How to Integrate Code with Code Snippets in Visual Studio
As I've noted in an earlier post, I don't use code snippets much (i.e. “at all”). One of the reasons that I don't is that I often have existing code that I want to integrate with whatever I'm getting from the code snippets library.
Some code snippets will integrate with existing code. If I first select some code before adding a code snippet, there are some snippets that will wrap that selected code in a useful way. For example, I might have code like this:
Customer cust;
cust = CustRepo.GetCustomerById("A123");
I could then select the second line of the code and pick the if code snippet. After adding my code snippet, I'd end up with:
if (true)
{
cust = CustRepo.GetCustomerById(custId);
}
That true in the if statement will already be selected, so I can just start typing to enter my test. That might mean ending up with this code:
if (custId != null)
{
cust = CustRepo.GetCustomerById(custId);
}
You have to be careful with this, though -- most snippets aren't so obliging. If you do this with the switch code snippet, for example, it will wipe out your code rather than wrap it. Maybe I should go back to that previous tip on code snippets -- it discussed how to customize existing snippets (hint: you specify where the currently selected text is to go in your snippet with ${ TM_SELECTED_TEXT}).
Posted by Peter Vogel on 10/21/2019