Hidden features of PyCharm

Question

I know PyCharm is young IDE but id like to know if you guys have found some candy while using it. I know from experience that JetBrains IDE's are filled with candy and can't wait to find it all.

Please list your tips, perhaps something you did not first expected to be there.

Answer 1

Control-clicking a view method in a URLconf will open views.py and bring you right to that method. Similarly, control-clicking template names in a view, and in other templates (like in the extends tag) will bring you to that template.

Not hidden, but when editing a CSS file, it shows the colors in the gutter for any styles that use color. I love that. Also for CSS: code insight offers optimizations of tags, as well as graying out unused tags.

When editing an HTML file, moving the mouse towards the top-right of the editor will display icons for several browsers...clicking those will open the current HTML in the respective browser. Not as useful if you're using Django templates, but another piece of IDE-candy nonetheless.

Auto-import is also probably one of my favorite features. It still needs a bit of work, though. This is just a preview release, so I'm sure it'll continuously get better.

Well done, JetBrains!

Answer 2

As the lead developer of PyCharm, I can tell you that we don't usually hide features in random places, and there are a few reliable ways to discover most of them.

• Try Ctrl-clicking on everything (methods, functions, template tag names and parameters, etc.)
• If Ctrl-clicking works, usually so does completion (Ctrl-Space), rename (Shift-F6) and Find Usages (Alt-F7)
• Look through the menus and try out the actions that seem interesting
• Look at Settings | Inspections to configure the warnings which can be highlighted by PyCharm, and note that many of the inspections have quickfixes to correct the problems automatically
• Read the blog at http://blogs.jetbrains.com/pycharm/ and try out the features highlighted there.

Answer 3

I don't know if this is a hidden feature really but when you know about it makes testing so much easier.

If you run your tests through PyCharm you can click on the names and lines of the backtrace to take you to the exact line in your python code. Makes testing so much easier.