Tuesday Tooling: Stack Overflow in the Terminal!

If you need an answer, then all you need to do is ask the question.

If you've been coding for a while or just Googling a problem, chances are that you have come across Stack Overflow by now. But what happens if you are in the date centre, terminal, or have no access to a web browser? Well you access Stack Overflow from your Terminal.

So what is it?

SearchOverflow is a terminal based tool written in Python by Airam Hernández Rocha and it enables us to search Stack Overflow while at the terminal, or in an IDE such as Visual Studio Code.

So how do I install it?

I tried to install this using the Python package, but I got this error.

Which looks like it is missing a requirements.txt file.

Don't worry I got it installed by using Github

I installed SearchOverflow using the project's Github repository.
Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/airamhr9/SearchOverflow.git

Navigate to the directory.

cd SearchOverflow

Install SearchOverflow.

sudo python3 setup.py install

But I don't know anything about Github, how can I install SearchOverflow?

Fear not, you can download the ZIP file from here. and extract the contents to a folder, and from there following the final step in the install.

Hi reader!

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Thanks!

So how do I use it?

SearchOverflow can be used in the Terminal or via an IDE such as Visual Studio Code. SearchOverflow works in two ways. We can call the command with no question sflow. And then ask a question, press ENTER and watch the results pour in.

We can also ask the question as we call the command sflow ["Your question goes here"] to quickly show a list of responses.

So does it work in an IDE?

I tried it in Visual Studio Code and yup it works!

Happy Hacking!