PhpStorm 2019.3 Help

JavaScript Documentation Look-Up

PhpStorm shows you reference for standard JavaScript APIs, for symbols from your project and from its dependencies, as well as for symbols defined in external libraries. You can view the documentation for symbols in the Documentation popup, get information on method parameters, and open documentation on external sites if links to them are available.

To view documentation for a symbol at caret

  • Press Ctrl+Q or select View | Quick Documentation Lookup from the main menu. The reference for the symbol is shown in the Documentation popup.

    • For a project symbol or for a symbol from the project dependencies, PhpStorm generates the documentation from the corresponding JSDoc comment.

    • For a standard JavaScript object or method, PhpStorm shows the corresponding JSDoc comment from the built-in TypeScript definition files d.ts. These files are bundled with PhpStorm and updated on a regular basis.

    • If no comment is found in the d.ts files, PhpStorm shows a summary from the corresponding MDN article.

To view the MDN documentation for a symbol at caret

  • In the Documentation popup Ctrl+Q, click the link at the bottom:

    ws_mdn_docs.png
  • Press Shift+F1 or select View | External Documentation from the main menu.

PhpStorm opens the MDN article in the default PhpStorm browser.

To view documentation for a third-party JavaScript library

  1. Download the required library or framework, configure it as an external JavaScript library, and specify the link to its external documentation, see Configuring a custom third-party JavaScript library for details.

  2. Position the caret at the symbol in question and press Shift+F1 or choose View | External Documentation from the main menu.

To view documentation for an npm package

  • In a package.json file or in a require or import statement, position the caret at the name of the package and press Ctrl+Q

    ws_quick_doc_for_npm_package.png
  • To open the documentation on the npm official website in the browser, press Shift+F1.

To view reference in a tool window

To show documentation automatically

  1. In the Settings/Preferences dialog Ctrl+Alt+S, go to Editor | General | Code Completion.

  2. On the Code Completion page that opens, select the Show the documentation popup checkbox and specify the elapsed time.

To change the font size of quick documentation, do one of the following:

  • Click the Slider icon in the upper-right corner of the quick documentation window, and move the slider.

  • In the Settings/Preferences dialog Ctrl+Alt+S, go to Editor | General and select the Change font size (Zoom) with Ctrl+Mouse Wheel checkbox. See Useful editor configurations for details.

Last modified: 19 June 2020