Code Snippets for Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, and Visual Studio for Mac

TL;DR — Here are the links to download the code snippets:

• Snippets for Visual Studio 2019
• Snippets for Visual Studio for Mac
• Snippets for Visual Studio Code
• Download the snippets from GitHub

Some Background

My coding world and coding life has changed a lot in the last year and a lot of it was driven by moving to a Macbook Pro. I moved to a mac not so much because I love MacOS — it’s mostly about forcing myself to learn to code .NET Core and ASP.NET Core without relying on Visual Studio. That means that I’m using Visual Studio Code for most of my work.

That initial transition from Visual Studio to Visual Studio Code was a little rough and a lot of it was because I not only leaned heavily on Visual Studio but I also leaned super hard on CodeRush and my custom CodeRush templates that I’d created over the years. It was painful enough that I rewrote all my CodeRush templates as Visual Studio Code snippets.

Our Hero Tries New Things and Doesn’t Hate Them

Fast-forward about 9 months and I’ve been switching between Mac and Windows a lot. Then a couple of things happened. 1) I had a conversation with Joseph Hill about Visual Studio for Mac and 2) I saw this Visual Studio Productivity Tips video by Robert Green and Kendra Havens.

Joseph drove home the point that Visual Studio for Mac is *NOT* just for developing Xamarin-based apps — it’s also good for doing ASP.NET Core development. He suggested that I go give Visual Studio for Mac another try. I did…and it’s good.

Then there’s the Robert & Kendra video. That video is mind-blowing. I’ve been using Visual Studio for *DECADES* and there were a ton of features that I had no idea about. I decided to give Visual Studio a try without CodeRush…and it’s good. There are still some things that I miss from CodeRush but whateryagunnado? (shrug)

Code Snippets for Mac and Code Snippets for Visual Studio

So I started using Visual Studio for Mac a lot and I started using Visual Studio 2019 a lot without running CodeRush. But I still needed/wanted the snippets that I wrote for Visual Studio Code.

One thing that’s a little frustrating is that Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio for Mac, and Visual Studio all have different formats for their snippets. So I wrote a utility to read all my Visual Studio Code snippets and translate them to Visual Studio snippet format and Visual Studio for Mac snippet format.

The Snippets

Category	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 404 not found
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	i	Declare a C# interface
Coding	mb	Declare a method that returns a bool
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	ian	If argument null throw
Exceptions	ians	If argument is empty string throw
Exceptions	tane	Throw ArgumentNullException
Exceptions	tcb	Try catch block
Exceptions	tnie	Throw not implemented exception
Exceptions	tnioe	Throw invalid operation exception
Exceptions	uitrywin	User interface try catch
Methods	mf	Method that returns an float
Methods	mi	Method that returns an int
Methods	mm	Method that returns a type of your choice
Methods	ms	Method that returns an string
Methods	mv	Method that returns an void
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	nsb	Create a new StringBuilder
Strings	se	String.Empty
Strings	stf	String.Format
Strings	stp	String.Format with paste
Unit Testing	aaa	Add Arrange Act Assert comments
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	aes	Assert.AreEqual on two strings
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 method for MSTest
Unit Testing	otisutn	On Test Initialize method that sets system under test to null
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 system under test property

How to Install the Snippets for Visual Studio Code

C# Code Snippets for Visual Studio Code

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.  

How to Install the Snippets for Visual Studio 2019

C# Code Snippets for Visual Studio 2019

To install these snippets for Visual Studio 2019, first make sure that Visual Studio is not running. Then you’ll need to copy the snippets to the snippets folder using Explorer.exe. The folder name is %userprofile%\Documents\Visual Studio 2019\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets. If you’ve never customized a snippet in Visual Studio before, this directory might not exist. Just create it and copy the snippets to that directory.

How to Install the Snippets for Visual Studio for Mac

C# Code Snippets for Visual Studio for Mac

To install these snippets for Visual Studio for Mac, first make sure that Visual Studio for Mac is not running. Then you’ll need to copy them to the snippet folder using Finder. The folder name is ~/Library/VisualStudio/8.0/Snippets. If you’ve never customized a snippet in Visual Studio for Mac before, this directory might not exist. Just create it and copy the snippets to that directory.

Summary

Anyway these snippets make my life as a developer a lot easier. Hopefully, you’ll get some use out of them. If you want to download them from GitHub or want to contribute, here’s the GitHub repository.

Hope this helps.

-Ben