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How did date validation work in JavaScript again? Do you remember how to check if an object is empty? Sounds very specific, doesn’t it? It’s good this way, as the very specific questions are much more frequent in a web developer’s everyday work than the question which of two frameworks is better in general. The new search engine Co.cycles is a very interesting helper for these everyday issues.

Forums: Classic Developer Help

I’m a member of a variety of forums, all of which deal with questions on front-end development, and I’m a huge advocate of using forum features 😉 On the base of helping and getting helped, I’ve been able to deal with plenty of problems that I couldn’t have solved alone, or at least not as fast, without forums. However, you can generally say that it becomes increasingly harder to find help in forums the more specific the question gets. Help found via the search feature often needs to be re-interpreted to suit the particular case.

That’s why it’s great that a new search engine for freely available code joins the valuable help base that can be received via forum interactions. Co.cycles is the name of the search engine. As it closely resembles Google, you won’t encounter problems using it. Its goal is to become an indispensable companion for today’s web developers.

Co.cycles: Developer Help on Steroids

Currently, Co.cycles can only help out with questions on JavaScript. It will look for projects that are similar to the search request, as well as for fitting code snippets, functions, and so on. Expansions for languages like PHP and Ruby are in the works.

Using Co.cycles is simple. It works exclusively on the base of free-text search phrases, just like its Californian role model. To ease getting started, you’ll instantly find suggestions on valid search phrase formulations next to the search bar as soon as you access Co.cycles.

As soon as you enter and send off the search term, the similarities to Google end. The result page is far more communicative than what you’re used to. On the left side, you’ll find projects that deal with the search term, in the center you’ll see the exact function you searched for in a complete source code example, and on the right, there’s explanation on what, why, and how.

This will help you get going fast, which should accelerate your workflow massively as the results are exactly what you were looking for. Just search for the following:

• Check if a date is valid
• Produce a random value within a given range
• Check if a value is zero or empty

Of course, the current lack of PHP is a larger minus. However, this will change shortly, so Co.cycles will gain a lot of additional utility value.

Which tool do you use for this type of questions?

(dpe)