Add snippets support. Suggestion provided.

[jvaldiviezo9]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
It's more to speed up the code writing with snippets.

Describe the solution you'd like
Would be nice to add the snippets support from this extension: https://github.com/MicroBeaut/MicroBeaut-VBA-Snippets. Or maybe a fork that includes support for the "vba-module", "vba-class" and "vba-form" language IDs.
The related extension seems like it's not actively maintained (last release on Jan 2023).

Additional context
I've used that extension and it's handy while writing code, so I'm sure that will be a welcomed addition.
The problem is that I don't see a way to make it work with the language IDs used by "VBA Pro".

[DecimalTurn]

Maybe the author of the extension thinks that they don't need to make any changes since their extension works correctly for their use. I'd suggest to raise an issue or make a PR to suggest changes to the package.json file to support alternative VBA language ids.

Something like this:

"contributes": {
  "snippets": [
    {
      "language": "vb",
      "path": "./snippets/vb.code-snippets"
    },
    {
      "language": "vba",
      "path": "./snippets/vb.code-snippets"
    },
    {
      "language": "vba-class",
      "path": "./snippets/vb.code-snippets"
    },
    {
      "language": "vba-module",
      "path": "./snippets/vb.code-snippets"
    },
    {
      "language": "vba-form",
      "path": "./snippets/vb.code-snippets"
    }
  ]
}

[SSlinky]

It's a real shame to find out snippets contributed from other extensions are broken by this one. The reason I introduced new language IDs was because there's only two ways to do so: unique language IDs or a theme.

You can only have one theme active, so I went with IDs to avoid conflicting with icon packs. You could take the snippets from extensions you like and create your own User Defined Snippets but you'd need to maintain three to have them work in all file types. It would work, but it's far from an ideal solution.

Sadly, I think I'm going to have to revert to one icon for all types and contribute a theme in case someone doesn't already have a pack installed.

---

In answer to your question though: I do think there's room for improvement in the snippets space for this extension. That being said, I very much don't wish to pollute it with useless snippets such as this one:

  "Value to String": {
    "prefix": "Str",
    "body": [
      "Str(${1:number})"
    ],
    "description": "Returns a Variant (String) representation of a number"
  }

The reason I haven't added more to date is partly because I have been focusing on other features and partly because I actually want to write context-aware snippets in the form of code actions. As a simple example, the fori snippet generates the declaration for i. It would be nice if it inserted (or didn't) based on whether you already had a declaration for i in the scope.

---

P.S. I don't think last release Jan 2023 is a bad thing. VBA isn't pushing out new features and there's no issues or PRs so it makes sense that there's no updates after it's "complete".

[DecimalTurn]

You could take the snippets from extensions you like and create your own User Defined Snippets but you'd need to maintain three to have them work in all file types. It would work, but it's far from an ideal solution.

Looking at the docs, there is actually a way to keep all your snippets in a single file, but you have to create a global snippets file and use the scope property to tell VS Code what language(s) to associate the snippets with.

Eg.:

{

	"Function": {
		"prefix": "func",
		"scope": "vb,vba,vba-class,vba-module,vba-form",
		"body": [
			"Function ${1:Name}()",
			"    $0",
			"End Function"
		],
		"description": "Create a new function"
	},

}

[DecimalTurn]

Sadly, I think I'm going to have to revert to one icon for all types and contribute a theme in case someone doesn't already have a pack installed.

That is still the easiest option to restore snippets indeed.

I also had started to look into icons themes and maybe we could consider forking the default VS Code theme (seti) and add VBA icons and then include that updated theme into the extension. @SSlinky would you consider this a good idea?

[jvaldiviezo9]

@SSlinky Thank you for your thoughts on it,
Yes, I completely agree that there is no need to have all of the snippets there, indeed there are some of them that doesn't look so useful or could clutter the environment. Thanks for pointing out the option to have a custom snippets, I was not aware of that, and seems like it is the best workaround. Also what @DecimalTurn mentioned to have a global snippets with a scope should make it work with the current approach of separated Language IDs.

Regarding the icons, the current approach doesn't look bad to me. I'm not aware of what the tradeoffs are regarding using a theme, but I think setting up a theme just for a single programming language might not be ideal, specially if VBA is not the only language used I guess. So, I think having the different language IDs for different icons it's fine and helps to quickly locate file types when there are a lot of files. In case we want to unify it we can "Configure File Association For [language]..." directly on VSCode.

P.S. Your reasoning over the maintenance of a software based on release date for a language like VBA makes sense, good point there.

[SSlinky]

maybe we could consider forking the default VS Code theme (seti)

I'm on board with that. Is it possible to submodule the repo into this one so we can pull it for easy updates? Looks like it was updated five months ago so it does occasionally happen.