How to get help

Whether you prefer to work through video tutorials, follow written guides, or discover APIs through live auto-completion, help is never far away in Anvil. All the available resources are listed below, along with examples of their use.

Documentation

The Anvil Documentation tells you all about how Anvil works. It is a comprehensive guide covering everything you can do with Anvil, along with screenshots and code snippets to help you.

This is reference documentation, so you probably don’t want to read everything at once. Instead, we suggest working through the Quickstarts - each quickstart is a minimum set of steps to get you working with a feature of Anvil as quickly as possible.

You can use the search bar at the top of any page (including this one), or from the learning centre. This searches all help content on the Anvil website, including this documentation, the tutorials, the example apps, and many forum posts.

In the Anvil Editor

You can find help in the Anvil Editor in a number of places, depending on context:

Autocompleter

Anvil has built-in code completion that works in both Server Code and client-side code, which you access from Code View of the Form Editor

The autocompleter will work as soon as you start writing code in the Anvil Editor:

As well as providing you with options in a dropdown, the dialog box gives you information on each option and its parameters, if any.

Having proper code completion gives you discoverability. It lets you explore the APIs, without having to look up the documentation.

The Help Tab

At the top of the Anvil Editor, you’ll find a help symbol . Clicking on it will bring up the Help Tab, which has a variety of resources to help you get started with Anvil and find answers to your questions.

Help Links

Wherever you see the help symbol in the Anvil Editor, you can click it to take you to the relevant section of the Anvil documentation.

Wherever you see the help symbol in the Anvil Editor, you can click on it for more help:

Component Toolbox

For help on a specific component, click on the component in the Toolbox and the click the link that appears at the bottom of the Toolbox:

-->

This will open a dialog that tells you more about the component as well as providing code snippets which explain how to create, modify and interact with that component from code.

Code Snippets

You can also find help in the ‘Code snippets’ panel, visible in Code view of the Form Editor. Here you will find a list of all components in your Form. Expand a component in Code Snippets to see a list of all of its properties.

Tutorials

Anvil’s learning centre contains a number of tutorials which show you how to build a web app from scratch with Anvil.

The first three tutorials cover the ‘Anvil Essentials’ and we recommend you start there if you’re new to Anvil.

If you have prior experience with Anvil, you might prefer to jump straight to the later tutorials or view our example apps.

Forum

All users are encouraged to join our Anvil Community Forum.

The forum is an excellent place to ask questions. We have a great community of users who are quick to respond to questions and share examples to help one another out, and the Anvil team also regularly check and reply to forum posts.

How-to Guides

Anvil’s how-to guides show you how to accomplish specific tasks in Anvil. These tasks are small use-cases that appear often in Anvil apps.

These how-to guides cover multiple topics. If you’re looking for guides relevant to one topic or component in Anvil, please refer to the relevant section of the Anvil Docs.

API Reference

The API Reference lists the modules, classes, functions, methods and properties that make up the Anvil API.

For example, if you want to know all the properties of a Button component, or the functions associated with Anvil’s built-in Google Authentication you’ll find these listed in the API Reference.

If you’re looking for information on how Anvil works, head to the Anvil Docs

Support Plans

We also offer live online support to keep you moving. Ask your questions right away, rather than waiting for a response to a forum post.

For more information on our support plans, see Support Plans.

Python

Anvil apps are written in the Python programming language. We’ll assume that you’re familiar with Python, but you should be able to follow along even if you’re coming from a different programming language. If you’re new to Python, there are many good Python resources out there on the internet. Here are a few we’d recommend:

• Codecademy’s online interactive courses.
• learnpython.org has a good step-by-step tutorial with an interactive prompt.
• The Python Library reference is very well-written and great if you want to know how to do something specific.
• The python.org wiki has a long list of tutorials for programmers and for non-programmers.
• Or just install Python, type python in a terminal window, and start trying commands! Try typing help() at the Python prompt to get some interactive help.

Do you still have questions?

Our Community Forum is full of helpful information and Anvil experts.