Book Image

PHP Application Development with NetBeans: Beginner's Guide

By : M A Hossain Tonu
Book Image

PHP Application Development with NetBeans: Beginner's Guide

By: M A Hossain Tonu

Overview of this book

<p>NetBeans has many features that greatly simplify PHP development, and with its several features and great flexibility, PHP developers can become overwhelmed by the IDE's options. This book provides step-by-step instructions that show you how to take control of the environment and make use of these features to make your PHP application development more efficient and productive than ever before.<br /><br />"PHP Application Development with NetBeans: Beginner's Guide" leads you through the crucial parts of PHP programming and shows you how to use the features of NetBeans that will improve your PHP development experience, through clear and easy instructions.<br /><br />The book gets you started with the development environment and tools, and takes you through working on practical projects with a clear focus. With each chapter being mission-critical, the book is a perfect companion to boost your PHP coding productivity and gain experience with even complex projects.<br /><br />The book starts with setting up the PHP development environment and introduces exciting and useful IDE features. You'll learn how to build real life PHP projects such as Facebook like Status Updater and even User Registration, Login &amp; Logout application. Also the book will introduce you with some must know development tools such as debugging &amp; testing tools, source documenter tools, and versioning tools.<br /><br />Working with the NetBeans IDE for PHP development has its own advantages, and this book reassures the purpose. This book is full of illustrations, screenshots, and clear instructions to take your PHP development to a new level and even shows you time-saving tricks and other productivity enhancements.</p>
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
PHP Application Development with NetBeans Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Debugging the PHP source with NetBeans


To proceed, we would like to check the required debugging settings for NetBeans. Select the Tools | Options | PHP | Debugging tab:

In this window, uncheck the Stop at First Line checkbox, because we want to stop at our desired line and check the Watches and Balloon Evaluation checkbox. This option enables you to watch custom expressions or variables while debugging.

Now, let's have a look into a debugging session running in the NetBeans window:

In this screenshot, the debug toolbar and button are indicated by functional names.

Note

Learn more about the debugging toolbar from http://netbeans.org/kb/docs/php/debugging.html#work.

The debugger windows

When you start a debugging session, a set of debugger windows open below the main editor window. To add a new window, select Window | Debugging. The following windows are available:

  • Local Variables shows a list of initialized variables, their types, and values

  • Watches shows a list of user-defined expressions...