Question

I am trying to create a small custom snippet for my C# code in VS2010. It basically inserts a comment block for informational purposes. Within this code though I want the current date to be automatically inserted when the snippet is inserted.

Here is the current snippet I have:

<CodeSnippet Format="1.0.0">
    <Header>
        <Title>
            C# Class Comments
        </Title>
        <Shortcut>ccom</Shortcut>
    </Header>
    <Snippet>
        <Declarations>
            <Object>
                <ID>DateTime</ID>
                <Type>System.DateTime</Type>
                <Function>DateTime.Now()</Function>
            </Object>
            <Literal>
                <ID>Author</ID>
                <ToolTip>Replace with name creator of class.</ToolTip>
                <Default>"Author name"</Default>
            </Literal>
            <Literal>
                <ID>Date</ID>
                <ToolTip>Replace with date class was created</ToolTip>
                <Default>"Date"</Default>
            </Literal>
            <Literal>
                <ID>Modified</ID>
                <ToolTip>Replace with modified date of class</ToolTip>
                <Default>"Modified"</Default>
            </Literal>
            <Literal>
                <ID>Description</ID>
                <ToolTip>Replace with a short description of what the class is used for</ToolTip>
                <Default>"Description"</Default>
            </Literal>
        </Declarations>
        <Code Language="CSharp">
            <![CDATA[
            //*******************************************************************************;
            // Author:          $Author$
            // Created Date:    $DateTime$
            // Modified Date:   $Modified$
            // Description:     $Description$
            //*******************************************************************************;
            ]]>
        </Code>
    </Snippet>
</CodeSnippet>

What do I have to do to insert the date that the snippet was inserted into the code?

Answer 1

This is unfortunately not really possible. The Visual Studio snippet architecture doesn’t support replacement macros for items such as the current date / time