CONTRIBUTING.md

Contribution Guidelines

30 seconds of code is powered by the community, so feel free to contribute in any way you can to help us!

How you can help

• Submit pull requests with new snippets (see guidelines below) or snippet updates (tags, descriptions, explanations, typos, examples, code improvements).
• Open issues for things you want to see added, modified, discuss ideas or help out with existing issues.

Ground rules

Breaking any of these rules will result in your pull request being closed. Please follow these guidelines above all else:

• Always be polite and respectful to others and try to follow the advice of the moderators/collaborators/owners.
• Only modify snippet files, never modify the generated files in the snippet_data directory.
• Use the snippet template to create new snippets, ensure they have the correct name and are in the correct location.
• Follow snippet format exactly, otherwise your snippets will not be recognized correctly by the tools responsible for publishing them on the website. This includes such things as spacing and empty lines - if you accidentally make a mistake, consult the repository's snippet template.
• Snippets should solve real-world problems, no matter how simple and should be abstract enough to be applied to different scenarios.

Snippet creation

In order to create a new snippet, you should follow the steps below:

• Create a copy of the snippet template in the snippets directory.
• Change the name of the newly created file to the name of your snippet.
• Edit the file, adding your snippet based on the guidelines.

Snippet guidelines

• Snippet must follow these general writing guidelines.
• Snippets must have all their frontmatter sections (title, tags etc.) filled.
• Snippet titles must correspond to the filename and follow the language and repository's naming conventions.
• Snippet tags must be comma-separated, contain a primary tag as seen on the website as their first tag.
• Snippets must have their firstSeen dates formatted using ISO 8601.
• Snippet descriptions must be short and to the point. Explain what the snippet does and detail how the snippet works and the language features used in it. Snippet description should be written as lists of points (unordered for a few points, ordered otherwise), describing the implemented functionality.
• Snippet code and examples must be enclosed in appropriate, language-tagged blocks as shown in the snippet template, be short and use modern techniques and features. Also make sure to test your code before submitting.
• If your snippet contains arguments with default parameters, explain what happens if they are omitted when calling the function and what the default case is. Specify default parameters for arguments only if necessary.
• If your snippet uses recursion, use the recursion tag and explain the base cases.
• Try to strike a balance between readability, brevity, and performance.
• Always use soft tabs (2 spaces), never hard tabs.
• Leave a single space after a comma (,) character (both in the description and code).
• Define multiple variables on the same line, if possible. Use meaningful names (e.g. letter instead of lt) and follow existing conventions as seen in other snippets. Do not use trailing or leading underscores in variable names.