Book Image

Expert PHP 5 Tools

By : Dirk Merkel
Book Image

Expert PHP 5 Tools

By: Dirk Merkel

Overview of this book

Even if you find writing PHP code easy, writing code that is efficient and easy to maintain and reuse is not so straightforward. Self-taught PHP developers and programmers transitioning from other languages often lack the knowledge to work with PHP on an enterprise level. They need to take their PHP development skills to that level by learning the skills and tools necessary to write maintainable and efficient code.This book will enable you to take your PHP development skills to an enterprise level by teaching you the skills and tools necessary to write maintainable and efficient code. You will learn how to perform activities such as unit testing, enforcing coding standards, automating deployment, and interactive debugging using tools created for PHP developers – all the information in one place. Your code will be more maintainable, efficient, and self-documented.From the design phase to actually deploying the application, you will learn concepts and apply them using the best-of-breed tools available in PHP.Experienced developers looking for expertise in PHP development will learn how to follow best practices within the world of PHP. The book contains many well-documented code samples and recipes that can be used as a starting point for producing quality code.Specifically, you will learn to design an application with UML, code it in Eclipse with PDT, document it with phpDocumentor, debug it interactively with Xdebug, test it by writing PHPUnit tests, manage source code in Subversion, speed up development and increase stability by using Zend Framework, pull everything together using continuous integration, and deploy the application automatically with Phing – all in one book. The author's experience in PHP development enables him to share insights on using enterprise tools, in a clear and friendly way.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Expert PHP 5 Tools
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface

Installing Eclipse


When it comes to installing Eclipse, you basically have two options. First, you can download one of the standard Eclipse packages and install PDT along with several other plugins. Second, you can download a PHP all-in-one and then use that as a starting point for installing the remaining plugins. Either way, you will be installing several plugins to extend the functionality of Eclipse.

The right approach for you depends on whether you will be using Eclipse for development in other languages. If so, my recommendation is to start with a standard Eclipse package and to install PDT and other plugins via Eclipse's built-in software installation and update feature. It will be a good exercise in configuring Eclipse and keeping it up-to-date. Otherwise, assuming that you will be using Eclipse for PHP only, you are best served by download the all-in-one package for PHP devlopers.

Requirements

All of the packages are available for Windows, Mac OS X, and both 32bit and 64bit versions...