How much do you use API?

pestaa · August 22, 2009, 11:27am

Am I the only one who have difficulties recalling all that parameter lists and orders?

What is your strategy to remember method signatures, apart from code completion?

DARX · August 22, 2009, 11:32am

chm?

pestaa · August 22, 2009, 11:46am

I extensively use chm, it is pinned to my start menu. Still, it takes time to find signatures.

DARX · August 22, 2009, 11:51am

Hehe

Sometimes I open the framework source and navigate to necessary method or class

pestaa · August 22, 2009, 12:18pm

For the same scenario, I use svn trunk browser at google code.

DARX · August 22, 2009, 12:22pm

Yeat another solution. Anybody else?

mikl · August 22, 2009, 1:48pm

A cheat sheet would also be nice (already discussed here).

davi_alexandre · August 22, 2009, 3:52pm

One good solution is an editor with code hinting support. In Komodo Edit just add the framework path to the code hinting libraries and you have full doc for the entire framework, right on your editor . Aptana, Netbeans and other editors also have this feature.

pestaa · August 22, 2009, 3:58pm

But this wouldn’t work for custom components. What if I want to use Yii::app()->db2 besides the original one?

samdark · August 22, 2009, 4:37pm

pestaa, for Netbeans I’m using vdoc hints to identify a class behind Yii::app()->db2:




$something=Yii::app()->something;

/* @var $something CSomething */

So1 · August 22, 2009, 4:52pm

Didnt know that. Thanks - very handy!

pestaa · August 22, 2009, 5:21pm

samdark,

That is very handy indeed, although I’m quite lazy to define variable types in each scope.

DARX · August 22, 2009, 5:25pm

Funny

sebi · August 22, 2009, 5:54pm

What is chm??

DARX · August 22, 2009, 6:04pm

The Yii Class Reference in chm-format - http://www.yiiframework.com/files/yii-api-1.0.8.chm

auxbuss · August 23, 2009, 9:50pm

But why not use code completion, or at least the dropdowns with all the hints/suggestions?

Also, with nb and eclipse, you can drill straight into the framework/extensions source with <ctrl>-click on a class or method name (well, any class, but those too). And when there are multiple options, it shows them in a list. So it also works on your own components; I use it all the time.

pestaa · August 23, 2009, 10:25pm

I extensively use Ctrl-P in NetBeans, which shows me a very simple parameter list, if accessible.

auxbuss · August 24, 2009, 9:32am

I find <ctrl>+P to be quite buggy So I tend to use <ctrl>+<space> after the function name. Since I have the automatic completion pop-ups switched off, I also use <ctrl>+<shift>+<space> to get the docs.

It’d be nice to see into Blah::model()-> though.

pestaa · August 24, 2009, 11:23am

Something similar has been asked as a feature, I’m not sure however, whether this is the same or not.

As far as I know, @return phpdoc should be defined before model() and other chainable functions.

What do you mean by buggy? I haven’t had any problems with parameter lists so far.

auxbuss · August 24, 2009, 6:59pm

I sometimes get the wrong values, that’s all. Probably driver error