Accessing the PHP Manual, Quickly

By Thomas Rutter | February 19, 2005 | PHP

This is Thomas Rutter, currently filling in for our regular PHP blogger Harry Fuecks. While Harry

Written By:

Thomas Rutter

Website
>> More Posts By Thomas Rutter

{ 25 comments }

dofa June 13, 2007 at 5:42 pm: hello you dont know hot to download php manuall. then pls close this sites. ok bye ediuu
Moiz Husain December 21, 2006 at 8:36 pm: Zend Studio is a good option. Dreamweaver is also good at providing help.
Anonymous July 21, 2006 at 4:31 pm
Raevel February 22, 2005 at 9:01 pm: I use Zend Studio, with it the function along with the arguments pop up as you’re writing it. It even works for the functions you wrote yourself! The only time i have to use php.net is when i completely forget what a function is called.
frankiehots February 21, 2005 at 12:19 pm: I have an ultra-simple and quick way of looking up functions in the PHP manual. I use
Opera 7.5 for Windows. I have set up Opera’s customizable search queries to
include the letter “p” as a keyword for the PHP manual. I just type something in my
address bar like:
p array_search
and it takes me right to the appropriate manual page:
http://us3.php.net/array_search
Opera comes with built in keywords (or key-letters) like “g” for Google and “y” for Yahoo. You can be modify or add to these by editing the Opera search.ini file. For PHP I just added:
URL=http://www.php.net/%s
Key=p
Richard@Home February 21, 2005 at 9:57 am: I simply press F1 in my editor of choice: HTML-Kit (http://www.chami.com/html-kit/), while editing PHP to bring up the required annotated PHP manual page.
or,
I simply press F1 in my editor of choice while editing Javascript to bring up the required Netscape Devedge Javascript documentation page.
or,
I simply press F1 in my editor of choice while editing (X)HTML to bring up the required W3C HTML documentation page.
or,
I simply press F1 in my editor of choice while editing CSS to bring up the required W3C CSS documentation page.
…You get the idea ;-)
nunomira February 21, 2005 at 5:30 am: I also use firefox’s quick search. Typing:
php function_name
in the adrress bar takes me where I want.
As I use Macromedia Dreamweaver for coding, I use this extension:
http://www.tecnorama.org/document.php?id_doc=49
which opens the .chm help in the disered function.
patrikG February 21, 2005 at 4:43 am: What I’d be very interested to read is a benchmark comparison of the various pre-compilers for PHP: turck MMCache, ZendOptimiser, AGP.
Skip Chris February 21, 2005 at 4:04 am: Not really anything that’s not already been said, but FF search keywords are a boon:
I have ‘phpf’ mapped to this link:
http://uk.php.net/manual-lookup.php?pattern=%s&lang=en
and it’s all beautiful.
topsmith February 21, 2005 at 3:26 am: nice work, fastwork :)
J February 20, 2005 at 6:03 pm: If you are using VIM as your editor, you can include the PHP manual into its integrated help: http://planetxml.de/vim-php-manual.php
gmilner February 20, 2005 at 5:42 pm: Here’s a copy for you Palm system. Don’t know how old it really is even though it says 06/07/2004, that could be when it was posted to memoware:
http://www.memoware.com/?screen=doc_detail&doc_id=5882&p=title^!PHP~!description^!PHP~!author^!PHP~!
Peter Dunham February 20, 2005 at 4:59 pm: If you use the chm version and editplus you can:
From within editplus, highlight a function name, language construct, etc in your code, press your pre-defined user key and bingo – up pops the manual with the appropriate page showing.
scoates February 20, 2005 at 9:50 am: If you want a local copy, a full mirror is overkill.
Go with the CHM (http://www.php.net/download-docs.php), or at the very least/most: livedocs (http://wiki.phpdoc.info/LiveDocs).
S
saurab February 20, 2005 at 3:16 am: if you dont remember the exact name of a function that you want to search the details for, then just type in Google :
site:php.net incorrect_function_name
google’s spell check thing will correct the incorrect function name and ask you very politely : did you mean this ?
:))
noel February 19, 2005 at 4:29 pm: what about a local mirror?
it’s about 50 megs.
instructions on the php web site, i think.
great for when you are away from the internet for large periods of time.
if needed will go though details when have proper internet connection
fastwork February 19, 2005 at 3:27 pm: Based on this article: http://phpvolcano.com/articles/manual/index.php
I wrote a small GUI in php (with winbinder).
A screenshot is here:
http://www.locknet.ro/shoots/pms.png
The code:
http://www.locknet.ro/files/pms.zip
Features:
-> Minimize to system-tray
-> 2MB and it`s working without php installed on the user computer
-> no dos Window
-> suport for Win XP Themes
Problems:
-> It works only on Windows (higher than 2000)
scoates February 19, 2005 at 10:15 am: … if you’re on efnet, you can:
/msg PEARClops ~f functiontolookup
like so:
10:12 -!- Irssi: Starting query in EFNet with PEARClops
10:12 ~f in_array
10:12 bool in_array(mixed needle, array haystack [, bool strict]) : Checks if the given value exists in the array
On freenode, you can do the same for phpdocbot.
PEARClops also has a limited PEAR vocabulary:
10:14 ~f Mail_Mime::get
10:14 mail_mime::get(&$build_params) :
These will improve over time.
S
Rebort February 19, 2005 at 10:11 am: If you want to do a quickie-lookup of a particular function, just type its name after the php.net URL, like so:
http://php.net/explode
http://php.net/strstr
This works for any function in the manual. If you muck up the name, you’ll be taken to a results page with near matches.
Dean C February 19, 2005 at 10:10 am: I use a keyword address bar search in firefox. So helpful :)
bwarrene February 19, 2005 at 8:12 am: Thanks for the tip on searching the PHP manual in Safari. I find no matter how much PHP I write – I will be staring at the screen trying to remember syntax (as I can only fit so much into my dunce cap!). I of course have some seriously dog-eared PHP books but will add this quick search in.
charmedlover February 19, 2005 at 8:12 am: I use these quick things all the time in Opera. They have an Opera panel available that I use most of the time, but I’ve also built a search bar into Opera for the manual.
It does really help.
Mike P. February 19, 2005 at 7:07 am: Or use a bookmarklet:
javascript:var p;var q;if(!q){void(q=prompt(‘PHP Search…’,”));}window.location=’http://www.php.net/’+escape(q);
Dr Livingston February 19, 2005 at 6:42 am: what i would like to see is that using php5 and you have an error using a library function, the function is displayed with the error if im understood?
well does anyone know of a way so i can click on the link (part of error message) and find the function locally, ie off my own server… since the link in question is relative and not absolute.
if the link was absolute then no problem as i am online in the background anyways but the link is relative so its all pointless really ;)
Craig Beck February 19, 2005 at 4:43 am: For OS X users you missed PHPfi from http://www.artissoftware.com/phpfi/ – a great little shareware app (free if you are a student or hobbyist). I use it all the time.