One of the powerful features of an IDE like Eclipse is the ability for it to "read" your code and give you some assistance about your API as you type. This could include things like class property or methods names, constants, functions, argument lists, and so on. Eclipse/PDT and ZendStudio do this by parsing a PHP class directly, but they also look at your docblocks and some other special comments where the raw PHP is not enough. This article is a bag of tricks that help you get the most out of code assistance using Eclipse/PDT or Zend Studio in those awkward corners of your code that you might have through previously inaccessible.

Among his tips are things like adding "@var" declarations to help with code completion, type hinting on methods/functions, using the "@property" annotation and using a "this" trick to override what class the IDE sees as the local object. ,/p>]]> Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:55:32 -0600 http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/16487 http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/16487 Warren Tang has put together this new post to his blog showing how you can use the SimpleTest extension for Eclipse to execute your tests without leaving the IDE.

He breaks it down into a few simple steps (some including screeshots):

• Download the plugin
• Install and configure
• Create a basic test with an assertion
• Run the test via "Run As > SimpleTest"

He also includes the option for running the test as a web page, but that requires a little bit more code. There's also a quick look at how to run a suite of tests from the IDE (as well as in the browser). for more about using SimpleTest, head over to the project's site.

I was happy Eclipse fanboy for quite a long time, and I can say that I still am. I like to try out new things, but this IDE was doing perfect job and I stick to it for PHP development. But few months ago I have tried NetBeans 7.0, and boy, after few hours it felt like home. At the end of the day, with all respect to Eclipse, I decided to switch. I will try to compare this two, but before we start I must say that they are both very good at what they do, and no matter which one you choose it will do great job for sure.

He includes descriptions and screenshots for quite a bit of the features, comparing the interfaces as well as the bundled functionality for the following:

• configuration options
• code completion abilities
• general application navigation
• code formatting abilities
• version control support
• debugging integration
• testing support (unit tests, etc.)
• plugins
• and perfomance

PHPsrc is a plugin that allow you to run PHP_CodeSniffer, PHPUnit, PHP Depend and PHP Copy/Paste Detector directly in Eclipse. The site also says that more tools should come. As you work, you will see any transgression you make. That will save you from breaking the build, but it also makes it easier to fix the problem. After all, you just wrote the faulty lines of code.

He walks you through the install of the plugin and shows you how to set things up to point to the executables on your development environment (complete with some screenshots). There's even an example of the output for a particularly offensive (standards-wise, of course) piece of code.

Cinder is a plug-in for your eclipse-based IDE (eclipse, Zend Studio, etc.) to display results of your Continuous Integration environment right inside your IDE. [...] You open the XML file containing the errors and warnings of your build (for us that's typically the PHP_CodeBrowser XML generated by a Hudson build) and get an overview of reports. Now you can sort them, categorize them and work on them in any order. Cinder can grab these files periodically if you make them available via http or on a filesystem.

They've included two screenshots with the list of errors and the panel showing the specific problem directly in the code.

Following on the heels of announcements a couple of weeks ago, the Interoperability Team at Microsoft is announcing the availability of another update to the Windows Azure Tools for Eclipse. In this post, I'll use the updated Eclipse plug-i to walk you through creating and running a project in the Windows Azure Development Fabric, readying a project for deployment to Windows Azure, and deploying a project to Windows Azure.

He walks you through the basics of getting the extension for Eclipse installed and how to create a fresh development project to hook into your Azure instance. Then you select the PHP runtime you want to use, set some debugging and create the project. Then running the PHP instance is as easy as selecting the "Run Windows Azure PHP Project..." from the "Windows Azure" menu. He also includes some instructions about running a custom PHP version and project deployment - all with screenshots to help along the way.

OK, so lately I have been doing a lot of work in both FDT & Flash builder and building data centric applications with PHP and mySQL back ends, it has been vital that my work flow has been up to scratch to ensure that these project's deadlines have been met and also so that I don't go crazy doing loads of crap that I don't need to do! As I have been very pleased with the ways things have run I though it best to share my set up with a wider audience.

He shows you how to set up Ant support for Flash Builder and get the "PHPEclipse Stable Builds" package installed for your Eclipse instance. His example shows his process of having all of his files in one place, regardless of their type. A code snippet for the URLLoader is included as well as an Ant XML configuration to make the task work.

Eclipse Helios (3.6) includes an improved version of Eclipse PDT, labeled 2.2. It is also included in the current Zend Studio (7.1 and above). Among other enhancements, it dramatically improved the performance of code lookup-related tasks like searching references, creating a type hierarchy and even code completion.

Some of the recommendations have more to do with the system the IDE is running on, but they're helpful none the less:

• Disable virus scanners
• Use a fast storage device
• Keep your JVM up to date
• Delete the database if your experience problems
• Do not backup the database

Anything involving Eclipse is always epic. First, you have to get your head around what distribution of it to use, as confusing as one's first introduction to Linux distributions (there are different kinds of Linux?). Next, you have to grok the fact that the Zend Debugger must be installed on your server. In this case, MAMP. Then, you have to make Eclipse listen to the debugging information being outputted, on the debug port. Finally, you have to figure out how to use a debugger effectively (not in scope, but careful, debugging will blow your mind).

After following along with this screencast he was still getting errors when trying to debug (connection failed message). Eventually, though, he finally figured out the problem - an extra zend_extension call to load the XDebug module.

MakeGood provides a test runner to run unit tests on Eclipse PDT. MakeGood strongly supports Test Driven Development (TDD) by various features.

Features in the plugin include:

• Runs all tests when a file is saved.
• Debugs a test.
• Reruns the last test.
• Can use the system include path when running tests.

It supports both PHPUnit and SimpleTest so you're covered either way. It also supports the Zend Debugger and Xdebug for help with your debugging needs.