This is the third and final part of my Sublime Text 2 (ST2) blog series. After giving an introduction and looking installation and configura- tion of ST2, I will talk about the key bindings and snippets.

Key Bindings

One of the biggest advantages of ST2 is that you have full control over most of its settings. It is really easy to configure ST2 to your personal needs.

As you can see, there are two major parts of the settings. The first being the general configuration and the second one for the key bindings. This is the feature you should be really excited about. Imagine you can configure a text-editor exactly to your needs. ST2 let your dreams come true. To start, just open the "Key Bindings - Default" settings. There you can see all the predefined key bindings like:

{ "keys": ["super+c"], "command": "copy" },
{ "keys": ["super+k", "super+b"], "command": "toggle_side_bar" },

These are simple definitions of key bindings. As you can see it contains a key-definition and a command (here you can find a full list of available commands). You also can chain key strokes to start an action. But this isn't where the customization ends. There are more complex key bindings, where you can pass arguments and contexts like:

{ "keys": ["shift+enter"], "command": "insert_snippet", "args": {"contents": "\n\t$0\n"}, "context":
        [
                { "key": "setting.auto_indent", "operator": "equal", "operand": true },
                { "key": "selection_empty", "operator": "equal", "operand": true, "match_all": true },
                { "key": "preceding_text", "operator": "regex_contains", "operand": "\\{$", "match_all": true },
                { "key": "following_text", "operator": "regex_contains", "operand": "^\\}", "match_all": true }
        ]
}

If you want to create new key bindings or overwrite existing ones just open the "Key Bindings - User" file and create your own bindings there. After saving the new bindings will be active.

For a detailed documentation of customizing your key bindings please visit the unofficial documentation of ST2. There is a part for the customization and a reference for the more complex configs.

The last item I have left to share on this matter is a free tool availabled for Mac users called Cheat Sheet (AppStore Link). Once installed, it shows you all available key bindings for your currently active application.

My most used keyboard commands

Snippets (for Drupal)

Another great feature of ST2 are the snippets. Snippets are intelligent templates that will convert some short codes into a predefined text block with placeholders. 

To create a snippet, simply go to Tools -> New Snippet... you will get a some lines of code which you can adapt easily. Let's say you write PHP code and you need a lot of functions. You can create a snippet for exactly this purpose

<snippet>
  <content><![CDATA[
// ${1: description}
// ${2: variable}
function ${3:functionname}() {
  // ${4:some comment}
}
]]></content>
  <!-- Optional: Set a tabTrigger to define how to trigger the snippet -->
  <tabTrigger>fct</tabTrigger>

  <!-- Optional: Set a scope to limit where the snippet will trigger -->
  <scope>source.php</scope>
</snippet>

Full credit to Márton Juhász who has done some great work for the Drupal community. He created a package for ST2 which contains a lot of nice snippets for the use with Drupal.
You can install it by pressing "cmd+shift+p" type "install" and search for "Drupal Snippets". Hit the "return" key and you're all set up.

But there is one problem... you don't know all the tab triggers of these Drupal snippets yet. I can help you with that: Just hit "cmd+shif+p" and type "sn hoo" or "sn h_" and you will get a list with all available tab triggers for the Drupal snippets. It's that easy.

There is a more in depth documentation of snippets available.

Conclusion

As you can see, there is a lot of community love around ST2. And if you take your time, you will love all the features and configuration possibilities. I am still getting used to the editor, but my addiction to this piece of software is growing from day to day.

If you need help with your Drupal project get in touch with us.

• Highly skilled Drupal surgeons.
• Cutting edge technologies.
• Personalized care to get your project back to life.
• Be treated, well.

Inspired by our lastest Amazee Labs t-shirt colour variant.

Making our Texan team members Kathryn and Andrew participate in a Skype call at 3 am (CST) and opening a bottle of bubbly in the process isn't something we normally do. On red-letter days we make an exception. Here is our explanation why today was one:

Imagine being told by your partner that your work has been featured on a web site and you wanted her to take a look. That is exactly what Andrew made Kathryn do earlier today.

Until now it might sound like nothing extraordinary but if you suddenly see a wedding proposal featuring your name you could get an idea that something might be going on.

And when clicking on the link leads to this website you will understand that this "take a look" request breaks the pattern of the looks you took before.

Followed by a proposal in the traditional way we are happy to clarify that Kathryn said YES!

Our wholehearted congratulations to the team's favourite American couple. We are absolutely chuffed for you guys.

But on a more serious note: Andrew you could have waited for DrupalCon Munich. What would have been more romantic than a Drupal themed proposal?
Just kidding!

Welcome to the second part of my blog post series about Sublime Text 2.

In this post will explain how to configure Sublime Text for the needs of a Drupal developer.

Installation

It is very simple to install Sublime Text 2 (ST2). Just go to the Sublime Text Website, download the editor and install it like you'll do it with every other program.

Configuration

Now we are talking about the really exciting things in ST2. As mentioned in the previous blog post, out of the box the editor comes with some neat features like:

• A small map on the right side, like a thumbnail of the code
• A distraction free mode
• Go-To anything
• Split panels

But ST2's real powers are unleashed through its plugin architecture. There are tons of high quality plugins and packages already available out there.

As a Drupal developer RJ. Pittman's (phase:II) script provides an automatic and hassle free setup for your developing needs. This means running the script won't require any other further configurations but for a better understanding I recommend reading my entire post.

At this point I also want to mention his blog post about this sophisticated editor.

Configuring the text editor

To meet the requirements of Drupal coding standards, we need to configure the text formatting (Please note that my shortcuts are refer to Mac OS X). To do so go to Sublime Text 2 - Preferences - Settings User ( cmd + ) and add the lines below.

{
  "rulers": [80],
  "tab_size": 2,
  "translate_tabs_to_spaces": true,
  "use_tab_stops": true,
  "trim_automatic_white_space": true,
  "trim_trailing_white_space_on_save": true,
  "ensure_newline_at_eof_on_save": true,
  "fallback_encoding": "UTF-8",
  "default_line_ending": "unix",
  "shift_tab_unindent": true,
  "word_separators": "./\\()\"'-:,.;<>~!@#%^&*|+=[]{}`~?"
}

Save the file and restart ST2. (Source: Drupal.org)

Installing Package Control

Will Bond has created the very easy to install Package Control for ST2.

Start ST2 and go to View - Show console in the menubar (ctrl+`).

Copy and paste this command and hit the return key on your keyboard.

import urllib2,os; pf='Package Control.sublime-package'; ipp=sublime.installed_packages_path(); os.makedirs(ipp) if not os.path.exists(ipp) else None; urllib2.install_opener(urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.ProxyHandler())); open(os.path.join(ipp,pf),'wb').write(urllib2.urlopen('http://sublime.wbond.net/'+pf.replace(' ','%20')).read()); print 'Please restart Sublime Text to finish installation'

If everything worked out, and you restarted your ST2, you should be able to use the package control to install new and awesome plugins for your editor.

Press command+shift+p on your keyboard to open the command palette and type install​ followed by the return key.

Now you can search all available packages/plugins just by start typing.

Type git and you'll get a list with all packages related to Git.

Select the package you want to install, in our case just Git and hit the return key.

The plugin is now being installed for you. In this case please note that you need to have Git installed locally in order for the plugin to work.

After the installation is finished you can open the command palette by pressing cmd + shift + p and type git for a list of all available commands.

It is also possible to just type pull, push or quick in the command palette to find the command you are searching for.

In my case I had troubles to get the plugin to work. Following error message appeared.

I had to adapt the git_command configuration in the Git.sublime-settings file.

Go to Sublime Text 2 - Preferences - Browse Packages in the menubar. Search for the Git folder and open the Git.sublime.settings file by double-clicking it.

Change the git_command value from true to the path your git executable is located.

If you don't know where your git executable is stored, just open a console and type which git and you'll get the answer. In my case it was /usr/local/git/bin.

Proposed packages to install

In the short time I have been using Sublime Text 2 I the following packages have proven their use to me. You can find the list in our Wiki.

The installation of these packages works in the same way as in my example of the Git package.

Conclusion

As you can see, Sublime Text 2 is not a fully featured editor from the beginning. But the power behind the scenes is tremendous and only limited by the imagination of the plugin-developers. I will keep my eyes open for new plugins that are useful together with Drupal development. If you know about a must-have plugin that I missed, let me know and I will check it out.

In the next part of this blog series about Sublime Text 2 I will write about the very useful keyboard commands.