Find the Python code for specified symbols
Install this tool using pip:
pip install symbexsymbex can search for names of functions and classes that occur at the top level of a Python file.
To search every .py file in your current directory and all subdirectories, run like this:
symbex my_functionYou can search for more than one symbol at a time:
symbex my_function MyClassWildcards are supported - to search for every test_ function run this (note the single quotes to avoid the shell interpreting the * as a wildcard):
symbex 'test_*'To search within a specific file, pass that file using the -f option. You can pass this more than once to search multiple files.
symbex MyClass -f my_file.pyTo search within a specific directory and all of its subdirectories, use the -d option:
symbex Database -d ~/projects/datasetteIn a fresh checkout of Datasette I ran this command:
symbex MessagesDebugView get_long_descriptionHere's the output of the command:
# File: setup.py Line: 5
def get_long_description():
with open(
os.path.join(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)), "README.md"),
encoding="utf8",
) as fp:
return fp.read()
# File: datasette/views/special.py Line: 60
class PatternPortfolioView(View):
async def get(self, request, datasette):
await datasette.ensure_permissions(request.actor, ["view-instance"])
return Response.html(
await datasette.render_template(
"patterns.html",
request=request,
view_name="patterns",
)
)
This tool is primarily designed to be used with LLM, a CLI tool for working with Large Language Models.
symbex makes it easy to grab a specific class or function and pass it to the llm command.
For example, I ran this in the Datasette repository root:
symbex Response | llm --system 'Explain this code, succinctly'And got back this:
This code defines a custom
Responseclass with methods for returning HTTP responses. It includes methods for setting cookies, returning HTML, text, and JSON responses, and redirecting to a different URL. Theasgi_sendmethod sends the response to the client using the ASGI (Asynchronous Server Gateway Interface) protocol.
To contribute to this tool, first checkout the code. Then create a new virtual environment:
cd symbex
python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activateNow install the dependencies and test dependencies:
pip install -e '.[test]'To run the tests:
pytest