Support for PHP - "Programming languages" tab

If you don't remember what a certain PHP function is for, or if you are looking for the right function for a specific task, the Programming Languages tab is very useful.

Tool description

This tab consists of a menu where you can switch programming languages and a data tree. If you choose the view for PHP there will be branches on the tree:

Constants and variables:

• PHP constants - list of PHP predefined constant names (e.g. in the php.ini file)
• Server constants - list of server constants names related to the server itself
• Server constants (Request) - a list of server constants for handling requests from the browser
• PHP variables - a list of PHP variable names, such as function argument array, session variables, etc.

Functions
Contains lists of names of the built-in PHP functions. They are grouped according to their purpose, or the module that provides them.

The described tab can be for example a reference book. It's not easy to remember PHP functions, constants and variables - there are over 2000 of them in the manual, and new ones appear all the time. For the items selected in the tree, a tooltip area is displayed at the bottom of the tab, providing more information about the selected function. For example for MySQL/mysql_fetch_row() we get a hint:

Name: mysql_fetch_row()
Arguments: object result
Type: array
project: PHP 3, PHP 4

You can use this tab not only as a reference tool. You can also insert selected elements into a document. You can do this in two ways: using the button on the left side of the tab or by double-clicking on the selected element. The Spider will warn you if you want to place an element in an inappropriate place.

Editing a definition file

To edit the data used by the tool, the Definition File Editor for PHP is used. With it you can change the description of an existing function, add new functions and their groups.