As a developer I find myself needing to reference API documentation regularly. When the internet is available to me I find either php.net or sites such as dochub.io great places to look up documentation.

But, if I’m traveling abroad, or on an un-trusted network, I like to have a locally hosted copy of relevant APIs and documentation available to me.

In order to facilitate this need I stumbled across the DrupalAPI installation profile. From the profile page:

The DrupalAPI Installation profile sets up a DrupalAPI reference site, automatically indexing all files and setting up the site for instant use.

This is particularly useful for developers who work offline or in areas with spotty connectivity, but still want access to API docs.

Installation

Ensure your PHP memory_limit is set high enough, we've confimed that the following works:
memory_limit = 256M

Install as per a normal Drupal site, being sure to use the 'DrupalAPI' installation profile.

Updating API reference sources

Navigate to the 'DrupalAPI' profile directory from command line and run the following command:

./update.sh

Then once you’ve configured this local website on your personal webserver you have a local version essentially of api.drupal.org. Which is awesome!

For PHP documentation I currently love Chrome PHP-Docs-To-Go which is a free extension for Google Chrome. From its description page:

Quick Tricks
1. You can search using omnibox by typing "op" then hit tab in your browser bar.
2. Click on the logo and it will scroll to the top of the page.
3. Hovering over the top grey bar will auto-select the input field so you can quickly make searches.

### Reason for permissions needed.
The reason this app uses the two permissions is for using the omnibox feature, and the additional feature which checks if the app is already open when using the omnibox again.  This keeps it from opening multiple windows

Features:
1.  App has more than 12,000 doc files.
2.  Documentation includes user notes.
3.  You can search by partial or exact function names.
4.  Omnibox Support
5.  100% offline app
6.  Updated quarterly.
7.  Back Button Friendly

Of course, the BEST thing about this documentation tool — it doesn’t look like the ugly new php.net site :).

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