Snippets with indentation in Visual Studio Code

Question

I'm trying to create a snippet in Visual Studio Code. This works, but the indentation is missing:

My snippet :

"HTML structure": {
    "prefix": "html",
    "body": [
        "<!DOCTYPE html>",
        "<html lang='fr'>",
        "<head>",
            "<meta charset='UTF-8'>",
            "<meta name='viewport' content='width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0'>",
            "<meta http-equiv='X-UA-Compatible' content='ie=edge'>",
            "<title>$1</title>",
        "</head>",
        "<body>",
            "$2",
        "</body>",
        "</html>"
    ],
    "description": "Base template for html file"
}

What you see :

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang='fr'>
<head>
<meta charset='UTF-8'>
<meta name='viewport' content='width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0'>
<meta http-equiv='X-UA-Compatible' content='ie=edge'>
<title>test</title>
</head>
<body>
test
</body>
</html>

What I'd like :

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang='fr'>
<head>
  <meta charset='UTF-8'>
  <meta name='viewport' content='width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0'>
  <meta http-equiv='X-UA-Compatible' content='ie=edge'>
  <title></title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

IdontCareAboutReputationPoints · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-18T02:20:56.567

25

I think the more appropriate way is to use \t instead of space to maintain document indentation even.

"\t<meta charset='UTF-8'>",

edited Nov 18 '19 at 02:20

answered Jul 02 '19 at 10:18

IdontCareAboutReputationPoints

1,584
21
26

3

Visual Studio Code will convert the tab character into your preferred indentation. – Seth Nov 15 '20 at 10:51

Gama11 · Answer 2 · 2018-06-25T08:51:59.593

The indentation needs to be inside of the strings, not outside (where it's meaningless), so:

"  <meta charset='UTF-8'>",

instead of:

  "<meta charset='UTF-8'>",

This works as intended:

"HTML structure": {
    "prefix": "html",
    "body": [
        "<!DOCTYPE html>",
        "<html lang='fr'>",
        "<head>",
        "  <meta charset='UTF-8'>",
        "  <meta name='viewport' content='width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0'>",
        "  <meta http-equiv='X-UA-Compatible' content='ie=edge'>",
        "  <title>$1</title>",
        "</head>",
        "<body>",
        "  $2",
        "</body>",
        "</html>"
    ],
    "description": "Base template for html file"
}

Instead of having indentation as hardcoded in strings, you should better use the escape sequence for tab character "\t". — Fahad Javed, Aug 05 '19 at 18:10

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 06 '23 at 00:02

I ran into this today and wanted to provide a more "robust" answer.

create a file in the .vscode folder called html.code-snippets please the contents in like i have done here:

{
"client-page": {
    "scope": "html",
    "prefix": "sn-client-page",
    "body": [
        "<ion-content>",
        "\t<ion-grid class=\"grid-full-height\">",
        "\t\t<ion-row>",
        "\t\t\t<ion-col>",
        "\t\t\t\t<header>",
        "\t\t\t\t\t<app-client-name></app-client-name>",
        "\t\t\t\t</header>",
        "\t\t\t</ion-col>",
        "\t\t\t<ion-col>",
        "\t\t\t\t<header>title</header>",
        "\t\t\t</ion-col>",
        "\t\t</ion-row>",
        "\t\t<ion-row>",
        "\t\t\t<ion-col>",
        "\t\t\t\t<!---content-->",
        "\t\t\t</ion-col>",
        "\t\t\t<ion-col>",
        "\t\t\t\t<!---content-->",
        "\t\t\t</ion-col>",
        "\t\t</ion-row>",
        "\t</ion-grid>",
        "</ion-content>",
    ]
  }
}

I can now start typing "sn" (without the quotes) in a vscode html file and will see the snippet name and hit enter... the output is this!

Please note the using \t each time represents amount of tabs/spaces/ indention. I hope this helps someone. Thanks.

Snippets with indentation in Visual Studio Code

3 Answers3