howdoi

instant coding answers via the command line

Sherlock, your neighborhood command-line sloth sleuth.

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Are you a hack programmer? Do you find yourself constantly Googling for how to do basic programming tasks?

Suppose you want to know how to format a date in bash. Why open your browser and read through blogs (risking major distraction) when you can simply stay in the console and ask howdoi:

$ howdoi format date bash
> DATE=`date +%Y-%m-%d`

howdoi will answer all sorts of queries:

$ howdoi print stack trace python
> import traceback
>
> try:
>     1/0
> except:
>     print '>>> traceback <<<'
>     traceback.print_exc()
>     print '>>> end of traceback <<<'
> traceback.print_exc()

$ howdoi convert mp4 to animated gif
> video=/path/to/video.avi
> outdir=/path/to/output.gif
> mplayer "$video" \
>         -ao null \
>         -ss "00:01:00" \  # starting point
>         -endpos 10 \ # duration in second
>         -vo gif89a:fps=13:output=$outdir \
>         -vf scale=240:180

$ howdoi create tar archive
> tar -cf backup.tar --exclude "www/subf3" www

Installation

pip install howdoi

or

pip install git+https://github.com/gleitz/howdoi.git#egg=howdoi

or

python setup.py install

New to howdoi?

howdoi howdoi

Usage

usage: howdoi [-h] [-p POS] [-n NUM] [-a] [-l] [-c] [-x] [-C] [-j] [-v] [-e [ENGINE]] [--save] [--view] [--remove] [--empty] [QUERY ...]

instant coding answers via the command line

positional arguments:
  QUERY                 the question to answer

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -p POS, --pos POS     select answer in specified position (default: 1)
  -n NUM, --num NUM     number of answers to return (default: 1)
  -a, --all             display the full text of the answer
  -l, --link            display only the answer link
  -c, --color           enable colorized output
  -x, --explain         explain how answer was chosen
  -C, --clear-cache     clear the cache
  -j, --json            return answers in raw json format
  -v, --version         displays the current version of howdoi
  -e [ENGINE], --engine [ENGINE]
                        search engine for this query (google, bing, duckduckgo)
  --save, --stash       stash a howdoi answer
  --view                view your stash
  --remove              remove an entry in your stash
  --empty               empty your stash

environment variable examples:
  HOWDOI_COLORIZE=1
  HOWDOI_DISABLE_CACHE=1
  HOWDOI_DISABLE_SSL=1
  HOWDOI_SEARCH_ENGINE=google
  HOWDOI_URL=serverfault.com

Using the howdoi stashing feature (for more advanced features view the keep documentation).

stashing: howdoi --save QUERY
viewing:  howdoi --view
removing: howdoi --remove (will be prompted which answer to delete)
emptying: howdoi --empty (empties entire stash, will be prompted to confirm)

As a shortcut, if you commonly use the same parameters each time and don't want to type them, add something similar to your .bash_profile (or otherwise). This example gives you 5 colored results each time.

alias h='function hdi(){ howdoi $* -c -n 5; }; hdi'

And then to run it from the command line simply type:

$ h format date bash

Other useful aliases:

alias hless='function hdi(){ howdoi $* -c | less --raw-control-chars --quit-if-one-screen --no-init; }; hdi'

Contributors

• Benjamin Gleitzman (@gleitz)
• Yanlam Ko (@YKo20010)
• Diana Arreola (@diarreola)
• Eyitayo Ogunbiyi (@tayoogunbiyi)
• Chris Nguyen (@chrisngyn)
• Shageldi Ovezov (@ovezovs)
• Mwiza Simbeye (@mwizasimbeye11)
• Shantanu Verma (@SaurusXI)
• And more!

Notes

• Works with Python 3.5 and newer. Unfortunately Python 2.7 support has been discontinued :(
• There is a GUI that wraps howdoi.
• There is a Flask webapp that wraps howdoi.
• An Alfred Workflow for howdoi can be found at http://blog.gleitzman.com/post/48539944559/howdoi-alfred-even-more-instant-answers.
• Slack integration available through slack-howdoi.
• Telegram integration available through howdoi-telegram.
• Howdoi uses a cache for faster access to previous questions. Caching functionality can be disabled by setting the HOWDOI_DISABLE_CACHE environment variable. The cache is stored in ~/.cache/howdoi.
• You can set the HOWDOI_URL environment variable to change the source url for answers (default: stackoverflow.com, also supported: serverfault.com, pt.stackoverflow.com, full list).
• You can set the HOWDOI_SEARCH_ENGINE environment variable to change the underlying search engine for StackOverflow links (default: google, also supported: bing, duckduckgo). The -e flag will switch the underlying engine for a single query.
• Setting the HOWDOI_COLORIZE environment variable will colorize the output by default.
• Special thanks to Rich Jones (@miserlou) for the idea.
• More thanks to Ben Bronstein for the logo.

Development

• Checkout the repo
• Run python -m howdoi QUERY (if you try running python howdoi/howdoi.py you might get ValueError: Attempted relative import in non-package).

If you would like to use howdoi from within a python script, just pass your query to howdoi.howdoi():

from howdoi import howdoi

query = "for loop python"
output = howdoi.howdoi(query)

Or parse it yourself (either work):

from howdoi import howdoi

query = "for loop python"
parser = howdoi.get_parser()
args = vars(parser.parse_args(query.split(' ')))

output = howdoi.howdoi(args)

Or get the results as JSON:

from howdoi import howdoi
import json

query = "for loop python"

output_json = json.loads(howdoi.howdoi(f'{query} -j'))

Extension Development

To simplify the process of integrating howdoi as a code editor extension, edit the files within the extension/code-editor-integration folder.

To improve upon the Visual Studio Code howdoi extension, edit the files within the extension/vscode-ext folder and republish the extension.

Code Editor Integration

Head over to the README.md for an in depth explanation on beginning development for the howdoi code editor integration plug-in.

Visual Studio Code Extension

To begin development for the Visual Studio Code extension, install all necessary packages:

npm install

Then, precompile the extension:

npm run precompile

To run and test the extension, utilize Visual Studio Code's debugging tools.

Visual Studio Code Extension Installation

howdoi can now be installed as an extension on Visual Studio Code! There are two ways to install it:

1. On the Visual Studio Code MarketPlace:

• Head over to the MarketPlace to install the extension.

2. Directly from the packaged extension:

• Head over here to locally install the howdoi Visual Studio Code package.

Contributing

I'm happy to accept pull requests that make howdoi better. If you're thinking of contributing and want a little feedback before you jump into the codebase, post an issue on Github.

Before PRs are accepted they must pass all tests and not have any flake8 or pylint warnings or errors. This projects uses vanilla configuration files for both linters (.flake8rc and .pylintrc in the root directory), but with a max line length of 119.