Some Useful Visual Studio Code Snippets

Update: June 20, 2019 — Here’s an updated version of this post and the snippets including support for Visual Studio and Visual Studio for Mac.

A couple of months ago, I got inspired to really learn .NET Core and Visual Studio Code (VSCode).  But I didn’t just want to learn it from Windows — the real power of .NET Core is that’s cross-platform.  So what did I do?  I bought a MacBook Pro and made that my primary work machine.  

The thing that really became clear once I started working a lot in VSCode was how much I relied on the CodeRush templates in Visual Studio 2017 — both the ones out of the box and the ones that I’d written — to get work done.  I kept doing all the CodeRush keyboard shortcuts in VSCode that I had ‘muscle memory’ for and (of course) they did nothing.  (Grrr.)

Well, because I had a huge looming deadline for my next Pluralsight course, the only reasonable thing to do was to spend a day learning how to write VSCode Snippets and to write snippets for all the things that I missed from full Visual Studio 2017.  

Here’s my pile of C# snippets.  Download and enjoy.  

To install these, open up Visual Studio Code, bring up the list of commands (CTRL-Shift-P / Command-Shift-P), and search for Configure User Snippets.  This will bring up your snippets info.  Choose ‘csharp’ and then copy the my snippets into your csharp.json snippets file.  You could also just replace your csharp.json snippets file with my file if you don’t already have any snippets that you’ve written.  

Once you’ve gotten those installed, to use them, type the keyboard shortcut value in VSCode and press Tab to expand the snippet.  Some of the snippets take multiple values.  Press Tab to move between the snippet values.   

Category	Keyboard Shortcut	Description
ASP.NET	mca	ASP.NET controller action method
ASP.NET	mcap	ASP.NET controller HTTP post action method
ASP.NET	r404	ASP.NET controller return 404 not found
ASP.NET	rbr	ASP.NET controller return bad request
ASP.NET	rnf	ASP.NET controller return 404 not found
ASP.NET	rr	ASP.NET controller redirect to action name
ASP.NET	rrid	ASP.NET controller redirect to action with id
Coding	b	Code block braces
Coding	c	Public class
Coding	cwl	Console.WriteLine
Coding	fe	foreach statement
Coding	r	Return
Coding	rf	Return false
Coding	rse	Return String.Empty
Coding	rt	Return true
Coding (if/else)	en	Equals null
Coding (if/else)	ese	Equals empty string
Coding (if/else)	ifb	if block
Coding (if/else)	ifn	If variable is null
Coding (if/else)	ifna	If variable is null assign
Coding (if/else)	inen	If variable is not null
Coding (if/else)	lb	Else block with braces
Coding (if/else)	li	Else if
Coding (if/else)	ne	Not Equal
Coding (if/else)	nen	Not equal to null
Entity Framework	aspdbc	Register DbContext
Entity Framework	dbc	DbContext class
Entity Framework	dbcf	Create DbContextFactory
Entity Framework	dbs	DbSet<T>
Exceptions	tcb	Try catch block
Exceptions	ian	If argument null throw
Exceptions	ians	If argument is empty string throw
Exceptions	tane	Throw ArgumentNullException
Exceptions	tnie	Throw not implemented exception
Exceptions	tnioe	Throw invalid operation exception
Exceptions	uitrywin	User interface try catch
Methods	mi	Method that returns an int
Methods	mf	Method that returns an float
Methods	ms	Method that returns an string
Methods	mv	Method that returns an void
Methods	mm	Method that returns a type of your choice
Miscellaneous	adp	Adapt property
Properties	ap	Auto-implemented property
Properties	apb	Auto-implemented bool property
Properties	apf	Auto-implemented float property
Properties	api	Auto-implemented int property
Properties	aps	Auto-implemented string property
Properties	p	Property
Properties	ps	Property (string)
Properties	rb	Read-only bool property
Properties	ri	Read-only int property
Properties	rp	Read-only property
Properties	rs	Read-only string property
Strings	se	String.Empty
Strings	stf	String.Format
Strings	stp	String.Format with paste
Strings	nsb	Create a new StringBuilder
Unit Testing	ae	Assert AreEqual with T
Unit Testing	ae0	Assert.AreEqual to 0
Unit Testing	aep	Assert.AreEqual on two properties
Unit Testing	aepb	Assert.AreEqual on two boolean properties
Unit Testing	aepd8	Assert.AreEqual on two DateTime properties
Unit Testing	aepf	Assert.AreEqual on two float properties
Unit Testing	aepi	Assert.AreEqual on two int properties
Unit Testing	aeps	Assert.AreEqual on two string properties
Unit Testing	af	Assert.IsFalse
Unit Testing	afa	Assert.Fail()
Unit Testing	ain	Assert.Inconclusive()
Unit Testing	aines	Assert string is null or empty
Unit Testing	an	Assert is null
Unit Testing	ane	Assert is not equal with choice of T
Unit Testing	ane0	Assert is not equal to zero
Unit Testing	anef	Assert floats are not equal
Unit Testing	anei	Assert ints are not equal
Unit Testing	anepb	Assert bool properties are not equal
Unit Testing	anepi	Assert int properties are not equal
Unit Testing	aneps	Assert string properties are not equal
Unit Testing	anes	Assert strings are not equal
Unit Testing	anese	Assert string is not empty string
Unit Testing	ann	Assert is not null
Unit Testing	anns	Assert is not null or empty string
Unit Testing	ans	Assert is null or empty string
Unit Testing	ase	Assert.AreEqual to String.Empty
Unit Testing	at	Assert is true
Unit Testing	mvt	Test Method
Unit Testing	oti	On Test Initialize
Unit Testing	sut	SystemUnderTest property for unit tests
Unit Testing	sutn	Set SystemUnderTest variable to null
Unit Testing	tc	Create test class
Unit Testing	tf	Create test class
Unit Testing	tfsut	Create test class with sut

Once again, here’s the download link for the csharp snippets. 

I hope you get some use out of these.  

-Ben