Today I needed to work on multiple things so I broke down and discovered how projects work. Like everything else in Sublime they are very simple, and offer a lot of flexibility.

Step one is to create a new project. You do that by simply adding a folder.

Project > Add Folder to Project…

Your project files and folders should now be displayed in the sidebar.

Now save your project.

Project > Save Project As…

This will create two files:

1. your_project.sublime-project
2. your_project.sublime-workspace

From the Sublime Text 2 documentation:

Projects in Sublime Text 2 are made up of two files: the sublime-project file, which contains the project definition, and the sublime-workspace file, which contains user specific data, such as the open files and the modifications to each.

As a general rule, the sublime-project file would be checked into version control, while the sublime-workspace file would not.

The sublime-project file allows you to make project specific configurations to Sublime. You define multiple folder paths as well as specify folders and files you want to exclude from view. You can also define per project Settings for Sublime:

{
    "folders":
    [
        {
            "path": "wwwroot",
            "folder_exclude_patterns": ["images"]
        },
        {
            "path": "c:\wwwroot\project1\assets",
            "name": "Project 1",
            "file_exclude_patterns": ["*.php"]
        }
    ],
    "settings":
    {
        "tab_size": 8
    }
 }

Here we’re defining two folders. The ‘name’ attribute will define the name that is displayed in the Sublime sidebar for this folder. This is helpful if you have a long path or folder name and want a more descriptive label.

Once you have multiple projects setup, you can easily switch between them by hitting CTRL+ALT+P. That will bring up a dialog of all defined projects. You can either click on the project or start typing a project name to apply a filter.

I’m still learning how best to use projects but I like the flexibility of defining multiple folders and being able to specify the path. I’m working on a project now with many deeply nested subfolders and can simply map to a specific directory instead of having to click down through several folders.

SELECT INT_SUB_ID FROM INT_SUBCATEGORY WHERE INT_CAT_ID = 123

My eyes! My eyes!

I immediately hit Package Control in Sublime and sure enough there is a SQL package: Format SQL.

After installing (and restarting Sublime) you have a new option under Selection. Format > Format SQL Statement.

This got the indention correct but I was looking for some case changes:

SELECT INT_SUB_ID
FROM INT_SUBCATEGORY
WHERE INT_CAT_ID = 123

Looking at the python-sqlparse library documentation there are some statements to change case for keywords and identifiers. So I cracked open \Sublime Text 2\Packages\Format SQL\FormatSQL.py and found this line:

return sqlparse.format(s, keyword_case="upper", reindent=True, indent_width=indent_size)

And modified it like so:

return sqlparse.format(s, keyword_case="upper", identifier_case="lower", reindent=True, indent_width=indent_size)

And now I get:

SELECT int_sub_id
FROM int_subcategory
WHERE int_cat_id = 123

Done!

Now thanks to the awesome community of plugin authors this has been resolved. Check out SublimeTODO.

Extract TODO-type comments from open files and project folders

Installation is easy via Package Manager just look for ‘SublimeTODO’.

“TODO”, “FIXME” and “CHANGED” are supported out of the box (and you can add your own).

To view your todo’s hit CTRL+SHIFT+P (on Windows) and enter “TODO”. “Show TODOs in project and open files” will popup (you could also map this to a keyboard shortcut). Hit ENTER.

A new tab will popup with your TODOs:

+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- +
| TODOS @ Tuesday 10 January 2012 20:20                                        |
| 1037 files scanned                                                           |
+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- +

## NOTE (4)
1. dsp_foiaform.cfm:267  Strip out any delimiters (spaces, hyphens, etc.)
2. dsp_foiaform.cfm:336  The first argument after TARGETSTRING must be a string.
3. dsp_view.cfm:89 </span> #trim(PROSECUTION_DETAILS.DETAIL)#</td>
4. docket_security.cfm:262  ValueList function adds a decimal point. It is CF bug 53488, 

## TODO (1)
1. cfping.cfm:0  This needs to be fixed --->

The only thing lacking is there is no easy way to go directly to your TODO though there is a ticket open on github to add this support.

What? I always use tabs so I was curious where the spaces where… Sure enough on looking there were spaces! Doh.

Then I noticed something in Sublime:

Sublime - Tabs and Spaces

Do you see it?

Before ‘displayStipulator’ there is ‘….—-’ and before ‘doChanged’ it’s ‘—-….’. When selecting text in Sublime the tabs ‘—-’ and spaces ‘….’ are highlighted for you!

Now that I know this is there I’ll be more aware and cleanup spaces when I see them!

Update: Digging through the preferences, there is an option for this:

// Set to "none" to turn off drawing white space, "selection" to draw only the
// white space within the selection, and "all" to draw all white space
"draw_white_space": "all",

Also note you can easily convert from one to the other via View > Indentation > Convert…

We can exclude unrelated folders and files from showing up in the sidebar which helps a little bit. I don’t need to be distracted with PDF and image files while coding.

You can either do this globally Preferences > Global Settings > User or what I like to do is add it to my project config since there are usually specific things in each project I want to filter out.

Within my project directory I have a file called myprojectname.sublime-project. I can simply add two filters: folder_exclude_patterns and file_exclude_patterns, and add directories and files that I no longer want to see:

{
	"folders":
	[
		{
		"path": "/Z/myprojectname",
		"folder_exclude_patterns": ["_deploy", "SpryAssets", "SpryPaging", "wireframe"],
		"file_exclude_patterns": ["*.pdf", "*.jpg", "*.png"]
		}
	]
}

This will also hide those files and folders from the ‘quick find’ (CTRL+P) which is nice as well.

You should have Package Control installed. Open Package Control and install “Terminal“.

Done. Now hit CTRL+SHIFT+T and a console will popup.

I can’t stand the Windows Terminal (spoiled by terminal in Linux!) and have been using another app: Console 2.

Console is a Windows console window enhancement. Console features include: multiple tabs, text editor-like text selection, different background types, alpha and color-key transparency, configurable font, different window styles.

It’s easy to tweak Sublime to open Console instead of Powershell (which it defaults to).

Preferences > Package Settings > Terminal > Settings – User

Adjust your paths accordingly.

{
"terminal": "C:/Program Files/Console2/Console.exe",
"parameters": []
}

Hitting the menu wouldn’t turn it on, nor would the keyboard shortcut work.

Uh oh.

Since I knew Sublime stores all it’s settings in text files I went looking and discovered:

C:\Users\jdpriest\AppData\Roaming\Sublime Text 2\Settings\Session.sublime_session

And it contained a bunch of useful looking settings like:

{
"menu_visible": true,
"show_minimap": false,
"show_open_files": false,
"show_tabs": false,
"side_bar_visible": false,
"status_bar_visible": false
}

I tinkered with a few of those and restarted Sublime. Still no sidebar. Getting a bit desperate I deleted the file thinking Sublime would rebuild it when it starts up again with defaults.

Nope. I restarted Sublime and there was no new sublime_session file.

Hmmm.

I really didn’t want to reinstall everything at work so I started tinkering around with my Sublime install at home.

Then I noticed you don’t have a sidebar until you create/open a project!

I created a project and I got a new session file. Ah-ha!

I’m still a bit unclear how projects work in Sublime. I’ve simply been opening my code directory in Sublime. Adding the directory, Sublime prompted me to create a project file (I didn’t pay much attention to this step when I first got started). This time I took note and it created two files:

• Z:\mycodedir\myproject.sublime-workspace
• Z:\mycodedir\myproject.sublime-project

Somewhere along the line my original sublime-workspace files got deleted!

The sublime-project files seems to simply contain the path to your project. I’m guessing you can define multiple paths:

"folders":
[{
 "path": "/Z/myproject"
}]

Opening the sublime-workspace file it appears similar to your session settings file, it looks like you can configure things at the project level.

For example in Project A you could show the minimap, in Project B you could hide it.

{
"menu_visible": true,
"show_minimap": false,
"show_open_files": false,
"show_tabs": false,
"side_bar_visible": false,
"status_bar_visible": false
}

I will definitely be looking more into how projects work in Sublime, and hopefully this will help others if your Sublime suddenly starts acting weird.

Checkout the “Selection” page in the Sublime documentation for more on multi-select.

How do you find, learn and remember all these commands? The Command Palette!

Tools > Command Palette or CTRL+SHIFT+P will get you there.

This will popup a dialog where you can enter commands, or if you aren’t sure what you are looking for – partial commands and it will filter the results.

It will even tell you what to type as you can see below:

Command Palette

So to enter a cfloop – simply type ‘cfloop’ and hit TAB (don’t enter the opening < !)

Since cfloop has multiple options – query, list, etc, you will see another dialog:

Available options

Select which type of loop you want and hit ENTER and you will get a cfloop with your cursor placed ready to fill in the attributes:

CFLoop

All these ColdFusion commands are from the excellent CFML Sublime package by Indy Nagpal who also includes a large list of CFML snippets.

The Palette also seems to be aware of what type of file you are in, so you won’t see ColdFusion commands if you are editing a .css file.

Nice!

You can easily access these under the “Prefrences” menu.

Note: before you go tweaking things you may want to make a backup of these files! :)

Let’s get started…

There are generally 2 sets of options:

1. Default: The default out of the box Sublime options
2. User: Your personalized settings (these will override the default settings)

And three areas for configuration:

1. File: These are related to editing files
2. Global: These are general editor settings
3. Key Bindings: Define what hot keys do

To easily get started – open ‘File Settings – Default’ and select and copy that text. Then open ‘File Settings – User’, paste the selected text and edit away.

Or you can simply add individual options to the user settings file. To keep things clean that is the route I’ve taken… so far I’ve got:

{
	"color_scheme": "Packages/Color Scheme - Default/Monokai.tmTheme"
	, "font_face": "Consolas"
	, "font_size": 12.0
	, "word_wrap": false
	, "gutter"   : true
	, "line_padding_bottom": 0
}

(the Alignment package makes formatting this file easy)

Basically just setting my font, word wrap and color scheme. Note that these changes are usually instant – no need to restart the editor.

The gutter and line_padding_bottom settings I’ve found useful when I have a dense block of code I need to pick through – I can turn off line numbers and create some white space between the lines to make reading easier.

I’m still exploring all the settings available. If you have some favorites, please leave a note in the comments!