Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Searching the Plone3 API

After kvetching about the Plone API documentation, I realized that maybe it's not the docs that need updated, but rather just a better way to navigate through them. Inspired by an awesome article by dukebody, I looked into how chrome could better serve me. To set up API search in the url bar:

  1. Chrome > Preferences > Default Search: Manage
  2. Click the + sign
  3. Choose your name and keyword. I used 'Plone 3 API' and 'api'. Use this beast for the url: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site:http://api.plone.org/Plone/3.0/private/products/+%s&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
  4. Save and enjoy.
In my case to use it I just enter 'api PloneModuleName' into the url bar and click enter. This gives me instant gratification and filters out the weeds of versions I don't want. Plone on.

4 comments:

  1. Nice idea, but not a particularly great option because:
    * This is missing a bunch of the packages that make up Plone.
    * It hasn't been updated since the Plone 3.0 days.
    * Most of the useful documentation about Plone is on plone.org, not in inline API docs, which are few and far between.

    I would like to see an up-to-date tool for searching/browsing API docs, and would even more like to see up-to-date API docs written, but as it stands this falls short.

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  2. I should have mentioned, that for the time being the best bet is probably either searching plone.org, or opening up the egg for the package in question and reading source code.

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  3. good points. the recipe still works for plone.org, just change the url to 'http://plone.org/search?SearchableText=%s'.

    For me this does exactly what I want and is up to date "enough". I want to be able to navigate 'online' to find out which methods/interfaces/etc an object provides which is why I prefer the repo version (plus I don't want to read text at all - show me the methods!). Maybe it's a personal style so reader beware!

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  4. Not that I am a fan of the "API docs" (api.plone.org) but I'm actually considering updating them for 4.0 (via epydoc) because at least they provide a nice frame of reference.

    However it's true that in the context of "pure" API docs, the useful methods are lost within a mountain of Zope 2, CMF, and other methods with no doc strings ;-)

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