Code Collector Pro: Snippets for Your Code

If you do any coding, you know how tedious it can be to remember how to do certain things. For example, if you’re a web designer and you do a lot of mouseover popups, you want the code to be right there, and you don’t want to have to remember all 20+ lines. Sure, you could use something like TextExpander, but if you want more features made for programmers, I suggest you try out M Cubed Software’s Code Collector Pro.

Code Collector Pro is basically a place to put long snippets of code that you don’t want to have to remember. I have found that it is best to put anything and everything that you could possible need, because you never know when you will need it.

If you like everything to be organized then Code Collector Pro has a great feature for you: smart groups (and regular ones too). With its smart groups, you can organize snippets by name, tags, description, language, license, and source. So, you can make one folder for Objective-C, one for HTML, etc. This feature would be even better, though, if you could have groups within groups.

As I mentioned above, you can give snippets tags. These are not only useful when sorting, but also when searching. Everything that is associated with a snippet (e.g., name, description, tags) can be searched for. So, if you have a huge library of thousands of snippets, searching will sometimes be the easiest way to find things. However, if you search in a group (or smart group), it will search throughout the whole library, and not just the group, even though the group is still highlighted in the sidebar.

My favorite feature (by far) is the ability to just drag a snippet into any Cocoa application, and it will put the code from that snippet where you dragged it! Although it may seem like a useless feature, because you can just copy and paste, it saves you lots of time, and is just simpler. When you need to use hundreds of snippets, you will see how much time you save.

Another thing that Code Collector Pro has that you will not find in something like TextExpander is bundles. If you are familiar to TextMate, then you will know what these are. Bundles are used by Code Collector Pro to highlight code based on the type of object something is. Like in Objective-C, variables will be highlighted in different colors than id’s. You can even use bundles made for TextMate! And if you don’t use TextMate, Code Collector Pro has built in bundles for common languages. It would be nice if they updated their Objective-C bundle to support the new Objective-C 2.0, though.

The last feature I will tell you about is Code Collector.net. Code Collector.net is a way to share snippets with people anywhere. To turn on syncing with Code Collector.net, just go to Preferences->Sharing and click Get an Account. Once you have your account, just put your information into the fields and your off!. The only problems you will find are, when browsing Code Collector.net, there are a lot of the exact same snippets because some people never delete the example ones.

Code Collector Pro, by M Cubed Software, retails for about $29, and you can pick up a free trial as well. I would say that Code Collector Pro is for moderate to advanced programmers, but some beginners may find it helpful, too. It has saved me a lot of time, and I hope that it will do the same for you.

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