# Searching for the source of a method

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/searching-for-the-source-of-a-method/90899>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [April 2, 2007, 8:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/searching-for-the-source-of-a-method/90899 "2007-04-02T20:49:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![nielsene](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/bc79bd/32.png) [@nielsene](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nielsene)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2007, 8:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/searching-for-the-source-of-a-method/90899/1 "2007-04-02T20:49:10Z")

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In order to get a better idea of how the in\_place\_editor\_field helper  
works I searched the api docs and viewed the source of the method from  
the api docs. I noticed that it calls in\_place\_editor which  
instantiates ::ActionView::Helpers::InstanceTag. InstanceTag  
unfortunately wasn’t documented in the apis anywhere so I had to go to  
my ruby gems directory and search the text of all my ruby files to  
find it. Is this typically how you would go about locating something  
that isn’t documented? I miss just hitting F3 in eclipse for my Java  
code.

So after I located the class in form\_helper.rb I wanted to figure out  
what the value method does but I’m not sure how to go about locating  
the source for the value method of self.class.value(object,  
@method\_name). Any ideas?

Eric