Do you keep them in your IDE, or elsewhere? Do you have an app for that? Are they easily shared?
I realized I have no system at all but could use one to make it easier to find code I've written and might need again some day.
By snippets, I am referring to any chunk of code / text in any format or language, of any length.
Thanks!
EDIT A DAY LATER: Thanks you all! Reading all these ideas, I got inspired to create my own little web app. Wish me luck... :)
Please, can you give an example of such code snippets? I’m wondering what people consider reusable in different projects.
In PHP, a lot. Unit test are boilerplate 90% of the time, getters and setters (although they can be done via Generate), ORM classes with your default shebang (autoincrement ID), and I could go on and on.
I dislike snippets for code like "key this array by some logic" - this should be reusable via a dedicated helper or service.
I go full chaos and look up where I last used it when I need a snippet...
It's got to be here somewhere... (Search for way too long.........) Dang, I guess I'll just write it again from scratch
Yeah, this is what I am looking to avoid.
I would appretiate if someone could explain the practical utility of snippets because it just dawned on me how useful they might be.
Easy access to small snippets of code you often need, but putting them in their own library would be crazy.
- Opening a file / db connection
- parsing xml/json/... ,
- template for unit tests,
- import and initialization of framework at work.
Depending on the IDE snippets can also move parts of the code around: (intellij live templates)
- variable.notnull -> if (variable != null) {... }
- "text %s".format -> String.format("text %s",...)
Think about how you write code. Is it all new, or are there functions / API calls / whatever that you might re-use from time to time?
If that's possible, think about how you go find that code now. Wouldn't it be cool if you could type a short bit like, "funcA" and boom! your IDE filled in the whole function? Or, worst case, you flip over to another tool, find the snippet you want, copy and paste it into your work.
That's what I am thinking about, at least. I'm just not sure how I want to get there yet.
My snippets are basically taken care of now by chatgpt.
I selfhost Snippetbox. Real easy, limited in features but does the job!
Thanks. I am thinking about whether a self-hosted service is overkill for this, for my purposes. I kept my question broad in order to find out if most people just keep their snippets on their own PC or what.
I will check this out and I'm also looking at Snibox.
