For professional development is also a good IDE. I've taken PHP Storm and before that Netbeans, But many developers recommend the fee or Zend Studio. similar but the free plugin for Eclipse Zend: das PDT-Plugin.

Installing Eclipse incl. Plugin is very easy in “All-in-one-Package” be performed.

Who already has an existing Eclipse installation and Eclipse will not uninstall, can install the plugin individually, as hereinafter described:

Installing the Eclipse PDT plugin for PHP on Windows 7

• Open Eclipse, and go to Help->Software Updates->Find and Install
• Select “Add”
• Create a beuen entry with the following details: Name:Indigo, URL: http://download.eclipse.org/releases/indigo
• ATTENTION: It in no case should the installation via http://downloads.zend.com / pdt be performed, because it is faulty.
• Select Programming Lanuages/ PHP Development Tools (PDT) SDK Feature   and click “Next”, to start the installation.

Eclipse PDT Zend installation under Windows 7

Creating your first project

It is recommended, if you use Eclipse for multiple programming languages (I used e.g.. Eclipse for Java or. Android) to create separate workspaces to shorten loading times, or. to customize the layout of Eclipse, It may also be advisable, For each project or customer to create a separate workspace.

If that plugin is installed correctly, You can now file in Eclipse> New ->Select a PHP Project Project:

successful installation of Eclipse Indigo PDT Zend under Windows7

The first project should be to test the htdocs Create a Directory of Xampp, can be thus tested locally.

Interesting features of Eclipse

Code templates are very handy, decreasing a lot of typing:

e.g.: cls, elif,fnc, forek, my_far usw.

For example, just for testing. Forek and typing Ctrl Space and Enter, then the following code inserted:

foreach ($array_expression as $key => $value) {
    ;
}

It can also own templates to insert or, existing templates are searched with tags: Window->Preferences->PHP>Editor->Templates

Eclipse own templates Create / Change

Access to MySQL database

With an additional plugin allows database content change and can show directly in Eclipse.

First installed the plugin database must generally be the same as the installation of plugins PDT:

Eclipse Plugin database installation

To access MySQL can, must have the appropriate JDBC drivers are installed.

• Download the driver (Registration required, Enter any files, Email does not have to be verified) and unzip to any directory
• Setting up access:File->New->Other
• Connection File->Connection File auswählen:
  

  MySQL integrate Eclipse

• MySQL Select
• Driver change: blue triangle icon below
• All information fill out and choose from the list JAR JAR from the unzipped driver and Properties For example,. enter (and DB server are possible, do not run locally)
• It is very important in the URL and the database reenter, be otherwise indicated in Eclipse no tables: jdbc:mysql://[server_name]:3306/[schema_name]
• With Test connection can be checked immediately, from the input data is correct

After finished configuration, the DB will be processed in Eclipse. These are the Data Source Explorer and SQL Views Results provided. This can Window->Show View->Other->Data Management be selected:

It can occur from tables are displayed by right-clicking on the Table Data>Edit.

MySQL Data Source Explorer began Eclipse

Own SQL statements must be written in a. Sql file and can then be executed. The results are displayed in the SQL Results View:

Own MySQL Statements settle in Eclipse

Conclusion

Eclipse is very suitable as an IDE for programming PHP. I recommend, however, the fast and tailored to PHP programmers PHP Storm.

From the book: