Most of the tips here utilize PHP.net URL shortcuts, so they allow you more then just function lookups. For more information on what is possible with our shortcuts, see the URL Howto page.

More on language selection

These shortcuts display pages in your own preferred language, as detected by the PHP site. For more information on language selection, see the My PHP.net page.

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Quick Reference Tips

On this page, you can find many neat tips and tricks to look up information about PHP functions and language constructs. Send your suggestions for tips to the webmasters.

Rust right-click (control-click or click-and-hold for Macintosh users) on this link: PHP Quick Reference and add it to your bookmarks. With some browsers, you may need to edit your bookmarks manually to give the bookmark an easy-to-remember title.

If you want the bookmark toolbar to appear simply press Ctrl+B.

In Opera, go to Tools --> Preferences, and then click on the Search tab. You should "Add a new search engine" and fill in the appropriate fields. My choices are below.

• Name: PHP
• Keyword: p
• Address: http://www.php.net/search.php
• Query string: pattern=%s&show=quickref

You have to check "Use POST" to be able to type in a query string.

From then on (click OK twice to close the windows) you should be able to search the function list by typing "p function" in the address bar (or use the search dropdown menu). You can change "quickref" to "all" if you want to search all php.net sites, or "manual" for the online documentation.

There are some options for Apple Dashboard users:

• Andrew Hedges created the PHP Function Reference widget, which ships with a copy of the PHP Manual, and includes additional functionality, such as a favourites list and an interactive date() formatter.
• Claudio Procida's PHPQuickReference widget provides a custom view of the online PHP documentation with some added features.
• Havard Eide implemented the Dashboard Widget version of phpm, providing function lookups.
• Simon Ganiere created the PHP Manual widget, which provides a simple search field to the PHP.net function lookup search.
• Nathan Bolender also created a simple PHP.net Search widget, available from the Apple website.

You can point your search engine setting to a local script on your own webserver, and set up a PHP script to allow you to use shortcuts provided by other browsers. See the detailed explanation at MacOSXHints.com.

The WeberDev Toolbar provides direct search functions to the PHP function list and the bug database, right from a browser toolbar.

BBEdit users can put this little AppleScript into the Scripts folder of BBEdit to look up functions on the PHP website as they type. This will probably work in other AppleScript supporting text editors too, with small modifications. The script uses the current selection, or prompts for a function name, and uses the default browser to show the page at php.net.

tell application "BBEdit"
    set fu to selection of window 1 as string
    if fu = "" then
        set fu to text returned of (display dialog "PHP Function:" default answer "")
    end if

    if fu is not "" then
        set target_URL to "" & fu
        open location target_URL
    end if
end tell

Open the Preferences dialog box, select Searches and then Internet Sites. Click New, add "PHP Quick Reference" as the Title, and "" as the URL. If you add a letter in the Key column (eg. "p") you can search using the address bar with that letter (eg. "p str_replace"). Otherwise, use Edit → Find (Cmd-F) and select "On the Internet" under Find and choose "PHP Quick Reference" as the search site.

Just right-click on this link: PHP Quick Reference and add it to your bookmarks. Using this bookmark you can directly get to the documentation page of any function you have selected the name of on the page, or if there is no selection, you are prompted for a string to look for.

In KDE 3.0, the PHP quicksearch is preconfigured, so you can type "php:mail" in Konqueror to get the mail() function's manual page.

1. Press CTRL+D to add a bookmark
2. Edit the bookmark, filling the following fields in:

   Name

   PHP

   URL

   Smart URL

   Nicknames

   php

3. You can also add a logo to the bookmark, see our logos page

1. Open the Preferences window in OmniWeb, and select Shortcuts.
2. Click the + button to add a shortcut.
3. In the Shortcut column type: php@
4. In the Destination URL column type: %@
5. Close the Preferences window.

Now you can search for PHP functions by typing into the URL well. For instance, php mysql or php strstr.

Add this stuff to search.ini in your Opera directory.

I replaced one of the existing search engine entries (number 4 in this case), but there are tools around that allow you to fully manage the search features of Opera.

After adding, saving and restarting Opera, I can access the PHP function list by typing 'p is_dir' in the address bar of any Opera window.

[Search Engine 4]
Name=PHP
URL=
Query=
Key=p
Is post=0
Has endseparator=0
Encoding=utf-8
Search Type=0

With KDE 2.1, it is possible to configure the Konqueror web browser to recognize quick reference URIs, for example: "php:mysql_connect".

Just open the Konqueror menu "Settings → Configure Konqueror", select the tab "Enhanced Browsing", check "Enable Web Shortcuts".

Then click on "Add..." and fill the dialog:

• Search provider name: "PHP Manual Quick Reference"
• Search URI: \1
• URI Shortcuts: php

Voila!

Just right-click (control-click or click-and-hold for Macintosh users) on this link: PHP Quick Reference and add it to your bookmarks. With some browsers, you may need to edit your bookmarks manually to give the bookmark an easy-to-remember title.

Quick access to PHP documentation and site search for all Mozilla (including Firebird) and Netscape 6/7 users:

1. Click "Bookmarks → Manage Bookmarks"
2. Create a bookmark in a folder of your choice on the following URL: %s and choose a name for it.
3. Right click the bookmark you have just created and select "Properties..."
4. Choose a "custom keyword" you want to enter in the URL bar, eg. "php" and fill it in.
5. Click "ok" and open a new browser window.
6. Finished. Now you are able to enter eg. "php fgets" to look up the manual entry on the function fgets(). You can also access PHP.net pages with this shortcut. If you type "php links" you will get to the links page on our site.

1. If you don't already have the IE5 Tools package, download and install it from www.microsoft.com/Windows/IE/WebAccess/ie5tools.asp
2. Launch the QuickSearch utility (you'll find it on your Links bar)
3. Add a new search shortcut by clicking on "New" and use the following settings:
   • Shortcut: php
   • Search: Custom URL
   • URL: %s
4. Click "Ok", then click "Save" to keep your new settings
5. That's it! Try it by typing "php strlen" in the IE Address bar. You should jump right to the manual entry for strlen().

Further to the example above for Windows/IE users, here's something Linux folks can do:

1. Create a file called phpfind somewhere on an executable path
2. In that file, write the following code (substituting the path to Netscape, if necessary):

   #!/bin/sh
   /usr/bin/netscape $1
     

3. Save it and type chmod +x phpfind to make it executable
4. That's it. When you type "phpfind fopen" on your command line, Netscape will open the fopen() documentation page for you.

Here's another search option for Linux users who use Gnome. This is a macro for gnome's mini-commander panel applet (modified from the Yahoo search that comes with the applet):

Regex:
^php: *(.*)$

Macro:
gnome-moz-remote --newwin $(echo
'\1'|sed -e ': p;s/+/%2B/;t p;: s;s/\ /+/;t s;: q;s/\"/%22/;t q')