//Completion Shortcut : @pa
//Completion Scopes : All
@property (nonatomic, assign) <#type#> <#name#>;

//@pc
@property (nonatomic, copy) <#type#> <#name#>;

//@pr
@property (nonatomic, readonly) <#type#> <#name#>;

//@prw
@property (nonatomic, readwrite) <#type#> <#name#>;

//@ps
@property (nonatomic, strong) <#type#> <#name#>;

//@pw
@property (nonatomic, weak) <#type#> <#name#>;

//@pb
@property (nonatomic, copy) void (^<#block name#>)(void);

//@pi
@property (nonatomic, weak) IBOutlet <#type#> <#name#>;
  • Complete method autocomplete uses @ as the prefix.

Check them all out after installation.

Code:

All code from this article can be found on my GitHub at MyCodeSnippet.