VerySimple

PDT Screenshot

Installing PDT (PHP Development Tools) Plugin for FlexBuilder allows you to work with PHP projects within the FlexBuilder environment.  This is useful if you are using AMFPHP, WebORB for PHP or some other PHP-based remote server.  There are similar instructions posted elsewhere, however I found that they have become outdated.  Because FlexBuilder 3 is based on an older release of Eclipse, you now have to specifically install older versions of the PDT files.

Note – If you are using a recent version of Eclipse with FlexBuilder plugin, or are using FlexBuilder 4 then you should not follow these instructions – instead install the most recent version of PDT.  These instructions are only necessary for FlexBuilder 3 Stand-Alone edition.

Installing PDT:

1. Open FlexBuilder 3 menu Help->Software Updates->Find and Install
2. Search for new feature to install
3. Click “New Remote Site” and enter the following:
   • Name: PDT 1.x
   • URL: http://download.eclipse.org/tools/pdt/updates/
     (note is that this URL is to the old 1.x update site)
4. After adding the site, click OK and select the following two Sites to include:
   • Europa Discovery Site
   • PDT 1.x
5. Click “Finish” to begin searching for updates
6. Once the results are displayed, un-check the box that says “Show latest version of a feature only”
7. Expand PDT 1.x and select PDT SDK 1.0.3
   (important – do not select a higher version than 1.0.3)
8. After you have selected PDT SDK, you may have required libraries missing.  You can try at this point clicking “Select Required” and they will be automatically selected from the Europa Discovery Site.  However, this sometimes causes FlexBuilder to lock up.  In which case, you have to force quit FlexBuilder, start the process over and manually select the required libraries which are:
   • Graphical Editors and Frameworks->Graphical Editing Framework 3.3.2
   • Java Development->Eclipse Java Development Tools 3.3.2
   • Models and Model Development->Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) Runtime + End-User Tools 2.3.2
   • Models and Model Development->XML Schema Infoset Model (XSD) Extender SDK 2.3.2
   • Web and JEE Development->Web Standard Tools (WST) Project 2.0.2
     (if any of these libraries are missing and do not appear, it probably means that you have already installed them)
9. You should now be able to click “Finish” and agree to the license.  You can then restart the app and begin working with PHP project within FlexBuilder.

Configure Smarty (TPL) Template Editing

There is another project called smartypdt – however it doesn’t seem to be compatible with the older version of PDT – at least I couldn’t get it working.  Instead I simply configure TPL files to open using the PHP editor:

1. Open the menu Window->Preferences
2. Navigate in preferences to General->Content Types
3. Expand the Text node and highlight “PHP Content Types”
4. In the File associations list, add *.tpl

At this point you should be able to open a PHP folder and edit both PHP and TPL files.  If you configure your include path correctly, you should have code insight on your PHP classes and functions.