The Way

A code snippets manager for your terminal.

Record and retrieve snippets you use every day, or once in a blue moon, without having to spin up a browser. Just call the-way new to add a snippet with a description, a language, and some tags attached.

the-way search fuzzy searches your snippets library (with optional filters on language and tags) and lets you * edit a snippet with Shift-Right * delete a snippet with Shift-Left * copy a particular snippet to your clipboard (with Enter), so you can paste it into whatever editor or IDE you're working with.

See it in action with some self-referential examples (click to open in asciinema):

Table of Contents

• Install
  • Requirements
  • Binaries
  • With brew
  • With cargo
  • With yay
  • On Android
  • Upgrading
• Usage
• Features
  • Main features
  • Shell commands
  • bash
  • zsh
  • fish
  • Sync to Gist
  • Shell completions
  • Syntax highlighting
  • Configuration
  • Copy command
• Why "The Way"?

Install

Requirements

xclip on Linux and pbcopy on OSX

Binaries

See the releases

• OSX - allow the-way via System Preferences (necessary in Catalina at least)
• Linux - chmod +x the-way
• Currently doesn't work on Windows (waiting on this issue)

With brew

bash brew tap out-of-cheese-error/the-way && brew install the-way

With cargo

bash cargo install the-way

With yay

bash yay -S the-way-git

On Android

Needs Termux, Termux:API and pkg install termux-api

Clone the repository, run cargo build --release, and use target/release/the-way

Upgrading

Some upgrades need a database migration (mentioned in the release notes):

• Before upgrade

bash the-way export > snippets.json the-way clear

• After upgrade

bash the-way import snippets.json

Usage

``` Record, retrieve, search, and categorize code snippets

USAGE: the-way

FLAGS: -h, --help Prints help information -V, --version Prints version information

SUBCOMMANDS: new Add a new code snippet cmd Add a new shell snippet search Fuzzy search to find a snippet and copy, edit or delete it sync Sync snippets to a Gist list Lists (optionally filtered) snippets import Imports code snippets from JSON export Saves (optionally filtered) snippets to JSON clear Clears all data complete Generate shell completions themes Manage syntax highlighting themes config Manage the-way data locations edit Change snippet del Delete snippet cp Copy snippet to clipboard view View snippet help Prints this message or the help of the given subcommand(s) ```

Features

Main features

• Add code and shell snippets
• Interactive fuzzy or exact search with edit, delete and copy to clipboard functionality
• Filter by tag, date, language and/or regex pattern
• Import / export via JSON
• Import from Gist (with the-way import -g <gist_url>)
• Sync to gist
• Syntax highlighting

Shell commands

the-way cmd (inspired by pet) makes it easier to save single-line bash/shell snippets with variables that can be filled in whenever the snippet is needed.

Add the following function according to your shell of choice. Every time you spend ages hand-crafting the perfect command: run it, close all the stackoverflow tabs, and run cmdsave to save it to the-way. You can then use cmdsearch to search these shell snippets and have the selected one already pasted into the terminal, ready to run.

bash

``shell script function cmdsave() { PREV=$(echohistory | tail -n2 | head -n1| sed 's/[0-9]* //') sh -c "the-way cmdprintf %q "$PREV"`" }

function cmdsearch() { BUFFER=$(the-way search --stdout --languages="sh") bind '"\e[0n": "'"$BUFFER"'"'; printf '\e[5n' } ```

zsh

``shell script function cmdsave() { PREV=$(fc -lrn | head -n 1) sh -c "the-way cmdprintf %q "$PREV"`" }

function cmdsearch() { BUFFER=$(the-way search --stdout --languages="sh") print -z $BUFFER } ```

fish

```shell script function cmdsave set line (echo $history[1]) the-way cmd $line end

function cmdsearch commandline (the-way search --languages=sh --stdout) end ```

You'll usually want different parameters each time you need a shell command: save variables in a shell snippet as <param> or <param=default_value> and every time you select it you can interactively fill them in (or keep the defaults). Parameters can appear more than once, just use the same name and write in the default the first time it's used.

Here's another self-referential example that saves a shell command to add new language syntaxes:

(todo: Use cmdsearch instead of search)

Sync to Gist

the-way sync date syncs snippets to a Gist, each named snippet_<index>.<extension>, with an index.md file linking each snippet's description and tags. Local updates and deletions are uploaded to the Gist and Gist updates are downloaded.

the-way sync local uploads all local changes, additions, and deletions to the Gist. This is useful after upgrading to a new version of the-way if the Gist format has changed, or something gets messed up in the Gist.

the-way sync gist downloads all Gist changes, additions, and deletions to the local database. This is useful to sync snippets across computers, as it uses the Gist as the source of truth.

This functionality needs a GitHub access token with the "gist" scope. Either enter this token on running sync for the first time or set it to the environment variable $THE_WAY_GITHUB_TOKEN.

You can also import snippets from a Gist created by the-way using the-way import -w <gist_url>.

Shell completions

bash the-way complete zsh > .oh-my-zsh/completions/_the-way exec zsh

Syntax highlighting

The Way maps languages to their extensions and uses this to 1. Enable syntax highlighting in $EDITOR (if the editor supports it), 2. Upload snippets to Gist with the correct extension, 3. Add a small colored language indicator (GitHub-flavored) 4. Syntax highlight code in the terminal

The last point can be customized via the-way themes.

Use the-way themes set to see available themes and enable a theme.

Default themes: Darcula InspiredGitHub Solarized (dark) Solarized (light) base16-eighties.dark base16-mocha.dark base16-ocean.dark base16-ocean.light base16-tomorrow.dark base16-twilight.dark

Use the-way themes add <theme.tmTheme> to add a new theme to your themes folder. Theme files need to be in Sublime's .tmTheme format. Searching GitHub for .tmTheme pulls up some examples.

Use the-way themes language <language.sublime-syntax> to add highlight support for a new language (many languages are supported by default). Syntax files need to be in Sublime's sublime-syntax format. Zola has a nice collection of such files.

Here's how it looks before and after adding Kotlin.sublime-syntax: * Before:

* After:

To get syntax highlighting for code blocks in markdown files, download and add the patched Markdown.sublime-syntax file in this repository, taken from bat (the default syntax file doesn't do this anymore)

Configuration

The default config TOML file is located in * Linux: /home/<username>/.config/the-way * Mac: /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/rs.the-way

This file contains locations of data directories, which are automatically created and set according to XDG and Standard Directories guidelines. Change this by creating a config file with the-way config default > config.toml and then setting the environment variable $THE_WAY_CONFIG to point to this file.

Copy command

By default xclip is used on Linux, pbcopy on OSX and termux-clipboard-set on Android. You can override the default command by setting the copy_cmd field in the configuration file. For example to use xsel as a copy command, set the copy_cmd field as follows:

toml copy_cmd = 'xsel -ib'

Why "The Way"?

The name is a reference to the Way of Mrs.Cosmopilite, kōans for every situation.