howdoi

Instant coding answers via the command line

⚡ Never open your browser to look for help again ⚡

Introduction to howdoi

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

brew install howdoi

Usage

New to howdoi?

howdoi howdoi

RTFM

Commands

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         display 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

You can also search other StackExchange properties for answers:

HOWDOI_URL=cooking.stackexchange.com howdoi make pesto

or as an alias:

alias hcook='function hcook(){ HOWDOI_URL=cooking.stackexchange.com howdoi $* ; }; hcook'
hcook make pesto

Other useful aliases:

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

Integrations

Slack integration available through slack-howdoi
Telegram integration available through howdoi-telegram
Discord integration available through discord-howdoi
Emacs integration available through emacs-howdoi
VSCode integration available on the marketplace
Alfred integration available through alfred-howdoi

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)
Sheza Munir (@ShezaMunir)
Jyoti Bisht (@joeyouss)
And more!

How to contribute

We welcome contributions that make howdoi better and improve the existing functionalities of the project. We have created a separate guide to contributing to howdoi that explains how to get up and running with your first pull request.

Notes

Works with Python 3.7 and newer. Unfortunately Python 2.7 support has been discontinued :(
Special thanks to Rich Jones (@miserlou) for the idea
More thanks to Ben Bronstein for the logo

rocklqy/howdoi