snipMate & UltiSnip Snippets

This repository contains snippets files for various programming languages.

It is community-maintained and many people have contributed snippet files and other improvements already.

Contents

• snippets/*: snippets using snipMate format
• UltiSnips/*: snippets using UltiSnips format

Snippet engines supporting vim-snippets

There are different forks of snippet engines which allow the user to insert snippets by typing the name of a snippet hitting the expansion mapping.

• github.com/SirVer/ultisnips: python, supports all snippets in this repo.
• github.com/garbas/vim-snipmate: VimL, snipmate-snippets, engine sometimes behaves strange. Supports snippets/*
• github.com/Shougo/neosnippet: VimL, supports snippets/* with some configuration.
• github.com/drmingdrmer/xptemplate: Totally different syntax, does not read snippets contained in this file, but it is also very powerful. It does not support vim-snippets (just listing it here for completeness)

There tries to be a more comprehensive list (which still is incomplete) here: http://vim-wiki.mawercer.de/wiki/topic/text-snippets-skeletons-templates.html

UltiSnips has additional features such as high speed, nesting snippets, expanding snippets in snippets and offers powerful transformations on text in snippets (like visual selections or placeholder texts).

Which one to use? If you have python give SirVer/ultisnips a try because its fast and has the most features.

If you have VimL only (vim without python support) your best option is using garbas/vim-snipmate and cope with the minor bugs found in the engine.

Q: Should snipMate be deprecated in favour of UltiSnips?

A: No, because snipMate is VimL, and UltiSnips requires Python. Some people want to use snippets without having to install Vim with Python support. Yes - this sucks.

One solution would be: Use snippets if they are good enough, but allow overriding them in UltiSnips. This would avoid most duplication while still serving most users. AFAIK there is a nested-placeholder branch for snipMate too. snipMate is still improved by Adnan Zafar. So maybe time is not ready to make a final decision yet.

github issue/discussion

Vendor Snippets

Additional library and framework snippets are available for UltiSnips users in the UltiSnips/ directory. These files are removed from the default language namespaces to prevent them from all being loaded automatically. If there is a separate library, framework, or package you would like to support open a pull request!

Additional snippets can be added to the current buffer with the :UltiSnipsAddFiletypes command followed by the snippet name without the "snippets" ending. For example, to add the JavaScript Jasmine snippets, run: :UltiSnipsAddFiletypes javascript-jasmine. To have this snippet loaded everytime a JavaScript file is opened or created you can add the command to your -.vim/ftplugin/javascript.vim file. Another way is to add autocmd FileType js UltiSnipsAddFiletypes javascript-jasmine in your .vimrc.

For more see the UltiSnips docs (:help UltiSnips).

Installation

First be aware that there are many options, see "Snippet engines" above. Second be aware than there are tons of plugin managers which is why Marc Weber thinks that it doesn't make sense to repeat the same repetitive information everywhere.

The recommended way to install these snippets is by using vim-addon-manager. Marc Weber wrote it for exactly this reason, it supports simple dependency management. E.g. all you need is this line in your .vimrc:

" assuming you want to use snipmate snippet engine
ActivateAddons vim-snippets snipmate

vim-pi Is the place to discuss plugin managers and repository resources.

For snipMate installation instructions, please see snipmate@garbas.

Pull requests adding installation instructions for Pathogen, Bundle, git clone, etc. are welcome and much appreciated.

Getting help

If you still have trouble getting this to work, please create a GitHub issue.

Things to consider when contributing

Some snippets are useful for almost all languages, so let's try to have the same triggers for them:

if : if without else
ife: if $1 else $2
eif : else if ($1) { .. }
el  : else ..
wh  : while (cond) ...

Don't add useless placeholder default texts like:

if (${1:condition}){
  ${0:some code here}
}

instead use:

if (${1}){
  ${0:${VISUAL}}
}

Exception: Functions which are used less often, such as Vim's matchall(), matchstr() functions which case hints may be helpful to remember order. In the VimL case get vim-dev plugin which has function completion

Thus for conditions (while, if ..) and block bodies just use ${N} - Thanks

When the snippet can be used to wrap existing code leverage ${VISUAL}

Open questions: What about one line if ee then .. else .. vs if \n .. then \n ... \n else \n .. ? Which additional policies to add? Discuss at: honza#230

folding markers: Until further work is done on vim-snipmate, please don't add folding markers into snippets. vim-snipmate has some comments about how to patch all snippets on the fly adding those.

Currently all snippets from UltiSnips have been put into UltiSnips - some work on merging should be done (dropping duplicates etc). Also see engines section above.

Related repositories

We also encourage people to maintain sets of snippets for particular use cases so that all users can benefit from them. People can list their snippet repositories here:

• https://github.com/rbonvall/snipmate-snippets-bib (snippets for BibTeX files)
• https://github.com/sudar/vim-arduino-snippets (snippets for Arduino files)
• https://github.com/zedr/zope-snipmate-bundle.git (snippets for Python, TAL and ZCML)
• https://github.com/bonsaiben/bootstrap-snippets (snippets for Twitter Bootstrap markup, in HTML and Haml)
• https://github.com/sniphpets (advanced snippets for PHP, Symfony 2/3, Doctrine and etc.)

Installation using VAM: https://github.com/MarcWeber/vim-addon-manager

Future ideas and examples

overview snippet engines If you have ideas you can add them to that list of "snippet engine features by example".

Historical notes

vim-snipmate was originally started by Michael Sanders who has now unfortunately abandoned the project. Rok Garbas is now maintaining a fork of the project in hopes of improving the existing code base.

Versions / dialects / ..

There are some issues, such as newer language versions may require other snippets than older. If this exists we currently recommend doing this:

• add snippets/ruby.snippets (common snippets)
• add snippets/ruby-1.8.snippets (1.8 only)
• add snippets/ruby-1.9.snippets (1.9 only)

then configure https://github.com/garbas/vim-snipmate this way:

let g:snipMate = {}
let g:snipMate.scope_aliases = {}
let g:snipMate.scope_aliases['ruby'] = 'ruby,ruby-rails,ruby-1.9'

If it happens that you work on a project requiring ruby-1.8 snippets instead, consider using vim-addon-local-vimrc and override the filetypes.

Well - of course it may not make sense to create a new file for each ruby-library-version triplet. Sometimes postfixing a name such as

migrate_lib_20_down
migrate_lib_20_up

will do it then if syntax has changed.

Language maintainers

No one can really be proficient in all programming languages. If you would like to maintain snippets for a language, please get in touch.

Notes: People are interested in snippets - and their interest may wane again. This list is kept up-to-date on a best effort basis.

• Elixir - lpil, iurifq
• Falcon - steveno
• HTML Django - honza
• Javascript - honza
• Markdown - honza
• PHP - chrisyue
• Python - honza
• Ruby - taq
• Scala - gorodinskiy
• Supercollider - lpil

License

Just as the original snipMate plugin, all the snippets are licensed under the terms of the MIT license.