It’s no surprise that you may need to work with different programming languages, or at least use many methods. You may not be sure how to call a method, how many parameters it has, or what type of object is used for each parameter. During these cases, having a quick way to search the API documentation helps immensely.

There are many ways to look up issues in the official API documentation for different languages. However, I have found two applications which are much easier than anything else I have tried. These tools can help you access the documentation with very few keystrokes.

Installing the Tools

Dash is suitable for Mac and Zeal can be used for any other operating system of your choice.

Once you have downloaded them, the first thing you need to do is grab the documentation for the language that you will be using. For example, you may download Java, Ruby, JavaScript, or even frameworks like jQuery, Ruby on Rails, etc.

Then, you can set up shortcut keys on your keyboard that can help you search anything quickly with only a few keystrokes.

Conclusion

Now, when you are having dilemmas about a particular method or functionality that you are about to use, you can quickly refer to the documentation that you have downloaded on your computer.

There may be some cases when something may be missing from these doc sets, but in most cases, they are very helpful.