Module: IHelp

Ri bindings for interactive use from within Ruby. Does a bit of second-guessing (Instance method? Class method? Try both unless explicitly defined. Not found in this class? Try the ancestor classes.)

The goal is that help is given for all methods that have help.

Examples:

  require 'ihelp'

  a = "string"
  a.help
  a.help :reverse
  a.help :map
  String.help
  String.help :new
  String.help :reverse
  String.help :map
  String.instance_help :reverse
  String.instance_help :new # => No help found.
  a.help :new
  ihelp "String#reverse"
  ihelp "String.reverse"
  a.method(:reverse).help # gets help for Method
  ihelp "Hash#map"

You can also search for terms in the documentation:

  ihelp 'domain name lookup'
  String.help 'byte order'

Custom help renderers:

The help-method calls IHelp::Renderer‘s method defined by IHelp.renderer with the RI info object. You can print help out the way you want by defining your own renderer method in IHelp::Renderer and setting IHelp.renderer to the name of the method.

Example:

  require 'ihelp'

  IHelp.renderers
  # => ["emacs", "rubydoc", "ri", "source", "html"]

  class IHelp::Renderer
    def print_name(info)
      puts info.full_name
    end
  end

  IHelp.renderers
  # => ["emacs", "rubydoc", "ri", "source", "print_name", "html"]

  IHelp.renderer = :print_name

  [1,2,3].help:reject
  # Array#reject
  # => nil

The current renderers are:

  ri -- the default renderer
  html -- creates a HTML document for the help and opens it
          with the program named in IHelp.web_browser
  rubydoc -- opens the corresponding www.ruby-doc.org class
             documentation page with the program named in
             IHelp.web_browser
  emacs -- uses gnudoit and ri-emacs to display help in an Emacs buffer.
           The Emacs commands that I got it running with were:
              ;; make ri-emacs autoload according to its instructions
              M-x ruby-mode
              M-x gnuserv-start
              M-x run-ruby
              > IHelp.renderer = :emacs
              > String.help:center
  source -- uses RubyToRuby to print the source for the method
            (experimental)

Changelog:

0.4.5

  Use RI environment variable to pass config to ri (thanks to Parragh Szabolcs.)
  Bugfix for missing stringio (thanks to Marcel M. Cary.)
  Show first thousand hits instead of a mere ten.

0.4.0

  Full-text documentation search using Ferret.

0.3.2

  Added support for ruby 1.8.5, added emacs renderer from
  rubykitch <rubykitch@ruby-lang.org>, made source renderer use the
  released version of RubyToRuby.

License: Ruby‘s

Author: Ilmari Heikkinen <kig misfiring net>

Methods

find_ancestors generate_help_description get_help_info get_help_info_str get_help_klass_info get_help_klass_info_for_name help help_description help_html help_index help_search help_yaml ihelp instance_help intersect_search_query render renderers ri_driver search

Classes and Modules

Class IHelp::IHelpAnalyzer
Class IHelp::IHelpDriver
Class IHelp::IHelpIndex
Class IHelp::Renderer

Constants

HELP_VERSION = "0.4.5"

Attributes

help_index	[RW]
no_colors	[RW]	Don‘t use colors for highlighting search results.
renderer	[RW]	Help renderer to use.
web_browser	[RW]	Web browser to use for html and rubydoc renderers.

Public Class methods

generate_help_description(klass, meth=nil, instance=nil)

Return RI::ClassDescription / RI::MethodDescription for klass or its method meth, or its instance method meth if instance == true.

Methods

Classes and Modules

Constants

Attributes

Public Class methods

Private Class methods

Public Instance methods