Set Up Your Environment
Every developer has a text editor or IDE of choice, and you should use what you’re most comfortable with while writing
code for ThinkUp. If you’re on the lookout for a new PHP dev environment, Eclipse PDT (PHP Development
Toolkit) is a free, cross-platform, full-featured PHP IDE that offers class
browsing, code formatting, and method completion. If you’re using Eclipse, here’s how to set it up for ThinkUp
development.
Set up Eclipse PDT to work with ThinkUp
- Set indentation to spaces: To easily generate code that complies
with ThinkUp’s indentation-by-spaces style (as per the Code Style Guide),
in your project’s preferences panel, under PHP > Code
Style > Formatter, set the ‘Tab Style’ to spaces, and indentation size to 4.
- Add word wrap: Insane but true: Eclipse does not support word
wrap natively. Use this experimental add-on to enable
it
(via Stack
Overflow).
Once the plugin is installed and you’ve restarted, right-click on a file
and select ‘Virtual word wrap’ to enable it.
- Show whitespace: See whether you’re using tabs or spaces; go to
Window > Customize Perspective and under ‘Editor Presentation’, check off
‘Show Whitespace Characters.’ A button will appear on your toolbar that
you can press to show spaces and tabs.
- Set your author name: In Preferences... > PHP > Code Style > Code
Templates, expand Comments and choose ‘Types.’ Click the edit button to
set what the @author tag auto-fills when you’re commenting your code.
- Show a max line length ruler: In
Preferences > General > Editors > Text Editors, check ‘Show print margin’ and
enter the maximum line length (currently 120 as per the style guide).
- Run regression tests in Eclipse: Here’s how to install the
SimpleTest
plugin in
Eclipse to run tests in the IDE. (Note from Gina: this plugin doesn’t
work on my Mac or PC; when I choose ‘Run as > SimpleTest’ nothing
happens.)
- Install Mylyn plugin for GitHub: If you want to browse and update
issues in Eclipse, install this
plugin.
Useful Keyboard Shortcuts