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HOWTO: Creating a URL Shortcut for Drupal API Documentation in Firefox

Josh Koenig

Every Drupal developer/hacker knows (or should know!) about the fantastic API Documentation the project has. This growing collection of documentation is one of the top reasons that Drupal continues to grow and expand as quickly as it does. It makes it very inviting for engineers to start getting savvy.

This started out more than a year ago as an independent project called “drupaldocs.org,” and at that time there was a neat feature that let you type drupaldocs.org/function_name into your browser’s location bar, and it would pull up that function, or search for function names containing whatever you typed if no exact match was found. This is similar to how php.net works (try php.net/preg_replace for instance), and it’s a really nice thing for developers like me who elect to outsource memorizing engineering minutia like argument-order and specific syntax to the collective intelligence.

However, with the launch of api.drupal.org, the old style of finding functions went away. Alas! For months I despaired, until some of the heads in #drupal (developer chat channel) clued me in to a great feature in Firefox that lets you define wildcards in bookmarks.

FF bookmark for drupal api

As it turns out, there still is a url that you can add a function_name to on api.drupal.org to perform a quick search, but it’s http://api.drupal.org/apis/4.7/function_name (or http://api.drupal.org/apis/HEAD/function_name if you want to search the budding 5.0 code). Using Firefox’s bookmark interface (see the image there), I created a bookmark with a wildcard (%s) and a keyword (api). This lets me type “api function_name” into my browser toolbar, getting access to the documentation faster than ever!

While many engineers with a background in big-league IT will probably remain committed to Integrated Development Environments, collecting little tips and tricks like these can give us upstarts and new-schoolers a lot of power and flexibility without very much work at all. Happy drupalling!

Now that is cool

Note that the path has changed recently to:

http://api.drupal.org/api/5/function/%s

Posted by shunting (not verified) | Aug. 15th, 2007 @ 6:56am | Link to this Comment

Use with del.icio.us

It looks like this is possible if you use the del.icio.us ff extension (There’s a field for keyword) but I can’t figure it out. I can only get the keyword to work without the %s. When I throw that in there it doesn’t know what to do and sends me on a google search of “api theme” or whatever I was trying to search for.

Posted by dalin (not verified) | Mar. 12th, 2007 @ 11:24am | Link to this Comment

FF wildcard for complete idiots

Posted by John (not verified) | Jan. 23rd, 2007 @ 3:30pm | Link to this Comment

Exposing the POST query with formget Favelet

If the URL query is not exposed for your examination, add a favelet to your bookmarks to change the query from POST to GET:

Use these bookmark properties

Name: formget

Location:
javascript:(function(){var x,i; x = document.forms; for (i = 0; i < x.length; ++i) x[i].method=%22get%22; alert(%22Changed %22 + x.length + %22 forms to use the GET method. After submitting a form from this page, you should be able to bookmark the result.%22); })();

Keyword: formget

Description:
Turns all Post forms on a page into Get forms, allowing you to bookmark a search-results page.

—————————-
For example if I search for “seattle” I get this URL:

http://groups.drupal.org/search/node/seattle

However, if I use formget, and then do a search for “seattle”, I get this query URL

http://groups.drupal.org/search/node?keys=seattle&op=Search&form_token=3...

Now I can substitute “%s” for “seattle” and setup a keyword search bookmark for the drupal groups.

http://groups.drupal.org/search/node?keys=%s&op=Search&form_token=&form_...

Keyword: drupalgroups

Now I can enter
URL Location: drupalgroups seattle

Posted by John (not verified) | Jan. 23rd, 2007 @ 4:12pm | Link to this Comment

Clarification

I realize the URL below will work just as well as the elaborate example above. I wanted to show how the formget works on any web site that uses a form POST to query.

http://groups.drupal.org/search/node/%s

Posted by John (not verified) | Jan. 23rd, 2007 @ 6:36pm | Link to this Comment

Josh, you just made my day.

Josh, you just made my day. This is my new favorite blog of the week.

Posted by rorris (not verified) | Nov. 30th, 2006 @ 8:28am | Link to this Comment

Ooh nice!

I’ll have to check that out. I love the Firefox extension scene… the browser-as-platform thing is the future.

Posted by Josh Koenig | Nov. 18th, 2006 @ 6:33pm | Link to this Comment

Firefox users can also

Firefox users can also install one of the available extensions to search the Drupal API and the drupal.org site.
mycroft.mozdev.org

Posted by yaph (not verified) | Nov. 16th, 2006 @ 7:22am | Link to this Comment

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