Br-Zueira's Boilerplater
An extension that allows saving code snippets for later use in a simple and intuitive way. From a dev, to devs.
Click here to open the Marketplace page
Features
- Saving snippets by highlighting them and pressing ctrl+u (mac: cmd+u).
- Snippet organizing by language, tags, title and description.
- Webview to add, read, create or remove snippets, languages or tags.
- Easy use of the snippets: Going to the webview, searching a snippet and pressing "paste snippet" pastes it directly into your cursor position. No more jumping through old projects or searching into internet to copy boilerplate.
- Template language for snippets: [% %] for macros and [# #] for tabstops (more info at extensions settings).
- 100% local and self contained, so no external dependencies or connections needed.
Download it
From the marketplace: Open the extensions tab at VSCode, then search for "Br-Zueira's Boilerplater" and download it.
With VSCode command: Launch VS Code Quick Open (Ctrl+P), paste the following command, and press enter.
ext install Br-Zueira.br-zueira-boilerplater
VSIX: Go to release page, download the VSIX file and open the file with VSCode
Compile it locally: Ensure you have NPM >= 10, then clone the repository and enter the folder.
git clone https://github.com/Br-Zueira/Boilerplater.git
cd Boilerplater
Then, get dev dependencies.
npm install`
Lastly, run either npm run compile to compile once, npm run watch to compile at every change or npm run package to compile once and bundle as VSIX
How it Works (Under the Hood)
Boilerplater uses an isolated virtual database instance that commits directly to a local boilerplater.db sqlite file in your extension context to keep things simple, local and lightweight. For macros and tabstops, it uses a custom templater function which searches for templates with regex, evaluates macros as JavaScript to take full proveit of JS potential and converts tabstops into standard Vscode tabstop syntax, escaping '$' dolar signs in the process, which avoids Vscode engine of evaluating syntax such as JavaScript's ${value}, PHP's $value or even plain text monetary values as tabstops.
Extension Settings
Shortcuts
- Ctrl + u (Mac: cmd+u) => Save snippet from highlight
- Ctrl + alt + u (Mac: cmd+alt+u) => Access webview
Macros
Expressions to be evaluated either by other macros or by the [% %] template evaluator. They can be:
Default
Those are predefined by extension and always return a string. Always evaluated first.
These are the default macros and example values:
BP_FILENAME: 'script'
BP_FILENAME_EXT: 'script.lang'
BP_EXT: '.lang'
BP_DIRECTORY_NAME: '/home/user/vscode/my-project'
BP_WORKSPACE_NAME: 'my-project'
BP_YEAR: '1970'
BP_MONTH: '01'
BP_DAY: '01'
BP_SELECTED_TEXT: 'print("I'm selected inside document!")'
BP_CLIPBOARD: 'print("I'm at clipboard!")'
Custom
Defined in the macros manager. Can be imported with snippet template syntax [% %] and its value can be accessed by the macros that come after it (defined by evaluation order). Its value is defined by a JavaScript expression, can return anything, and must return something. Macros can be asynchronous, expect if you want to execute then inside the [% %] template evaluator, which is totally synchronous. Although it is sandboxed, it can access vscode, path, extension context and other macros. Their titles must be valid variable names.
Known Issues
- The search bar in list view may "glitch" a little bit (this would be misplaced cursor or missing chars) every time a search is sent, specially if you type too fast.
- While trying to paste a snippet, sometimes the cursor will unfocus from document before it can be pasted, making it fail. Simply refocus cursor at document, then try again while cursor is still focused at document.
Credits/Acknowledgements
- SQL.js: Made the local database completely lightweight and self contained
- Tom-Select: Made the snippet manager dropdowns possible
- Esbuild: Made compiled extension way more lightweight
- StarDance: The inspiration for this project and the only reason it exists
