I just wanted to run a user snippet on VS Code when writing a post (like this one!) in front matter, so that I can insert the current time easily. The goal is something like below.

# Type "update" and get the curren time inserted
modified_date: 2024-01-30T21:37:32.000-05:00

frontmattersnippet

There are a lot of blog posts and stackoverflow questions (and answers) for how to create a snippet, but no single post explains exactly how - so I’m writing exactly that here.

1. Enable “Quick Suggestion” in markdown files.

Many people point out that, somehow, snippet (aka Quick Suggestion) is not enable for markdown by default. For that, you need to add the following section in settings.json file.

    "[markdown]": {
        "editor.quickSuggestions": {
          "other": true,
          "comments": true,
          "strings": true
        }
      }

2. Write user snippet for YAML

The most common suggestion to create a snippet for markdown, but none of such suggestion worked in front matter.

The solution is to create a user snippet for YAML, not for markdown. The configuration file is yaml.json. After finding this out, it somehow makes sense. Front matter is a YAML formatted section, which happens to reside in a markdown file after all.

    "currentdate": {
        "prefix": "update",
        "body": [
            "modified_date: $CURRENT_YEAR-$CURRENT_MONTH-${CURRENT_DATE}T$CURRENT_HOUR:$CURRENT_MINUTE:$CURRENT_SECOND.000-05:00"
        ],
        "description": "Add Current date & time"
    }

With the above snippet in the correct yaml.json, it works within the front matter.