Safari vs. Codefetch on Amazon's Best Sellers

Can you rely on O'reilly's paid Safari service for the latest code from programming books? Apparently not. I knew Safari was lacking independent publishers like Pragmatic Programmers, but when I did this experiment I was surprised they don't even offer their own bestsellers. Strange. Anti-cannibalism perhaps?

We took Amazon's computer bestseller list for February 21, 2006, eliminated non-programming books, and looked at whether the books are code-searchable on Safari or Codefetch:

Book	Code on Safari?	Code on Codefetch?
DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model	no	yes
Head First Design Patterns	no	yes
Ajax in Action	no	yes
Professional ASP.NET 2.0	no	no
Agile Web Development with Rails : A Pragmatic Guide	no	yes
SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 5 Study Guide	no	no
Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, Second Edition	no	yes
Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML	no	no
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software	no	yes
CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions	no	yes

More C Code

The publicity from Wired and Slashdot has yielded more searches for C and C++ topics than ever before and I noticed there were not enough results. A little research showed that we were missing some good C books because the publishers didn't categorize them as C books. After a little digging we added much more C code last night and more C++ too. We'll add two new Ajax books on March 1 when they are officially published.

Codefetch on Slashdot and Wired News

Codefetch got a little boost of activity from being mentioned on Slashdot and Wired News on Friday.

Wired issued this article about not-yet-operational search code search engine startup krugle, and mentioned codefetch and koders as competitors.

Slashdot picked up the story with this posting whose comments discuss codefetch. On slashdot there was initially some confusion that maybe Google had launched Krugle.

New Languages: Delphi and Pascal

Added search for Borland's Delphi (an oo pascal) and Apple's AppleScript (the successor to hypertalk and similar to early versions of Lingo). In the press release I mention how we found used copies of a classic Delphi book selling for hundreds of dollars on Amazon.

New Feature: Search Codefetch on your site

Now your own site can have the little codefetch search box like this page does. Visit the Codefetch tools page. Also now you can use much shorter yubnub commands like cfas for a codefetch search of Flash ActionScript. See the tools page for all of them.

Ontology

I enjoyed this article about categorization vs. search vs. tagging: Ontology is overrated

Codefetch uses a bit of old-school categorization because its actually useful in codefetch's domain (most code is one and only one language). But we're thinking hard about where we should be ignoring categorization and how we might help our users create new information relationships.

New Feature: oo API search

API search now supports object-oriented languages. Ruby and Java are the first to be implemented. Search for "button" in java and at the top of your results page you'll see links to the javadocs for java.awt.Button, javax.swing.JButton, and other classes that contain the word button, and below that, methods that contain the word button.

Other changes: API search results ranking for other languages have been greatly improved when using multiple-word queries. Bugs causing occasional server errors fixed.

Answers

A list of answers provided by codefetch to questions asked in user forums

See a question answered by Codefetch? Please add a comment!

PHPbuilder
I did a codefetch search for image thumbnail and found this example of uploading images and creating thumbnails from the book Beginning PHP5, Apache, and MySQL Web Development. The text is hot-linked to PHP documentation so you can click on PHP commands in the code to see the syntax. See for example how they use imagejpeg.

PHPbuilder
A codefetch search for connect form database select found this short but complete example to display a form and retrieve database results based on it from the book Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL: From Novice to Professional.

PHPbuilder
You are getting the string null because you have quotes around '$common', '$rares', and '$epics'. Change your if then clauses to include quotes only if you are inserting a non-null text value. A quick codefetch search for sql insert null shows that NULL (without quotes) is a valid SQL insert value, at least for mySQL.

Macromedia ColdFusion Forums
A Codefetch query for cfchart source code examples found this example of using cfloop to pre-fill a query to display custom data with cfchart from the book Reality ColdFusion: Intranets and Content Management


JavaRanch
This java.codefetch.com query for "jtree file" found this code example of how to display a file system in a JTree view from the book Java Cookbook

JavaRanch
codefetch search for game scale image buffer found this example 2D image scaling for games from the book Killer Game Programming in Java

JavaRanch
The codefetch query sql list indexes brings up this example code for printing a list of indexes of a table in a database from the book Java Enterprise in a Nutshell

JavaWorld
Since no one else has replied I'll give it a shot. This codefetch search for login screen yielded this login screen source code example from the book Java Cookbook, 2nd Edition

JavaWorld
A little codefetch search for DocumentBuilderFactory found this DocumentBuilderFactory source code example from the book Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition

JavaWorld
A quick Codefetch search for "files directory" found this source code example listing files in a directory from the book Learning Java

JavaWorld
You could also use javascript on the client. This simple codefetch query for "list up down" found this list box shift up/down code example from the book Professional JavaScript for Web Developers

JavaWorld
This codefetch query for "xml dom" found this simple dom xml parsing example from the book Learning Java

JavaWorld
This codefetch search for "parse xml" brought up this 16 line xml parsing example from the book JSTL in Action

How to get a list of the files in a jar or zip file

Unzip, list and expand files in a zip file

New Feature: Popular

Inspired by Google Zeitgeist, we've added the Popular page where you can see for what people are searching and in what languages.

Testimonials

Matthew Haughey on a.wholelottanothing.org
codefetch{ awesome new service that searches all code samples from books on programming languages.

Mads
Immediately bookmark this website: codefetch-{. So freaking cool: it searches code samples from programming books! And shows you the results! And this makes me immensely immensely happy

Pete Freitag
CodeFetch is a clever little app...

^Lestat at Beginnercode.com
I rencently found a neat site that searches for code snippets published in books. codefetch { lists 19 different programming languages to choose from. The first querry I ran for a php script was fast, and returned many results... I think it’s great!

Paul Johnson
codefetch{ is a brilliant source of Code in any programming language (including coldfusion). It is a great resource for any coder needing to dabble in other programming languages.

Steve Stedman
Codefetch is still very new, but useful results are obtainable surprisingly fast

Bill Covert
This is a very nifty tool. Thanks...

Matt
Here's a very cool site for you to check out. php.codefetch.com...Go give it a try!

Nat of O'Reilly Radar (posting no longer extant)
codefetch · Clever! They index code snippets from books whose code tarballs
are available on the net..

Jake Sutton
codefetch{ very cool

Raymond Brigleb
There is a very clever service now available for programmers called Codefetch...No ads or anything, just great search results for programmers.

Oskar Austegard
Bad logo, good code search site: codefetch{

Dalibor Dvorski
This has to be the coolest thing I’ve seen since Google first came on the web – of course for programmers. Codefetch allows you to search for code snippets...

Scott Walters author of Perl 6 Now
http://perl.codefetch.com searches examples from piles of Perl books, including Perl 6 Now! Try for example http://perl.codefetch.com/search?qy=delegate&lang=perl...I'm still grooving on how neat this is.

Buffalosoft
a great online utility.... Keep up the good work.

forceboy
www.codefetch.com - coolest sample code repository ever.

de:bug blog (babelfished from German)
Will unite from you perhaps esoterisch to occur, but I finds greatly, above all if one introduces oneself, how much one could still expand... Thus applause for Codefetch{.

freeonline.it (from Italian)
Codefetch.com is a search engine dedicated to the world of the programming. Its specialty is indexing the specific elements of sources analyzing them as actual code and not like simple text keywords. Codefetch.com...is a useful instrument for finding resources and useful material for programmatori.