Setting up your workstation for web development

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Introduction[edit]

This article provides detailed instructions for setting up your workstation as a PHP development environment, not only for Joomla! it also should work fine for PHP development in general.

Note There are many possible configurations for doing PHP development environments. Any environment that supports the basic AMP stack (Apache, MySql, PHP), Subversion and/or Git should be fine.

Choosing a code editor[edit]

The PHP language code represented just by plain text that can be edited with simple text editors like:

  • Geany (opensource cross platform text editor)
  • Gedit (opensource code editor for linux)
  • Notepad++ (opensource code editor for Windows)
  • Apple textEditor (Apple's basic text editor)

But when you are about to work in more advanced and complex projects and need some coding assistance there is a handful of development tools called IDEs (Integrated Development Environment) these are some of them:

  • Elcipse IDE (opensource cross platform IDE)
  • Netbeans IDE (opensource cross platform IDE)
  • UltraEdit IDE (closed source cross platform IDE)
  • Aptana IDE (opensource cross platform IDE)

To empathize some of the advantages of the use of IDEs over simple text editors we got:

  • Some IDEs integrate and/or let you integrate more programming languages under the same tool such as PHP, Javascript, CSS, XML, etc...
  • Some IDEs integrate and/or let you integrate assistive functions to develop code such as code completion, re-factoring, templates, advanced search/replace, syntax check, syntax coloring and more
  • Some IDEs can analyze the project as a whole and build a map of relationships between the classes in use in your project giving you the opportunity to explore the project in a more comfortable and coherent way
  • Some IDEs can analyse the current file under edition and give you a map of the different variables, functions and classes present on the file as a shortcut to navigate through the content
  • Some IDEs integrate and/or let you integrate PHP debugging client under the same tool
  • Some IDEs integrate and/or let you integrate several kind of source code revision control clients under the same tool

Some of the advantages of simple text editors are:

  • This kind of editor are usually lightweight
  • Some of these editors are great to do quick editions
  • Some of these editors provide syntax coloring and basic code completion

All these advanced tools facilitate the development of PHP code, debugging, and the integration of other tools like SVN or GIT clients for source code version control under the same IDE, but for this article we are going to focus on how to configure Eclipse IDE for our PHP development environment, feel free to add more editors and document them in the following list.


Choosing a web server[edit]

To develop and test our PHP projects we need to execute the code in a web server capable of interpret PHP code and send the output to our browser, is good to know that we have a nice range of opensource tools to deploy a PHP webservers for our development environment such as:

  • XAMPP (Cross platform AMP stack implementation)
  • WAMP (AMP stack for Windows)
  • LAMP (AMP stack on Linux)

Also there is other commercial closed-source options such as:

  • IIS (Microsoft webserver, the PHP and MySQL services got to be installed manually)
  • others

All these options for web services can be used for the development of PHP projects, but for this article we are going to focus on how to configure a XAMPP server for our PHP development environment, feel free to add more web servers configuration and document them in the following list.


Choosing a Debugging tool[edit]

Debugging tools are quite useful when you are developing a PHP project and you want to study how your code behave step by step on each line execution of your code, also these debugging tools let you see the real values of variables and objects and set new values on the fly for testing purposes, you can also create expression to check the outcome without modify your code.

Old school and hardcore PHP programmers don't fraternize much with these kind of visual tools and they prefer to debug their code the old way using php:var_dump and other methods to display and analyze the output of the PHP code, is up to you what kind of tools you want to implement in your development workflow.

There is several alternatives for PHP debugging, some of these are:

  • Xdebug (opensource debugging service for PHP)
  • Zend Debugger (commercial debugging service for PHP)

To empathize some of the advantages of the use of this kind of debugging tools we got:

  • You can stop (freeze) the execution of your PHP code any time placing a breakpoint
  • You can inspect the current value of variables and objects without dumping the content
  • You can execute the code step by step all the way from the beginning of the PHP code to the end of it and study how your application behaves under certain circumstances
  • You can set or modify the value of variables and object on the fly and see the results of your changes without modify the original code at all

All these options for PHP debugging can be used for the development of PHP projects, but for this article we are going to focus on how to configure Xdebug for our PHP development environment, feel free to add more debugging alternatives and document them in the following list.


Choosing a software versioning and revision control tool[edit]

Don't you hate when you are coding and suddenly by accident you just deleted a big chunk of text and there is no backups of that file to restore those important lines of code?, don't you hate when you are working with 2 or more developers in a project and everyone have a different copy of the project then comes the day of merge all those changes in one final project but everything goes wrong or the project does not want to run properly because some one just overwrite your work?, for all this problems and many more exist some nice tools to bring you the solutions you just need, some of these tools are:

  • GIT (Is a distributed revision control and source code management)
  • SVN (Is a software versioning and revision control system)

All these options for software versioning and revision control can be used for the development of PHP projects, but for this article we are going to focus on how to configure GIT for our PHP development environment, feel free to add more software versioning and revision control alternatives and document them in the following list.


Choosing a project build system[edit]

To read the full definition of a project build system you can go here but in short, the project build systems help you to automatize those tedious and repetitive tasks that developers got to do in several stages of the development of a project, some of this tasks are:

  • Compiling source code
  • Packaging (such as creating installers or final compressed files of individual libraries)
  • Running tests
  • Deployment to production systems (such as automatic upgrades and/or installation)
  • Creating documentation and/or release notes

Looking at project build systems from another point of view we can say they are a tool to automate complex tasks or little tasks such as:

  • Move a file from one place to another
  • Compressing a folder with several files
  • Upload a final build to a server
  • Update the content of files such as XML files or some comment sections of PHP files to print the version of the last build

A simple thing like the development of a Joomla! extensions such as a simple module could need the use of a project build system to gather all the information dispersed about the module in the Joomla! folder structure and put it back to the typical package structure of a module package with a simple build command, this could save you several minutes and headaches when you try to build a module or any extension manually and misplace a file or skip one of then in the final package. Consider your self some time to learn the proper use of project build systems and make them part of your regular development workflow.

Exist several options for project build systems out there, some of those are:

  • Phing Project (Build tool that uses simple XML build files and extensible PHP "task" classes to describe the build process)
  • Apache Ant (Build tool that uses simple XML build files to describe the build process, it needs JAVA to run)

All these options for project build systems can be used for the development of PHP projects, but for this article we are going to focus on how to configure Phing for our PHP development environment, feel free to add more project build systems alternatives and document them in the following list.


Other useful consideration for your future as developer[edit]

When you work in a project in a project with other developers is a good idea to define a strategy and define a development protocol to a have a well defined workflow among the different states of a project. Whiting the strategies needed to have a pleasant work journey is choose the right tools for the right task, some of these tools are freely available on Internet such as:

  • Host your project in the cloud with Github, SourceForge, Bitbucket and others, this services comes with a lot of nice features like, blogs, issue trackers, version control, forums and more.
  • Subscribe to security forums or security mailing lists
  • Collaborate with the documentation effort gives you direct and indirect benefits at short and long term during your career as developer
  • Keep a open mind and always give a try to different and new alternatives for tools and software as much as you can to helps you gain knowledge and confidence when you need to chose a tool or solve a problem
  • Consider your self to invest some of your time as a novice developer to help others in support forums or support IRC channels, this will give you an invaluable experience to learn how to deal with real people with real problems from different parts of the world
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