Using selected text in UltiSnips snippets

Suppose that we’ve got some tests written with rspec:

subject(:order) { Order.new(basic_attributes) }
it "records the buyer's name" do
  expect(order.buyer_name).to be == "Drew Neil"
end
it "has no affiliate_email" do
  expect(order.affiliate_email).to be == 'none'
end

We want to wrap them inside of a context block:

context "with no affiliate" do
  subject(:order) { Order.new(basic_attributes) }
  it "records the buyer's name" do
    expect(order.buyer_name).to be == "Drew Neil"
  end
  it "has no affiliate_email" do
    expect(order.affiliate_email).to be == 'none'
  end
end

We could make this change quickly using this UltiSnips snippet:

snippet context "rspec: context block"
context "$1" do
    ${0:${VISUAL:# assertions...}}
end
endsnippet

This snippet can be used in Insert mode or Visual mode. When triggered from Insert mode, the context block is pre-filled with the default placeholder text: # assertions. But if we start off by selecting several lines of text, then trigger the snippet from Visual mode, the context block will be pre-filled with the text that we had selected. That’s what the $VISUAL placeholder is for.

Note that in the above snippet, the line inside of the context block begins with a tab character, which causes the selected text to be inserted with and extra level of indentation. You can think of a tab character as representing one press of the tab key: it inserts either a tab character or a fixed number of spaces, depending on how you’ve set up Vim’s ‘expandtab’ option. (See episode 2 of Vimcasts for more details of how the ‘expandtab’ option works.)

Transforming the selection with Python interpolation

In C++, suppose that we want to turn a simple pointer (like this):

// Simple pointer:
Vim* cursor;

Into a smart pointer (like this):

// Smart pointer:
std::unique_ptr<Vim> cursor;

We could use this snippet to speed up the process:

snippet up "Unique Pointer" i
std::unique_ptr<${1:`!p
snip.rv = snip.v.text.strip("*") or "klass"
`}>
endsnippet

Here, we’re using UltiSnips Python interpolation feature to transform the selected text before inserting it back into the document. That means that we can select the text Vim* (including the star character), then when we expand the snippet it will insert Vim (having stripped away the star character).

VimCasts.org