To help you get started, we've collected the most common ways that howdoi is being used within popular public projects.

howdoi

Instant coding answers via the command line

⚡ Never open your browser to look for help again ⚡

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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

Usage

New to howdoi?

howdoi howdoi

RTFM

• Introduction and installation
• Usage
• Contributing to howdoi
• Advanced usage
• Troubleshooting

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'

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 3.5 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
• Slack integration available through slack-howdoi
• Telegram integration available through howdoi-telegram
• Special thanks to Rich Jones (@miserlou) for the idea
• More thanks to Ben Bronstein for the logo

Visual Studio Code Extension Installation

Head over to the MarketPlace to install the extension.

News

2.0.20

• Update dependency versions
• Add support for Python 3.10

2.0.19

• Fix typo

2.0.18

• Fixed issue with howdoi cache where cache misses would be printed to the console

2.0.17

• New documentation and mkdocs
• Fixed issue with how howdoi chooses the proper search engine (command line flags now override environment variables)
• Added a search engine fallback if one of the search engines fails
• Fixed issue with howdoi cache

2.0.16

• Fix GDPR issue for those using howdoi in countries outside the US
• Better support for using HOWDOI_URL

2.0.15

• Add explainability with -x or --explain options
• Better error checking for when search engines block queries
• Using improved DuckDuckGo endpoint
• Answer pages now fetched in parallel for speed improvement

2.0.14

• Fix a number of bugs by switching from parsing Google links to looking for URLs instead

2.0.13

• More permanent fix for extracting Google links

2.0.12

• Hotfix for Google link formatting

2.0.11

• Hotfix for Google link formatting

2.0.10

• Hotfix for new Google classnames
• Separate requirements.txt files for prod and dev

2.0.9

• Cleaner command line options that also include environment variables
• README updates

2.0.8

• Fix issue for answers that have no code in the answer but code in the comments
• Add range checks for -n and -p flags
• Moved from Travis to Github Actions
• Dropped Python 2.7 support

2.0.7

• Update for new Google CSS style

2.0.6

• Fix issue where -a would not return a proper response due to updated CSS on StackOverflow

2.0.5

• New logo and colors!

2.0.4

• Cachelib rollback to support Python 2.7
• Better error message when Google is being blocked (for example in China)

2.0.3

• Bring back Python 2.7 support (for now)

2.0.2

• Fixed keep support for stashing and viewing answers

2.0.1

• Added JSON output with the -j flag (great for consuming howdoi results for use in other apps)
• Added stashing ability for saving useful answer for later (based on https://github.com/OrkoHunter/keep)
• Added caching for tests to prevent being rate limited by Google while developing
• Added easier method for calling howdoi when imported (howdoi.howdoi)

1.2.1

• Fix dependency issue

1.2.0

• Massive speed improvements of startup, answer fetching, and caching
• Command line flags for alternate search engines
• Remove duplicate answers

1.1.14

• Links displayed with markdown syntax
• Improved performance and caching (again)

1.1.13

• Improved performance and caching
• More friendly answer display
• Added support for Python 3.6
• Removed support for Python 2.6

1.1.12

• Add additional search engine support

1.1.11

• Fix issue with UTF-8 encoding

1.1.10

• Include the link in output when asking for >1 answer
• Compatibility with linuxbrew

1.1.9

• Fix issue with upload to PyPI

1.1.8

• Fix colorization when HOWDOI_COLORIZE env variable is enabled
• Fix certificate validation when SSL disabled

1.1.7

• Add Localization support with HOWDOI_LOCALIZATION env variable (Currently only pt-br and en)

1.1.6

• Updates for Python3
• Updates for caching

1.1.5

• Updates for Python3
• Fix issues with cache
• Allow disabling SSL when accessing Google

1.1.4

• Added caching

1.1.3

• Added fix to handle change in Google search page HTML
• Updated Travis CI tests

1.1.2

• Compatibility fixes for Python3.2
• Travis CI tests now being run for Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.2, and 3.3

1.1.1

• Added message when question has no answer

1.1

• Added multiple answers with -n/--num-answers flag
• Added colorized output with -c/--color flag
• Added answer link to the bottom of questions with -a/--all flag
• Unit tests now managed through Travis CI

1.0

• Added support for Python3
• Switched to the requests library instead of urllib2
• Project status changed to Production/Stable
• Added troubleshooting steps to the README

0.2

• Added sane flags
• Now using /usr/bin/env python instead of /usr/bin/python
• Updated README for brew installation instructions

0.1.2

• Added Windows executable
• Updated README for pip installation instructions

0.1.1

• Added to PyPI

0.1

• We're doing it live!