17 Slick Snippet Storage Sites

A big part of development, coding, or web design is repeating yourself. No one likes to admit it, but a lot of the work we do is repetitive. A great way to reduce the number of times you have to write something is to save it to use again later using code snippets. Snippets are little bits of code that you have written before that you think you might find useful again later, they could be a specific way to show images on a site, the SQL to create a handful of tables in one stroke, or an entire class for the backend of an ASP.NET web application. Whichever it is you need a place to keep the snippets so that you can get to them when you need them.

This is where the cloud based snippet storage comes into its own. You can access it from anywhere that you have an internet connection, which is everywhere these days. It saves you messing around with memory sticks with your code in text files on, or sending yourself snippets by email (we’ve all done it!) and allows you to find what you want when you want it. I’ve compiled a list of 17 super slick snippet storage sites below in no particular order, check it out, you might find the perfect one for you.

Snipt.org

Not to be confused with snipt.net (below) this is a slick looking snippet repository which allows you to not only store your own snippets but also search those of others to find useful. You can sign in with your Twitter account to keep track of your snippets in your ‘Snipt Box’. When you do Snipt will become styled to match your Twitter home page, including the background, a really cool little feature (you can turn if off should you wish).

Ideone

Not only can you store your snippets here, you can use the site to compile and run your code as well. The language support is pretty good for such a service and includes all of the major web languages as well as the .Net framework. You get more features if you sign up like longer code running allowance before timeout, as well as the ability to save and manage your submissions, but you can also use the site on an anonymous basis and still access most of the functionality.

Code Barrel

A professional solution to the problem, and is a good looking site with a privately hosted repository for which you can even get your own subdomain. It also supports mobile use very well, but if you want to store more than the 25 snippets that the free package allows then you have pay for it with a subscription. The professional package is $9.95/month and offers storage for an unlimited number of snippets to be collected and stored. There are also plugins for Visual Studio and Eclipse to facilitate easy access to your snippets.

Smipple

I’ve found this a pretty nice site to use: it’s well designed and allows easy access to your own snippets as well as those of others. You can search for other’s snippets for solutions or inspiration and also comment on them.

Snipt.net

Not to be confused with Snipt.org (above) this is another site that allows you to save snippets to your user account, embed them and favourite them. The syntax highlighting works very well, and you can add comments to snippets as well.

Ohloh

This is slightly different to most of the other sites here as this is predominantly a search engine. Its inclusion here is because you can add open source projects to the search engine and they will be indexed and can then be searched by anyone. At the time of writing there are over 15 billion lines of code to search through, which is quite the fantastic resource.

Snippler

This is one of the higher traffic sites amongst the bunch, so if you are looking for snippets as well as saving your own you might find that this is a good place to sign up to. The usual are supported, private snippets, public snippets and linking to snippets as well as folders and favourites.

SnipSave

This is a pretty slick implementation of a snippet paste site looking more like a featured mobile app than a web site. The snippets are saved into you own account so that you can view them all in the same place.

SnippLeaf

This is one person’s take on a snippet site, he found that the sites that he used to use had all closed down so decided to make his own. The result is pretty good, and definitely worth checking out. There is a free plan and a paid one for those who want to store larger snippets.

Github:Gist

This is likely the best known of this list, for a number of reasons: it’s widely used, powerful, part of the massively popular Github, and it’s easy to use. It’s more polished than some of the competition, which would be expected from a big player in the coding arena. Gists can have multiple files in and as each gist is a repository in its own right you can fork them, see version histories for them and clone any of the snippets into your local workspace.

Slexy

The editor is tab enabled which is fantastic for formatting your code. Slexy allows you to keep private snippets and also to set expiration dates for the snippets.

Pastie

Pastie keeps it simple, settings are non existent which often leads to a very streamlined experience. The features that are there such as the syntax highlighting and the linking are very well implemented, who needs settings?

Tiny Paste

Tiny Paste is a security concious paste bin that lets you set a password to view the pastes and also gives you a link to the post. It also does not allow search engines to crawl your code in the site, and does not allow other users to search any of the snippets either so this a fully private repository for your code. You create a separate acoount for the site so it’s not tied to your social media accounts and such like. An interesting take on code storage.

CodePad

This is a site that allows you to paste, edit, compile and share code. When you submit the snippet you are given a short URL that you can use to share or access the code. You can set project spaces with CodePadS — Projects are a convenient way for groups to work together. A project gives you a codepad.org subdomain, with its own local history of recent pastes.

Mystic Paste

As well as snippet storage this site also allows image pasting and saving and sharing. Another one that gives you a link as opposed to letting you log into the site.

PasteBin

The original and undeniably one of the best still, a good number of settings without becoming cumbersome, well presented and solid functionality.

JS Bin

This again is a different take on the code snippet storage, not only can you store and share code but if it’s web code you can run and edit it all in real time, as you type. That includes showing the changes to the people that you have shared the link with. So as you edit the code the others will see the updated version refresh before their eyes, a very cool little app.

A couple of Useful Extras.

MathBin.net

Some people use mathematics a lot in their day to day jobs, so this is one for you, mathematics snippets can be made, saved, edited and sent to people from the web interface here. It uses the LaTeX language to allow you to transfer your formulae from paper to web.

WorkFlowy

You will often find me extolling the virtues of WorkFlowy as I think that it is a great solution to many problems and this is no exception. Tagging and a very powerful search engine make it very suited to fragmented but related items such as snippets. The only downside I’ve found is that if your snippets have hex based colours in, ie #FF00AA, then your colours become tags which appear in the tag list.

Conclusion

What do you think? Have I missed your favourite or given you food for thought? Let me know in the comments below, as I’m always looking out for great new snippet tools.