How does one quickly access ruby and rails documentation when using vim?

What method are vim users out there using to quickly access documentation for both ruby and rails (other than switching to the browser to use ruby-doc or railsapi?).

I was trying to adapt this script (http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Online_documentation_for_word_under_cursor) to do the trick however it's only going to work if the cursor is over a class name and I'd like it to work with both class and met开发者_C百科hods.

Thanks.

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Seems like you may have answered this yourself with that function, but there are a couple of existing Vim plugins that can access ri on-the-fly within Vim. I use PA_ruby_ri. You might also try ri-browser and ruby-menu, though I can't personally vouch for either of them.

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Managed to modify the script in the OP to work with the slick http://railsapi.com (which also provides docs for ruby, rspec and more).

Added the below to my .vimrc, then using leader + d will load up the docs for the word the cursor is on:

" online documentation search
function! OnlineDoc()
  if &ft =~ "ruby"
    let s:urlTemplate = "http://railsapi.com/doc/rails-v2.3.8_ruby-v1.8/?q=%"
  else
    return
  endif
  let s:wordUnderCursor = expand("<cword>")
  let s:url = substitute(s:urlTemplate, "%", s:wordUnderCursor, "g")
  let s:cmd = "!open \"" . s:url . "\""
  execute s:cmd
endfunction

map <silent> <leader>d :call OnlineDoc()<CR>

coreyward, please don't use this, ha.

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This is an old post but for future googlers, I'd suggest 2 plugins:

1. ri.vim: to bring up offline ri docs within Vim.
2. vim-ruby-doc: to bring up online rdoc.info, api.rubyonrails.org, or rspec relish docs in a browser.

BTW If you're looking for CSS, DOM, HTML, JavaScript, JQuery, or PHP documentation check out my lil plugin dochub.vim.

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Install the cheat sheets gem and simply shell out to access a quick help text.

:! cheat cheat

Rob Conery over at Tekpub.com uses this gem in his rails videos and it is quite useful.

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I usually use a browser to read online docs, because of hyperlinking. It makes it a lot easier to jump around between related pages.

Otherwise, I'll keep a terminal window open, for ri and man pages.

Also, inside vim, I'll open a separate tab and use that to view docs. That works pretty well because I don't have to shuffle splits.

The last two are old-school, but they work well.

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If you're on a Mac, try dash.vim. Works for Rails and lots of other frameworks and languages as well.