Cursor Prompting: Iteration

The Iterative Process in Cursor

1. Initial Prompt: Ask Cursor for what you need using Chat (Cmd+L) or Inline Edit (Cmd+K), providing good context (selection, @ symbols).
2. Analyze Response: Carefully review the generated code or explanation. Is it correct? Complete? Does it meet constraints? Does it match the desired style?
3. Identify Gaps/Errors: Determine what's wrong or missing.
4. Refine Prompt (Follow-up):
   • Using Chat (Cmd+L): Ask a follow-up question in the same chat thread. Refer implicitly ("that code", "the previous function") or explicitly using context. Example: "That's helpful, but can you modify the function to also handle negative numbers?"
   • Using Inline Edit (Cmd+K): Select the code Cursor just generated (or a part of it) and press Cmd+K again with a prompt to modify it. Example: "Make this function asynchronous."
5. Repeat: Continue analyzing and refining until the result meets your requirements.

Example Iteration Flow (Cursor Chat)

Write a Python function to get data from `https://api.example.com/data`

import requests

def get_data():
    response = requests.get('https://api.example.com/data')
    response.raise_for_status() # Raise an exception for bad status codes
    return response.json()

Thanks. Please rewrite that function using only the standard `urllib.request` library and add a try-except block to handle potential JSONDecodeError, returning None in case of an error.

import urllib.request
import json

def get_data():
    try:
        with urllib.request.urlopen('https://api.example.com/data') as response:
            if response.status == 200:
                data = response.read()
                try:
                    return json.loads(data)
                except json.JSONDecodeError:
                    print("Error decoding JSON")
                    return None
            else:
                print(f"HTTP Error: {response.status}")
                return None
    except urllib.error.URLError as e:
        print(f"URL Error: {e.reason}")
        return None
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"An error occurred: {e}")
        return None