Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Setup Eclipse PDT a PHP IDE with Zend Debugger easily!

So, Dreamweaver was a good editor, but if you have a big PHP project, you will need some more firepower. I decided to install Eclipse PDT a PHP IDE with the Zend Debugger. I used WAMP as my webserver and firefox as my external browser.

I haven't used it yet but I have a feeling it will help speed up development :)

Here are the steps:

Step 1] Download and install Eclipse PDT 1.0.3 (Release) (example: C:\Program Files\PDT\)
http://download.eclipse.org/tools/pdt/downloads/release.php?release=R20080603

Step 2] Download and install WAMP or any server with PHP.
http://www.wampserver.com/en/download.php

Step 3] Download and install Zend Debugger (put the ZendDebugger.dll in your C:\wamp\php\ folder)
http://downloads.zend.com/pdt/server-debugger/
Put the dummy.php in your PHP project's webroot.

Step 4] open up C:\wamp\php\php.ini
change: implicit_flush = Off to implicit_flush = On
change: output_buffering=4096 to output_buffering = Off
at the bottom append:
[Zend]
zend_extension_ts = "C:\wamp\php\ZendDebugger.dll"
zend_debugger.allow_hosts=127.0.0.1/32, 192.168.0.0/255.255.0.0
zend_debugger.expose_remotely=always

Step 5] Install Subclipse by opening PDT goto Help->Find and Install Updates(optional)
Add remote server with URL: http://subclipse.tigris.org/


--------- Extra steps to start debugging with firefox (optional, sorry its a little rough, but these are just general steps) ------------
Step 1] Start PDT, goto Window->Preferences->General->Web Browser, select use external web browser, select firefox
Step 2] Make a new project, make a new file called index.php, right click on the file, goto run as, open run as dialog.
Step 3] Point WAMP to the new project (ex: http://helloworld)
Step 4] Go back to PDT, under PHP Web Page, create new. Under Name: write in Test index.php. Under Server Bugger use: Zend Debugger. On PHP server, make a new one pointing to http://helloworld Under file, manually type in index.php. URL should be left at auto generate.
Step 5] Goto the common tab, check Debug and Run under 'display in favorites menu'. Click apply settings.
Step 6] Edit index.php to do something like echo 'hello world';
Step 7] At the top toolbar if you click the debug arrow you should see test index.php in your favorites, click it. Firefox should popup while PDT is connected to the zend debugger.

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