Appears in the list of snippets in the tool view and is also searched when using the code completion feature.

Prefix used while using code completion.

Select the license for you snippet repository.

Enter the name(s) of the author(s) of the snippet file.

Select the file type(s) you want the snippet repository to apply to. It is set to “” by default, so the repository applies to all files. You can change it to something like C++ for instance, or select from a list by clicking on the items. You can specify more than one file type pressing the Shift while adding types.

The name will be shown in the completion list.

Pressing this shortcut will insert the snippet into the document.

The text your snippet will insert into the document.

A snippet can contain editable fields. They can be cycled by pressing Tab. The following expressions can be used in the template text to create fields:

${field_name} creates a simple, editable field. All subsequent occurrences of the same field_name create fields which mirror the contents of the first during editing.

${field_name=default} can be used to specify a default value for the field. default can be any JavaScript expression.

Use ${field_name=text} to specify a fixed string as default value.

${func(other_field1, other_field2, ...)} can be used to create a field which evaluates a JavaScript function on each edit and contains its contents. See the Scripts tab for more information.

${cursor} can be used to mark the end position of the cursor after everything else was filled in.

JavaScript helper functions to use in your snippets.

All JavaScript functions should return the contents you want to place in a template field as a string.

Functions are called in a scope which contains the contents of all editable template fields as local variables. For example in a snippet containing ${field}, a variable called field will be present which contains the up-to-date contents of the template field. Those variables can either be used in the function statically or passed as arguments, by using the ${func(field)} or ${field2=func(field)} syntax in the snippet string.

You can use the Kate scripting API to get the selected text, full text, file name and more by using the appropriate methods of the document and view objects. Refer to the scripting API documentation for more information.

For more complex scripts it may be important to understand that first, the raw snippet is inserted into the document, and then functions are being evaluated. E.g., if a function retrieves the text on the line where the snippet is being inserted, that text will also contain ${functionCall()}.

As an example of working with selections using the scripting API, a simple way to wrap selected text inside tags is this snippet: <strong>${view.selectedText()}</strong>

The following example invokes a script that inserts a default text in case there is no selection. Snippet:

${rangeCommand("<strong>%%1</strong>", "Bold")}

Script:

function rangeCommand(command, def) {
    if (view.selectedText().length > 0) {
        return command.replace("%%1", view.selectedText());
    } else {
        return command.replace("%%1", def);
    }
}