Laravel Tip: API Quick reference with Liona

If you've never visited the #Laravel IRC channel, today might be the day to stop by. Besides offering authoritative answers to Laravel questions, the channel also offers instant access to all the Laravel API documentation. In this article, I show you the secret command to find all the Laravel API documentation.

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An oft-overlooked gem in the Laravel documentation arena is #laravel. (I'm old enough to remember "hash-tag laravel" meaning IRC and only IRC, and that's what I mean here. Anyway.) When you join that channel, you'll find lively Laravel discussions. You'll also find Liona.

Liona is a bot that listens for instructions. One instruction she answers is API documentation look-up. To return current Laravel 4.2 documentation, say:

liona show docs for api support manager

And Liona will give you a link right to the desired documentation. This is so much faster than Google, because Google doesn't always get it right. Sometimes you might get, for example, a blog article and you have to hunt for the actual API documentation. Sometimes Google gives you version 4.1 when you wanted 4.2.

If you want Laravel 5 documentation, Liona can help with that as well:

liona show docs for api 5 contracts auth

Thanks to machuga, lagbox, and github for producing such a wonderful Laravel helper!