Open Source code doesn’t always come in big complex packages. At ProPublica we sometimes share small snippets of using GitHub “Gists.” These Gists range from single-byte file delimiters to an entire JavaScript framework for making stepper graphics. They rarely have documentation and don’t even always have names, but they can be super-useful.

Here are some we’ve shared over the past few years:

• A simple way to grab remote template elements in your Rails app (after Brian Boyer’s RemoteSnippets) https://gist.github.com/1664329
• A single byte gist that contains ASCII character 28, which the FEC uses as a field delimiter. https://gist.github.com/2191300
• A quine in Ruby https://gist.github.com/523940
• Check links on a page using JavaScript https://gist.github.com/1502737
• Convert state abbreviations to and from AP Style in JavaScript (requires Underscore) https://gist.github.com/1006390
• Find out if you have permission to publish to a user’s Facebook stream, using JavaScript https://gist.github.com/1181004
• Grab U.S. Code by statute using Ruby https://gist.github.com/861266
• JavaScript color generator based on this color palette by Tyson Evans https://gist.github.com/1558470
• Natural language document clusterng in Ruby https://gist.github.com/1508278
• Non-strict CSV parser in Ruby https://gist.github.com/1684042
• Parse Unix diffs using Ruby https://gist.github.com/335891
• Poor Man’s Fech, in Ruby https://gist.github.com/1405852
• Rake task to build github pages https://gist.github.com/891157
• Ruby code to purge Amazon CloudFront cache https://gist.github.com/1630177
• Shell script to download TIGER/Line shapefiles https://gist.github.com/885812
• Simple dynamic page titles for Rails https://gist.github.com/981957
• Simple JavaScript graphing framework https://gist.github.com/1690779
• Simple Ruby benchmark https://gist.github.com/987477
• Stepper graphic framework using JavaScript https://gist.github.com/1703708
• Turn CSVs into JSON, in Ruby https://gist.github.com/1334996
• Turn hashtags in git commit messages into git tags using Ruby https://gist.github.com/826360

Naturally, this post is available as a gist, too.