By sujitnair on

We @ SUN Microsystems, have come up with a demo to illustrate how easy it is to download, upload and run a drupal based website through NetBeans IDE. The demo runs through the process of downloading the Drupal PHP sources from CVS, creating a corresponding PHP project and uploading it onto a pre-configured server, all through the NetBeans IDE. Beyond this, the demo also details the usage of the NetBeans plugin to assist Drupal Module Development. The demo is hosted over here.

Hope this assists exploring NetBeans IDE support for Drupal.

Regards,
Sujit

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

Justin Freeman’s picture

Justin Freeman commented

Very cool. I've experience with Eclipse, but not Netbeans. So can you tell me, does Netbeans provide the same level of debugging as Eclipse for PHP? eg. variable watches, code stepping, tracebacks etc.

Thanks again for telling us about this capability & the demo :-)

Agileware, Australian Developers for Drupal, Wordpress and CiviCRM
https://agileware.com.au

wen1900’s picture

wen1900 commented

Hi Justin, NetBeans supports PHP debugging via XDebug. You can code step, set variable watches, (not sure about tracebacks). For more info about debugging, you can check out this tutorial on the NetBeans.org site:

Debugging PHP Source Code in the NetBeans IDE

StickyTouch’s picture

StickyTouch commented

I've been running Netbeans (for Java) for years (and it rocks IMHO). I'm glad to see PHP support maturing at the pace it is.

Kudos to the Netbeans team. Great work guys/gals!

Sohodojo Jim’s picture

Sohodojo Jim commented

I am among those currently 'seeing the new light' of NetBeans support for PHP.

My upgrade subscription to Zend Studio expired some time ago and it has been too expensive to renew. While there were many nice features in NuSphere's PHPEd, its code completion and other editor 'power tools' have been a bit lacking (and the good folks at NuSphere have seemed to languish at version 5.5). So I have been living with Komodo Professional for some time now. And it is okay and getting better. But it will not be long before the ActiveState folks roll out a new 'major' release of Komodo (meaning not cheap to upgrade and the current version will languish). So the clock is ticking a bit.

As a somewhat 'lazy coder' (and having been spoiled by over 20 years as a Smalltalker in my youth), I _really_ like an editor that works with me to reduce keystrokes and remember syntax, documentation, etc., so I don't have to. I have been missing the Zend Studio editor's long-standing PHP language awareness. But $350 USD for the priviledge of going from Zend Studio 5.2 to 6.1 is just too much.

So I have been on the looking for something affordable that comes close to Zend Studio. I am very pleased to say that with the latest build of NetBeans 6.5, the NetBeans (Sun folks) team is making a valiant run for the gold! :-) The code completion features are excellent out of the box and easily extended. In addition to the 'go to declaration' feature of most IDEs, NetBeans has a welcome 'Find usages' feature much like Smalltalk's 'senders of' and 'receivers of' message views.

One of Drupal's significant strengths is the depth and breadth of contributed modules. So, like Smalltalk, an IDE's ability to help you explore and understand your often large and growing codebase is important. Code exploration and 'remote' debugging (most often meaning not so much 'remote' as 'live' on your local development server) are among the most useful features of an IDE.

I am very pleased to report that the progress being made by the NetBeans PHP team is impressive and likely to result in a new top contender for widely used Drupal development. When it comes to a PHP IDE in tight economic times, free is very good. Free without sacrificing important productivity features, that's even better.

--Sohodojo Jim--
http://sohodojo.com

frank ralf’s picture

frank ralf commented

For anyone who stumbles across this thread, the current discussion is taking place at Updated NetBeans plugins support for Drupal.