Soup of the Day

The Eclipse Development framework

As PDnH Server is now officially a project, it seemed appropriate to discuss how one would get involved. Currently PDnH Server has a sole developer, the author of this post. However, I sincerely hope this grows over the coming months and years, blossoming into a fully active community of developers and users.

But before my imagination runs away with me, I had better get down to the serious business of explaining how PDnH Server is developed. Please note this is a guide to how we internally develop applications at Polaris Digital, you may have an approach to development that is completely different and if it works for you then great. But because we use a particular set of tools, if you need help it would help us if you were in the same environment.

We use an open source IDE called Eclipse for development of our web and desktop applications. There are a number of reasons why we choose Eclipse, mainly the fact it is free, it is open source (which Polaris Digital supports immensely), it is updated regularly, it has endless plug-ins and it is totally customisable. A brief history of Eclipse can be read on the Eclipse web site.

So the first thing to do is download Eclipse to your system. Because of the nature of development for PDnH Server, we recommend using the Web Tools Project distribution (also referred to as Distro). These distributions are available from multiple vendors, including Eclipse, IBM, BEA, Yoxos, EasyEclipse and many more.

When you download Eclipse, it isn’t ready for web development, in particular we want support for PHP, Javascript and MySQL database design. Luckily, the community has provided the tools and all we need to do is add them, not forgetting to restart Eclipse afterwards. You can download these plug-ins manually and then copy them to the Eclipse plugin folder, but that is so last century. Rather than doing a lot of confusing unarchiving, copying and pasting, lets let Eclipse do the work for us.

1. Open Eclipse and wait for the standard workspace to finish loading
2. Go to Help > Software Updates > Find and Install…
3. When the dialogue box appears, select Search for new features to install and hit Next >
4. A list of Update sites to visit will appear. Now you need to add in each plug-in site one by one by selecting the New Remote Site… button on the right hand site, then fill out the following details;
   1. PHP Eclipse (PHP support)
      Name : PHP Eclipse
      URL : http://phpeclipse.sourceforge.net/update/cvs
   2. Interakt Online (Javascript support), Interakt are now part of Adobe
      Name : Interakt Online
      URL : http://www.interaktonline.com/
   3. Azzuri Database Modeller (MySQL database design and SQL output)
      Name : Azzuri Database Modeller
      URL : http://www.azzurri.jp/eclipse/plugins
   4. Subclipse (Subversion support for Eclipse)
      Name : Subclipse
      URL : http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.0.x
5. Once those external sites are all added and selected, you can finally select Automatically select mirrors if you wish, then press Finish.
6. After a few moments a new window will appear titled Updates. This lists all the updates Eclipse found from your previous list. Select all the updates for Subversion, PHP Eclipse, Interakt and Azzuri, then select Next > .
7. Accept all the licence agreements (if you accept them, if not stop using Eclipse) and select Next > .
8. Finally an Install window will display, confirming the plug-ins Eclipse is about to download and install. If you are happy with the list, select Finish.

Eclipse will go off and start downloading the plug-ins, you can run this process in the background if you want to get on with other tasks within Eclipse. Once the plug-ins have finished downloading, one final window will appear highlighting the features you are installing. Select Install All to save yourself from having to step through each one, unless you want to of course.
Finally Eclipse will offer to restart itself, which you should allow it to do as the plug-ins will not work without a restart.

Once Eclipse starts up again, start a new PHP project by right clicking in the Package Explorer and selecting New > Project…, look down the list and you’ll see PHP as an item. You are now ready to start developing dynamic web applications, or hopefully PDnH Server.

To get the source for PDnH Server, go to Google Code for instructions on how to use Subversion within Eclipse to get the latest revisions. If you have any trouble with Eclipse, please post your problems in the PDnH Server forum, where I’ll try and help you.