A Fantastic Textmate Bundle

It started out last weekend with a couple of features and now the syncPEOPLE on Rails bundle has really become a must have for Textmate if you do any programming in Rails.

keypad ‘enter’: Intelligent Go To File

Ever get tired of traversing rails directory structure when trying to find a view or partial? This shortcut check the current line you are on upon pressing the enter key to see if there is a render or redirect statement. If one is found, it automatically opens this file up. As if that wasn’t enough, it also works for stylesheets, javascripts and in between controller actions and views. Yes, it is that cool.

command-option-p (with selection): Create Partial from Selection

This shortcut takes a selection, asks for a name and creates a partial. Not only that, but it creates the <%= render :partial => “whatever”%> method call to the partial that is created.

command-option-p (without selection): Inline Partial Edit Mode

This shortcut is flat out amazing. Simply hit command-option-p and all your partial calls are replaced with the actual code from the partial. Make your changes, hit command-option-p again, and the render partial method call is put back in its place and the partial is saved with the changes. I dinked around with it abit and definitely got the geek snorts.

command-option-g: Rails Generator

No need to even open up the terminal with this shortcut. It gives you stupid easy access to the Rails script/generate while remaining in Textmate.

ctrl-option-command-\: Install a Bundled Plugin

This automatically installs a plugin to your current project. Currently there are only two plugins bundled with it, but I can imagine it would be easy to add your own. I really like this feature.

Snippets

Not only does the bundle come with all the above cool shortcuts, but it also has several snippets which are helpful for migration. You can read all about these in the features once you download the bundle but I wanted to at least mention it.

Plugins

The bundle also comes with two plugins. One, textmate_footnotes: Clickable Web Pages and Backtrace, does two really cool things. First, it makes the line number and file name error messages clickable. Upon clicking, it opens up the file in Textmate. If you have done much debugging, this is really handy. The second feature is also pretty cool. It adds links to the bottom of the page when in development mode. These links open up the exact controller or view that rendered the page. Nice.

Final Thoughts

Have you downloaded it yet? I’m serious, this thing is awesome. Duane has been posting updates to it like crazy so I look forward to some really cool features in the coming weeks.