Eclipse Orion PHP plugin - php

So for a project I need to check if I'm able to get code completion working for Eclipse Orion (on the IBM DevOps Services WebIDE) when coding in PHP. There's a default plugin available but it only provides syntax highlighting. Code completion is the deciding factor this time.
Just googling around I've found some plugins here and there in various git repos but they seem to be for an outdated version of Orion, hence not usable here.
So, just a quick throw out if someone is using IBM DevOps Services WebIDE (or some Eclipse Orion implementation) with a PHP plugin with code-completion? Preferably a link to installation steps since I need to educate a programming class on how to set everything up from a clean slate.

Orion's Go language plug-in provides a straight-forward example of contributing content assist via a plugin, see http://git.eclipse.org/c/orion/org.eclipse.orion.client.git/tree/bundles/org.eclipse.orion.client.ui/web/plugins/languages/go?id=R7_0 . To make something similar for PHP you would create a plug-in with the same shape that defines at least the "orion.edit.contentAssist" service, and then install it in your Orion/WebIDE on its Settings-Plugins page (point it at your plugin's .html file).

Related

Blog platform that has built in syntax highlighting

I want to start writing some blog and I know that i will past code there so i am looking for some platform with this already built in . And that i will not need to use third party script for syntax highlighting.
As I understood Blogger and Word press dont have that built in and they use syntax highlighter .
The problem is that i am really not understand in web programming and I am not sure to install all those scripts .
Thanks .
WordPress is designed so that all you ever have to do is write - i.e. you don't have to be a web developer to use the platform while you're blogging. You add functionality through plug-ins, which are optional modules you download, install, activate, and configure within the WordPress GUI. No coding skills required.
Getting WordPress
You can get a free WordPress blog at WordPress.com. You might also be able to set one up on your own domain through your web host with a one-click-installation tool (this depends on your host). Finally, you can usually find a developer who will install WordPress on your hosted server for free (Here's an example of an Arizona developer who offers free WordPress installation.)
To install a syntax highlighter, you'll need to be running WordPress on your own server. The free WordPress.com setup doesn't allow you to install additional plug-ins. But setting up WordPress on your own server is fast, relatively easy, and as I mentioned before, very well supported by the community.
Installing a Plug-in
You can search for plug-ins and install them directly within the WordPress dashboard. Just go to your dashboard, click Plugins then click on the big Add New button at the top of the page. From this screen, you can browse available plug-ins by tag or search for a specific feature.
Once you've found a plug-in you like, click Install Now and follow the on-screen instructions to install and activate the new system on your site. Then you have new functionality set up, and you didn't have to touch any code!
Syntax Highlighting
I use a syntax highlighter on my own site for displaying PHP and JavaScript code. It's called Code Colorer, and it supports a wide variety of languages and structures - you can even use a custom theme to color/style your code snippets if you want. Here's an example on my site using PHP. Here's an example using JavaScript.
Other Resources
Here are some other places you can look for more information regarding getting a WordPress blog set up on your own system:
WordPress Web Hosting
WordPress Hosting with GoDaddy
How to Setup a Self-hosted WordPress Blog For Free
Jumping Duck Media Web Hosting (Full Disclosure: This is my company!)

Need assistance finding the perfect PHP IDE for Ubuntu

I'm trying to build an application in PHP using my Ubuntu laptop. I'm having a hard time, however, finding an IDE that fits my needs. My ideal IDE would have the following features:
Code folding
Easy code snippet creation that is assignable to a shortcut key
Code organization
Unit Testing
Debugger
Netbeans fits most of these requirements except that the ability to create snippets is complex. One must create a module file and then screw around with some XML and do the hokey poky to get a super simple snippet installed. I tried creating a macro in NetBeans, but it screws up the javadoc and I have not figured out a way to tell it to just paste in what I type for the duration of the macro rather than using all of the human assistance features. So what I get is a bunch of jacked up looking code with jacked up phpdoc.
gPHPEdit is more of what I'm looking for as far as snippet support, but it sorely lacks all of the other features that NetBeans does so well.
Any ideas on a great PHP IDE. Since this is a personal project, purchasing an IDE is not an option.
In NetBeans, you can make code templates. These are abbreviations with variable support, what you can complete with a selected key (tab, ctrl+enter etc).
You can find it under Tools -> Options -> Editor -> Code Templates.
I use Aptana which is build on top of eclipse or can be used as an eclipse plugin. It comes with some basic snippets and creating new snippets isn't that hard with eclipse.
I would recommend to start with the 3.0 beta as it has some new features that are quite useful. Apatana has almost everything you need and as it uses eclipse, you will get almost everything that is missing (like SVN or GIT support).

Eclipse Auto-Complete for Included PHP Source

I've installed Eclipse 3.5.1 (PDE), which I believe I got from Zend's download site (it was a while ago on my travel laptop). I can't get auto-complete to work for any of my included libraries. I've tried both adding the libraries to the 'include path' and just linking the files to a subdirectory of the project. Neither gets me auto-complete of the library classes.
My normal development system has an older version of Eclipse which I don't update, because it currently works well, and I fear an update will change that. I find configuring eclipse more work that actual coding, and more voodoo that mod_rewrite. I doubt I'm alone.
Any secret to getting auto-complete working?
No you're definitely not alone! I have experienced this problem in many installations of Eclipse (after updates and such etc etc). Try running Build Project. I know that solution has worked in some instances for me. My last installation I was running Eclipse Galileo and once I finally got the intellisense to at least work it was extremely slow. I tried lowering the time delay for the intellisense which helped in php files (still had a 1.5 second delay at least) but made it way over-sensative in my view scripts for example.
I finally bit the bullet and switched to Zend Studio 8. (At least they've knocked the price down $100 haha).
Eclipse has a quirky auto-complete but the Zend one is excellent! :)
You can add a PHP library to the project in Project properties/PHP Include Path/Libraries. After that, autocomplete will index all php files in that directory.
Maybe it's not the best solution for you, because it doesn't care about whether the file is included or not in the given script. If I include /usr/share/pear, and now I see all PEAR libs' functions everywhere.

Flex + PHP: Flash Builder 4 vs. Eclipse

I'm getting started with Flex and initially installed the Adobe environment (Flex Builder 3) and later found out that they're starting to call it Flash Builder 4.
Anyway since I'm very new to this technology and I have to leave Flex Builder 3 anyway, I'm trying to find out if there are any advantages to developing with Adobe's Flash Builder 4 (adobe's commercial IDE) vs. Eclipse (which Adobe seems to also heavily support, they make and support a special plugin for it).
My main language is PHP so my end goal is to integrate Flex with PHP. It sounds like Adobe did a decent job with integration in the Flash Builder 4 release (you can choose a language and choose data services options, etc. which should make that integration smoother), but is that integration only available through their commercial Flash Builder 4 or is it also available through the plugin they release for Eclipse? I'm trying to get some advice from those who used the technology so I can make up my mind whether there's a lot of advantage using Adobe's commercial IDE vs. the very robust open source Eclipse IDE. Other aspects I may not have considered are also welcome.
Note: I use php without a framework, and I keep also hearing Zend from Adobe themselves, which is kind of confusing too. I guess they're using part of the zend for remoting. Does anyone know how zend will affect my flex development environment?
Flex Builder and Flash Builder both function as Plug-ins to Eclipse, though each also comes in a "stand-alone" flavor - which is still eclipse, but with a lot of the Eclipse functionality torn out for a smaller footprint.
What you want to do is pretty simple - get eclipse set up, install PDT or whatever your favorite PHP plug-in is and then install Flash/Flex Builder into that same instance of Eclipse. Make sure when you download FB you choose to download the "Plug-in" version instead of the stand-alone version. When you go to install it, it'll ask you where you want to install it - pick a location, and hit next. It will then ask you if you want to plug-in to an existing instance of Eclipse or use the bundled Eclipse (at least Flash Builder comes with a Bundled eclipse). Opt to select an eclipse version and point it toward the Eclipse install that has your PHP coder plugged into it.
If all goes well, once it' done you can open Eclipse and then switch views between Flash Builder and PDT all within one instance of Eclipse. I do this with Aptana, it's very handy to be able to do your HTML, PHP and AS3 all in one editor.
Good luck!
Also [edit]:
Adobe promotes Zend because of a Zend plug-in called ZendAMF. ZendAMF is the spiritual successor to AMFPHP - basically, with a little bit of setup you can create a dev environment where you are able to call PHP functions right from your AS3 code. You can set up a ZendAMF Class, for instance, called getUsers() which then queries your DB and pulls out a list of Users. You can use that to populate PHP ValueObjects, and then it will pass those VO's back to Flex in binary (much, much faster than XML) and if you have it set up correctly they will be data-typed as AS3 Value Objects of the same type.
This is very useful because it's all very transparent - you can then write an AS3 function called getUsers() which returns an Array of value objects, set it up to quietly call your PHP which calls the database, and have it return a value as though it were just all AS3 from start to finish. A bit tricky to set up, but once you're rolling there's really no going back! :)
I'm pretty sure they're actually the same thing - this was certainly the case with Flex Builder 3, and I'm assuming is the case with Flash Builder 4 as well.
The plugin is there for if you have an existing installation of eclipse and want to just add in Flash Builder to that. But if you don't already have it, the Flash Builder stand-alone installation includes eclipse, pre-built with the plugin.
As for Zend - Adobe is currently collaborating over aspects of the Zend Framework to improve integration with your Flex Apps. Zend have there own eclipse plugin called Zend Studio for building Zend Framework apps, which does integrate with the Flash Builder plugin. I've not used it myself, but from what I hear it's not that brilliant. You can still use Flex without any Zend stuff if that's the way you work.
Hope this helps.
You should also check IntelliJ which has support for Flex and PHP. Apparently it's way better than FlexBuilder/Eclipse. We're using Eclipse with the FlexBuilder plugin but are looking to switch over.
You can download and use the Flash Builder Standard program for free if you're a student or unemployed, so I would grab that. The premium version does have some nice to haves like Network Monitoring and better code generation tools.
The standard package will install the Zend PHP engine for remote calls if you use PHP, which is a framework that allows you to write your services in PHP, then make calls in Flash through the Zend engine to PHP. It's pretty useful, and they will easily pull properly formatted PHP services into the data view (a window showing your available service calls).
You can also use other frameworks like AMFPHP.
Overall, the only real differences between the Adobe Flash Builder and Eclipse plugin is if you upgrade to the Premium version or you prefer a concentrated lightweight version of eclipse tailored specifically to Flash (the Builder).

PHP development environment best practices

There are so many options when it comes to PHP development environments and you have to piece it all together yourself.
I'm wondering if someone has come up with what they think is the ideal setup that gets out of your way and lets you develop.
Right now I use vim and svn from the command-line. I write scripts to manage builds but I'm thinking about looking into Phing.
I love vim but I'm seriously thinking of trying Eclipse with the PHP plugin because I imagine it makes common SVN options a bit easier (moving files around in a project).
Something to support continuous integration on the database would be a major plus!
UPDATE: Just wanted to stress that previous line up there. I realize some frameworks will help with this, but I don't use a framework. Is there some simple module out there (included in the IDE or not) that will let me easily tie my database schemas/data to a subversion revision, letting me rollback and forward, tag, branch, etc?
Any comments on things beyond the editor? For example: Builds, managing staging/production/development environments, automated testing and building upon SVN commit, etc. Ideally we can make this post a "Go to Whoah" for setting up a professional PHP team development environment.
I recommend to use a complete featured IDE like the PDT (the eclipse PHP project), it gives you:
debugging (using Xdebug or ZendDebugger)
SVN/CVS very convinient integration
DB integration (the DTP plugin)
and much more, based on features of the PDT and eclipse plugins
if you have some money to spent, I think the Zend Studio For eclipse worth it.
It gives you better debugging, PHPUnit integration, ZendFramewrok support, Refactoring and remote system support (ftp, ssh etc.)
I'm giving Netbeans 6.5 PHP bundle a try and liking it very much. I find debugging in it is less clunky than in Eclipse PDT.
I too love vim and used to develop using the same environment as you. These days though I find Eclipse PDT, with Subclipse for SVN integration, to be invaluable. XDebug is great too - no more var_dump();exit; for debugging.
One of the best plugins for a vim fan moving to Eclipse: viPlugin. Well worth the token licence fee to have vi key bindings in Eclipse.
If you are working from the command line, using Git's SVN module eases most of the SVN pain - it handles deletes and moves automagically.
The GUI front ends (kgit or qgit) provide a very intuitive history browser.
I personally like the way that AptanaStudio has pre-packaged all the great Eclipse modules you need to have a very smooth PHP development environment

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