Snippets... from creation to usage.

After finding about "cw" C# code snippet for Console.WriteLine() I tried to Console.ReadLine a lot of times by typing "cr" until I decided to create my own snippet and I'll do it again here with you.

First we add a new XML file to our project named ReadLine.snippet. We add now a snippet template by right clicking in the code Editor and select Insert Snippet. We proceed now to modify the template, since we are creating an expansion snippet we remove the <snippettype>SurroundsWith</snippettype> tag. In the title tag we name our snippet ReadLine and in the author tag you write your own name. Now is time to change the shortcut tag wich is the trigger of our snippet and why not we change it for "cr". In the description tag we add a short description of the snippet.

Since we are creating a C# snippet we change the language in the code tag for CSharp, and add the code inside CDATA[/*code goes here*/]. Our resulting snippets looks this way:

  <CodeSnippet Format="1.0.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/CodeSnippet">
  <Header>
    <Title>Console.ReadLine()</Title>
    <Author>Enrique M. Castañeda</Author>
    <Shortcut>cr</Shortcut>
    <Description>Console.ReadLine()</Description>
    <SnippetTypes>
        <SnippetType>Expansion</SnippetType>
    </SnippetTypes>
  </Header>
  <Snippet>
    <Declarations>
      <Literal>
        <ID>author</ID>
        <Default>Enrique M. Castañeda</Default>
      </Literal>
    </Declarations>
    <Code Language="CSharp">
      <![CDATA[Console.ReadLine();]]>
    </Code>
  </Snippet>
</CodeSnippet>

Is time to load our created snippet into VisualStudio to use it everywhere. To get it done we just go to Tools int the main menu and click on Code Snippet Manager. Once there we import our snippet from our current solution folder. We can then select where to place the snippet.

Now we are ready to type "cr" in any code file and Console.ReadLine(); will show. If we forget our snippet name we can just right click in the editor and select Insert Snippet.