PowerShell VSCode snippets

Continuation of the first VSCode settings post if you will 😊

Given that I have worked with many engineers over the years, I have noticed that very few of them are aware of the snippet feature in VSCode. Even fewer actually use them.

So maybe this will help somebody out there 😊

VSCode PowerShell snippets

So what are PowerShell snippets and why should you care?

Snippets are pre-defined code templates that you can insert into your code to save time and reduce errors. They are a great way to speed up your workflow and improve your code quality.

My favourite snippet is the calculated-property snippet, which creates a PowerShell calculated property with the proper syntax.

How often do you want to get what I would call a custom property that you want to select and in line do something with. Like this:

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Select-Object -Property *, @{Name='CustomProperty';Expression={$_.'SomeProperty'}}

I for one, never remember the syntax for that, so this snippet saves me a lot of time 😊

The easiest example is Get-Disk with some calculated properties:

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Get-Disk | Select-Object -Property FriendlyName, @{ Name='SizeGB'; Expression = { [Math]::Round($_.Size / 1GB, 2) } }, @{ Name='SizeTB'; Expression = { [Math]::Round($_.Size / 1TB, 2) } }

Example output

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FriendlyName        SizeGB SizeTB
------------        ------ ------
VMware Virtual disk 200.00   0.20

How to insert a snippet

To insert a snippet, press Ctrl + Alt + J to bring up the menu, type the snippet name and press Enter.

Where are the VSCode PowerShell snippets located?

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"C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\Code\User\snippets\powershell.json"

If you want to use the $env:APPDATA variable:

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"$($env:APPDATA)\Code\User\snippets\powershell.json"

Sample snippet file

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{
	"CredentialObject": {
		"prefix": [
			"credential",
			"pscredential",
			"credentialobject",
			"newcredential"
		],
		"body": [
			"\\$Username = \"$1\"",
			"\\$Password = ConvertTo-SecureString -String $0 -AsPlainText -Force",
			"# Create credential object",
			"\\$Creds = New-Object -TypeName PSCredential -ArgumentList \\$Username, \\$Password"
		],
		"description": "Create a PowerShell PSCredential object."
	}
}

This creates a snippet that can be used in PowerShell files with the prefix credential, pscredential, credentialobject, or newcredential. It looks like this:

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$Username = ""
$Password = ConvertTo-SecureString -String  -AsPlainText -Force
# Create credential object
$Creds = New-Object -TypeName PSCredential -ArgumentList $Username, $Password

Super handy if you ask me 🤣

JSON escape characters tips for the snippet file

Bonus tip

The best thing about those snippets is that if you synchronise your VSCode settings using Settings Sync, those snippets will be synchronised too! But maybe that is a blog post for another day 😄