Last Site Update: December 20th, 2024 | Latest Version: 12.2.0

One of the main advantages of using an IDE is being able to navigate through your code in a really fast way, so, let's see how to find what you want when coding in PyDev...

1. Open file in your workspace

The simplest way is searching for any resource for any project you have available (this is actually provided by Eclipse itself). So, if you know the file name (or at least part of it), use Ctrl+Shift+R and filter using the Open Resource dialog:

2. Go To Python Token (package, module, class, method or attribute in project or interpreter)

Another way of getting to what you want is using the PyDev Globals Browser (using Ctrl+Shift+T).

This is actually what I use most as a single place can be used to filter for package names, classes, methods and attributes inside your own projects or any other package in Python itself. Also, it allows for advanced filtering, so, you can search for tokens only inside a package (i.e.: dj.tz filters for any 'tz' token inside django in the example below).

3. Quick Outline (current editor)

Ctrl+O will show a Quick Outline which shows the structure of your current file. Pressing Ctrl+O one more time in this dialog will also show the structure of superclasses in the hierarchy (you can see that in the example below __setitem__ appears twice, once for the method in this class and another one for the superclass).

4. Selection History

Go back and forward in your selection: Alt+Left goes to the place you were before and Alt+Right to the place you just went from... this allows you to easily go navigate through your recent places.

5. Open files

To filter through the open files you can use Ctrl+E: a dropdown will appear and from there you can filter through its name and you can close existing editors using Del from that dropdown too.

6. Go to previous next token (class or method)

Ctrl+Shift+Up and Ctrl+Shift+Down allows you to quickly navigate from your current position to the previous or next method (selecting the full method/class name).

7. Navigate through occurrences and errors in the file

Ctrl+. (i.e.: Ctrl + Dot) allows navigating through occurrences and errors found in the file, so, in the case below we'll navigate through the occurrences of 'func'.

Note: An alternative way of doing the same thing is using Ctrl+2, R (which can be used to do a rename of the tokens) and cycle using Tab.

8. Go to some view/menu/action/preference

This is an Eclipse standard mechanism: using Ctrl+3 allows you to navigate to any part of the IDE.

9. References

Ctrl+Shift+G will make a search showing all the references to the token under the cursor (and the search view where results are shown can be navigated with Ctrl+Dot).

10. Go to definition

Just press F3 or Ctrl+Click some available token and go directly to the selected place.

11. Hierarchy View

Using F4 shows a hierarchy view where you can see the structure of your classes.

12. Show In

Alt+Shift+W allows you to see the current file in a given place (such as the PyDev Package Explorer or the System Explorer from your OS) or your current class/method in the Outline View.

Others

The ones below are available in standard Eclipse and you should also definitely know about it :)

Ctrl+L allows you to navigate to a given line in your current editor.
Ctrl+Q goes to the place where the last edition was made.
Ctrl+F6 navigates through the opened editors. In LiClipse Ctrl+Tab is also bound to it by default-- and I suggest you also add this binding if you aren't using LiClipse :)
Ctrl+F7 navigates through opened views (i.e.: Package Explorer, Outline, etc.)
Ctrl+F8 navigates through opened perspectives (i.e.: PyDev perspective, Debug perspective, etc).
Ctrl+F10 opens the menu for the current view (so you can select filters in the Package Explorer, etc.)
F12 focuses the editor (so, you can go from any view to the editor)
Ctrl+H Opens the search dialog so you can do text searches
Ctrl+Shift+L twice goes to the keybindings preferences

Now you can enjoy going really fast to any place you wish inside PyDev!

Previous (Configuring Eclipse)

Root

Next (Useful tips)

PyDev development

PyDev is open source and depends on your contributions! This may be in the form of bug fixes, answers on stackoverflow, new features...

Another option is financially supporting it at: Patreon (which provides a way to support it monthly and get rewards starting with $1).

Or through 1-time contributions at:

Paypal

Search PyDev-related content