 | Level: Intermediate Michael Galpin (mike.sr@gmail.com), Developer, eBay
18 Dec 2007 In Part 1 of this
three-part "Web
development with Eclipse Europa" series on how to use Eclipse for Web development in
the Java™, PHP, and Ruby languages, you
saw how the latest release of Eclipse — Europa — can be used to rapidly develop Java
Web applications. In Part 2, you saw how easy it is to develop PHP applications using
a different set of Eclipse plug-ins, collectively known as the PHP Development Toolkit
(PDT). Here in Part 3, we introduce the RDT and RadRails Eclipse plug-ins and show you
how to get these plug-ins and start using them. You will learn how to use RadRails to
do many common Ruby on Rails development tasks. In this tutorial
In Part
2, we talk about some of the benefits of using an IDE with PHP. Most of what is
discussed there is equally applicable to Ruby, and that was the inspiration for the
Ruby Development Toolkit (RDT). The RDT provides all the basics you would expect of an
IDE: syntax highlighting, coloring, and validation, code completion and formatting, and
project organization. It also has a Ruby debugger, an essential tool for large
projects. There are also some Ruby-specific features, like a regular expression
editor/tester and unit testing support via integration with Test::Unit. This tutorial introduces the RDT and RadRails Eclipse
plug-ins. It shows how to get these plug-ins and start using them. You will learn how to
use RadRails to do many common Ruby on Rails development tasks. And you will see how
RadRails makes it easier than ever to test and debug Rails applications.
Prerequisites
This tutorial is all about Web development with Ruby. Web development with Ruby is
pretty much synonymous with Ruby on Rails, so it is assumed you have some
experience with Ruby on Rails. Familiarity with Eclipse is also useful, but not
required. This tutorial builds on applications built with the Java and PHP languages in the first two
tutorials. A background in Java and Ruby programming is essential for getting the most
out of this tutorial. Familiarity with the Eclipse IDE is helpful, but not necessary.
System requirements
-
Ruby
- This tutorial uses Ruby V1.8.6. You also
need Rails, and this tutorial uses the Mongrel Web server. Install both of these using
Ruby's package manager, RubyGems.
-
Ruby Development Toolkit
- This tutorial shows you how to develop Web applications using Ruby, so you need the
Ruby Development Toolkit and RadRails. Both are Eclipse plug-ins, and this tutorial explains how to install them.
-
Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers
- You'll also need the Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers.
-
Java Runtime Environment (JRE)
- To run Eclipse, you must have a JRE.
-
Apache Tomcat
- The application uses a Apache Tomcat as
its container.
-
MySQL V5.0
- The application uses MySQL V5.0 as its database.
-
Java Persistence API
- You will also need the Java Persistence API and, in particular, the OpenJPA implementation.
-
Eclipse PHP Development Toolkit (PDT)
- This tutorial shows you how to develop Web applications using PHP, so you'll need the
PHP Development Toolkit
You can get this as a set of plug-ins for an existing Eclipse installation. If you're
new to Eclipse, you can get an all-in-one installation that includes the Eclipse platform and the PDT plug-ins.
-
PHP
- You need PHP, so get the latest version, which at the time of this writing was V5.2.1.
-
Apache HTTP Server
- You need a Web server that integrates with PHP. This tutorial was developed using Apache V2.0.59.
-
Fancy PHP debugger
- You need a PHP debugger. We used the Zend Debugger
V5.2.10.
-
Operating system
- You need an operating system capable of running all of the above. We used Mac OS X
when creating this series, but you can use a modern version of Windows® or
Linux®, as well. Adjust locations of files accordingly.
Formats html, pdf
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