Thursday, August 26, 2021

Add code snippets into blog posts

From the start of my first blog post on programming, I always struggled with how to show the code snippets in the post itself. Sometimes I even colour coded my code snippets which turned out to be ugly. Here is the sample.


When I realised these are ugly, I started looking for the alternative like js libraries that we can import into our blog template. Though this serves the purpose, it also introduced additional work of maintaining the format. Also, when there are any code changes, it is always irritating😟. So after long further research, I found the right solution (at least for me)😃. 

The solution is to use the gists of GitHub. It is one of the features of Github to make the sharing of code snippets much easier. To use gists, you can directly create one at https://gist.github.com/ (make sure you log in to your GitHub account), else you navigate to gists from the Github dashboard.


Now on the right top, you can see a  symbol to create a new gist. Click on that and you will be navigated to a new page for creating the gist.



Now add the respective details like the description, file name with extension, and the content and create the secret gist.


After creating, you will be directed to the page which resembles like the below,

Now let me congratulate👏 you on creating your first gist on GitHub. Let us now integrate that gist into our blog post. Actually, it's quite simple, on the right top of the gist page, you can see an option called embed. 
All you have to do is to copy that embed link and paste it into the HTML of the blog post.


Yup, you are right, the sample snapshot is of this blog post only. You can see the gist snippet below.


So this is how it is done. If you find any other ways to integrate the Code snippets into blog posts, please do comment below.