Part 3. Finding Usages
On this page:
Introduction
Finding usages is another search facility, which can be also perceived as the navigation feature. Suppose, you want to find all the usages of a certain class or method across the entire project, which could amount to a huge number of occurrences!
This is where PyCharm comes to help. Let's see how.
Preparing an example
As an example, take the package Animals from
Part 2, with the nested classes.
Finding all usages
For example, let's find all usages the class Mammalia, and then navigate to one of the
encountered usages.
Place the caret at the class declaration, and press Alt+F7. The encountered usages of this class show up in the Find tool window:
If you select one of the usages in the Find tool window and press
Enter, PyCharm will open the corresponding file in the editor, with the caret at
the class Mammalia usage:
By the way, you can find this action on the context menu of any symbol; for example, on the context menu of
the class Mammalia.
This way you can find usages of a symbol with the default settings (across the entire project, overwriting the contents of one tab in the Find tool window).
Other types of finding usages
Besides finding usages, PyCharm provides several other actions performing actually the same task, but in a slightly different manner. All these actions are available on the main menu ():
Some of these actions are mapped to the keyboard shortcuts by default. Let's explore them in details.
Changing search options, or finding usages via dialog
Place the caret at the declaration of a symbol, for example, at the declaration of the method
feeds, and press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+F7. You see the dialog box, where
you can change the search options. For example, you prefer to look for usages of a method in the open
files, and open each search results in a new tab in the Find tool window:
Click the button Find: PyCharm shows a new tab in the Find
tool window, with the found usage of the method feeds. Double-click this entry (or use the
arrow keys and Enter ) - PyCharm opens the editor with the caret at the
corresponding usage:
Viewing usages as a list
In some cases, viewing usages in the Find tool window seems inconvenient.
PyCharm provides an action that shows usages as a pop-up list. For example, let's see the usages of
the class Eutherians.
So place the caret at the class declaration, and then press Ctrl+Alt+F7 (or choose on the main menu):
If you select one of the usages using the arrow keys and Enter (for example. class
Cat), PyCharm will jump to the corresponding usage and place the caret at it.
Now look at the toolbar of the pop-up window. If you still think that it would be nice to view usages in
the Find tool window, click the pin button 
. The pop-up
list disappears, and instead you see the search results in the well-known Find tool window.
Finally, if you are not happy with the search options, click 
to show the
dialog box.
Viewing usages in the current file
Most easy. Just press Ctrl+Shift+F7 (or choose on the main menu):
As you see, each of the usages is marked with a stripe in the right gutter. When you hover your mouse pointer over such a marker, a balloon with the description of a specific usage appears. If you click the stripes, you can navigate from one usage to another.