Making Eclipse for PHP Useful

Out of the box, Eclipse for PHP is lack­ing a few vital features.

Prob­lem: How do I run SQL queries in Eclipse?

Solu­tion: The SQL Explorer plugin.

To install:

• Go to Help->Install New Soft­ware.
• Add a new site called SQL Explorer with the URL http://eclipsesql.sourceforge.net/
• Select SQL Explorer.
• Keep­ing click­ing Next/Finish until the plu­gin is installed.

Prob­lem: Okay, I can run some queries now, but not against Microsoft SQL Server!

Solu­tion: Use the jTDS JDBC dri­ver. (Note: In my expe­ri­ence, this dri­ver is much faster and more reli­able than the dri­ver you can get from Microsoft.)

To use:

• Down­load the lat­est driver
• Unzip the down­load and put the jtds-1.2.5.jar file some­where safe.
• In Eclipse, go to Window->Preferences.
• In the Pref­er­ences win­dow, go to SQL Explorer->JDBC Dri­vers. Select Microsoft MSSQL Server JDBC Dri­ver.
• Go to the Extra Class Path tab. Click Add JARs and select the jtds-1.2.5.jar you down­loaded earlier.
• Click List Dri­vers and ensure that net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver is in the Dri­ver Class Name box.
• Your exam­ple URL should look like jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://<server_name>:<1433>

Prob­lem: What about edit­ing files on a remote server? The built in Remote Sys­tem Explorer doesn’t seem to work…

Solu­tion: Use CDT and Tar­get Man­age­ment (this includes a work­ing ver­sion of Remote Sys­tem Explorer).

To install CDT:

• Go to Help->Install New Soft­ware.
• Add a new site called CDT with the URL http://download.eclipse.org/tools/cdt/releases/galileo
• Select Eclipse C/C++ Devel­op­ment Tools.
• Keep­ing click­ing Next/Finish until the plu­gin is installed.

To install Tar­get Man­age­ment (requires CDT):

• Go to Help->Install New Soft­ware.
• Add a new site called Tar­get Man­age­ment with the URL http://download.eclipse.org/dsdp/tm/updates/3.1/
• Select TM and RSE 3.1.1.
• Keep­ing click­ing Next/Finish until the plu­gin is installed.

To con­nect to a Linux box over SSH:

• Open the Remote Sys­tem Explorer perspective.
• Cre­ate a new con­nec­tion, and select SSH Only as the sys­tem type.
• Fol­low the wizard.