PHPEclipse: A User Guide: Take advantage of the leading open source integrated development environment to develop, organize, and debug your PHP web development projects.

226 Pages·2006·5.7 MB·English

by  Shu-Wai Chow

PHPEclipse: A User Guide

Shu-Wai Chow

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
http://avaxhome.ws/blogs/ChrisRedfield
PHPEclipse: A User Guide

Copyright © 2006 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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First published: January 2006

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 1-904811-44-2
www.packtpub.com
Cover Design by www.visionwt.com
Credits
Author Development Editor
Shu-Wai Chow Douglas Paterson

Reviewer Indexer
Thomas M. Ose Ashutosh Pande

Technical Editor Proofreader
Nikhil Bangera Chris Smith

Editorial Manager Production Coordinator
Dipali Chittar Manjiri Nadkarni

Cover Designer
Helen Wood
About the Author
Shu-Wai Chow has worked in the field of computer programming and information technology
for the past eight years. He started his career in Sacramento, California, spending four years as the
webmaster for Educaid, a First Union company and another four years at Vision Service Plan as
an application developer. Through the years, he has become proficient in Java, JSP, PHP,
ColdFusion, ASP, LDAP, XSLT, and XSL-FO. Shu has also been the volunteer webmaster and a
feline adoption counselor for several animal welfare organizations in Sacramento.
He is currently a software engineer at Antenna Software in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Born in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, Shu did most of his alleged growing up in
Palo Alto, California. He studied Anthropology and Economics at California State University,
Sacramento. He lives along the New Jersey coast with seven very demanding cats, three birds that
are too smart for their own good, a cherished Fender Stratocaster, and a beloved, saint-like girlfriend.
Acknowledgements
To Nora Lynn... Your support, love, and wisdom through the years have been invaluable.

First and foremost, I would like to thank the people at Packt Publishing for this opportunity and
their confidence. I would especially like to thank my Development Editor, Douglas Paterson, for
his support, good humor, and, above all, patience. Also at Packt, I would like to thank Nikhil
Bangera for his diligence. Thanks to Thomas Ose, the Reviewer, for his insight.
My gratitude goes to the developers of Eclipse, PHPEclipse, and their respective user
communities. Special thanks to Michael Huetteman for all his assistance, and Charles Perkonig
and Robert Kraske for their work on the PHPEclipse debugger clients. You have created products
that make a lot of people’s lives easier. Thanks, also, to John Starkey, of PHPBuilder.com, who
gave me a forum to write my first two articles.
Thanks to Patricia Quinn, Stuart Montgomery, and Kari McKinney who did their best to keep me
on track through their encouraging words and shameful berating.
Career-wise, I would like to thank Gary Sandler, who gave me my first 'big break' in programming
and information technology. A mentor and teacher in every sense of the words, I would not be
doing what I’m doing today if it wasn’t for him.
I hereby give a stern, solemn nod to Sascha Goldstein and Curtis Portwood.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention all our various animal companions in such an enduring
setting, so here goes: (in order of feline hierarchy) Snowball, Lizzie Borden, Saffy, Pim Pim, Tera-
San, Mathilda, Manfred, (in order of avian hierarchy) Avi, Hoser, and Dolly. And the ones that are
gone but not forgotten: Malachi, Macaroni, Natasha, Squishy, and Marsha.
And last but not least, thanks to Anneliese Strunk. You’ll have to wait for the next book to get a
dedication, but until then, you have my heart.
About the Reviewer
Thomas M. Ose has been actively involved in computer and information technologies for the
past 28 years. He has seen computer and software trends and technology mature over various
industries including the manufacturing, office automation, and communication sectors. Over the
years Thomas has been a programmer, consultant, and manager for various industries; and he has
become proficient in many languages and disciplines, including C, C++, C#, PHP, Java, XML,
and UML. He prides himself on always learning something new and developing applications and
solutions at the cutting edge of technology and the industry.
Thomas is currently President of his own consulting company, Ose Micro Solutions, Inc.
specializing in electronic B2B, G2B system for the Uniform Commercial Code and Business
Registration systems at state and local governments. For his solutions, he utilizes PHP, Java, and
C# to provide web service- and browser-based solutions using XML to file regulatory documents
at state and local governments. He has developed many national standards in this area and has
spoken at numerous trade conventions.

Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Overview of Eclipse and PHPEclipse 5
Integrated Development Environments 5
Advantages of Using an IDE 6
Disadvantages of Using an IDE 6
IDEs in Development Projects 7
Eclipse 7
A History of Eclipse 7
IBM and OTI 8
The Eclipse Foundation 8
The Eclipse Architecture 10
Plug-Ins 10
The Workbench Plug-In 12
Standard Widget Toolkit 12
Why Use Eclipse? 13
Eclipse is Extensible 13
Eclipse is Free 14
Eclipse Frees You from Vendor Lock-In 15
Cross-Platform 15
Professional Features 15
PHPEclipse 16
Summary 16
Chapter 2: Installation 17
Installing Apache/PHP 17
Windows 17
Mac OS X 19
Linux 21
Testing Apache 22
Testing PHP 23
Installing Java 25
Windows 25
Table of Contents
Mac OS X 25
Linux 26
Testing Java 26
Eclipse 26
Downloading Eclipse 26
Installing Eclipse 28
Installing PHPEclipse 29
Putting It All Together 33
Summary 33
Chapter 3: The Eclipse Interface 35
Starting Eclipse 35
The Eclipse Welcome Screen 37
Perspectives 38
Changing Perspectives 39
Quantum DB Perspective 41
Editors 41
PHPEclipse Views 42
Navigator View 43
Working Sets 44
Console View 46
Problems View 48
Outline View 50
Bookmarks View 51
PHP Browser View 53
Personalizing Your Perspectives 56
Customize Perspectives 56
Perspective Layouts 57
Save Perspective As… 58
Reset Perspective 58
Close Perspective 58
Close All Perspectives 58
Summary 58
Chapter 4: Writing PHP Code with Eclipse 59
Creating a Project 59
Adding Directories 61
Creating PHP Files 63
Code Templates 64
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