Loading snippets

Snippet definitions are stored in files in the filesystem. Unless you use the simpler bundle version), these are arranged so that YASnippet can load them into snippet tables. The triggering mechanisms (see Expanding snippets) will look up these snippet tables and (hopefully) expand the snippet you intended.

The non-bundle version of YASnippet, once unpacked, comes with a full directory of snippets, which you can copy somewhere and use. You can also create or download more directories.

Once these directories are in place reference them in the variable yas/root-directory and load them with yas/load-directory:

;; Develop and keep personal snippets under ~/emacs.d/mysnippets
(setq yas/root-directory "~/emacs.d/mysnippets")

;; Load the snippets
(yas/load-directory yas/root-directory)

The point in using yas/root-directory (as opposed to calling yas/load-directory directly) is considering "~/emacs.d/mysnippets" for snippet development, so you can use commands like yas/new-snippet and others described in section Writing Snippets.

You can make this variable a list and store more items into it:

;; Develop in ~/emacs.d/mysnippets, but also
;; try out snippets in ~/Downloads/interesting-snippets
(setq yas/root-directory '("~/emacs.d/mysnippets"
                           "~/Downloads/interesting-snippets"))

;; Map `yas/load-directory' to every element
(mapc 'yas/load-directory yas/root-directory)

In this last example, the all the directories are loaded and their snippets considered for expansion. However development still happens in the first element, "~/emacs.d/mysnippets".

Organizing snippets

Once you've setup yas/root-directory , you can store snippets inside sub-directories of these directories.

Snippet definitions are put in plain text files. They are arranged by sub-directories, and the snippet tables are named after these directories.

The name corresponds to the Emacs mode where you want expansion to take place. For example, snippets for c-mode are put in the c-mode sub-directory. You can also skip snippet storage altogether and use the bundle (see YASnippet bundle).

Nested organization

Here is an excerpt of a directory hierarchy containing snippets for some modes:

$ tree
.
`-- text-mode
    |-- cc-mode
    |   |-- c-mode
    |   |   `-- printf
    |   |-- for
    |   |-- java-mode
    |   |   `-- println
    |   `-- while
    |-- email
    |-- perl-mode
    |   |-- cperl-mode
    |   `-- for
    `-- time

A parent directory acts as a parent table of any of its sub-directories. This is one of the ways different Emacs major modes can share snippet definitions. As you can see above, c-mode and java-mode share the same parent cc-mode and its while snipepts, while all modes are share the time snippet from text-mode.

This can be also used to as an alias -- cperl-mode is an empty directory whose parent is perl-mode.

$ tree
.
|-- c-mode
|   |-- .yas-parents    # contains "cc-mode text-mode"
|   `-- printf
|-- cc-mode
|   |-- for
|   `-- while
|-- java-mode
|   |-- .yas-parents    # contains "cc-mode text-mode"
|   `-- println
`-- text-mode
    |-- email
    `-- time

The .yas-make-groups file

If you place an empty plain text file .yas-make-groups inside one of the mode directories, the names of these sub-directories are considered groups of snippets and The YASnippet Menu is organized much more cleanly, as you can see in the image.

Another alternative way to achieve this is to place a # group: directive inside the snippet definition. See Writing Snippets.

$ tree ruby-mode/
ruby-mode/
|-- .yas-make-groups
|-- collections
|   |-- each
|   `-- ...
|-- control structure
|   |-- forin
|   `-- ...
|-- definitions
|   `-- ...
`-- general
    `-- ...

$ tree rails-mode/
rails-mode/
|-- .yas-make-groups
|-- .yas-ignore-filename-triggers
|-- Insert ERb's <% __ %> or <%= __ %>.yasnippet
|-- asserts
|   |-- assert(var = assigns(%3Avar)).yasnippet
|   |-- assert_difference.yasnippet
|   |-- assert_no_difference.yasnippet
|   |-- assert_redirected_to (nested path plural).yasnippet
|   |-- assert_redirected_to (nested path).yasnippet
|   |-- assert_redirected_to (path plural).yasnippet
|   |-- assert_redirected_to (path).yasnippet
|   |-- assert_rjs.yasnippet
|   `-- assert_select.yasnippet

YASnippet bundle

The most convenient way to define snippets for YASnippet is to put them in a directory arranged by the mode and use yas/load-directory to load them.

However, this might slow down the Emacs start-up speed if you have many snippets. You can use yas/define-snippets to define a bunch of snippets for a particular mode in an Emacs-lisp file.

Since this is hard to maintain, there's a better way: define your snippets in directory and then call M-x yas/compile-bundle to compile it into a bundle file when you modified your snippets.

The release bundle of YASnippet is produced by yas/compile-bundle. The bundle uses yas/define-snippets to define snippets. This avoids the IO and parsing overhead when loading snippets.

Further more, the generated bundle is a stand-alone file not depending on yasnippet.el. The released bundles of YASnippet are all generated this way.

See the internal documentation for these functions

• M-x describe-function RET yas/define-snippets RET
• M-x describe-function RET yas/compile-bundle RET.

Customizable variables