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Netbeans Backwards and Forwards

If you are browsing around a load of files on your object oriented project using the great features like right click -> go to definition, then you like me are probably also hankering after a nice backwards and forwards functionality so you can easily jump between places in your project.

After a bit of looking around, it seems that you can by either using the Navigation menu or the key combinations [alt]+[<-] (left arrow) for back and [alt]+[->] (right arrow) for forwards.

That’s better, however a pair of toolbar buttons would be even better, but I can’t seem to find a way to do that. Seems a shame when the functionality is there not to be able to create those buttons.

If you know of a way to do it please add it to the comments!

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2 Comments

Brady
January 28th, 2010

Thank you for this article!

I noticed you write pretty frequently about Magento. I currently use Coda (on a Mac), but want to migrate over to an IDE like Netbeans.

I was wondering if you could to a “Best Practices” post about setting up Magento in Netbeans? I feel a bit lost in that arena.

Thank you!
 

admin
January 29th, 2010

There's not really anything particular about Magento with Netbeans.

My advice is to get PHP with Xdebug installed locally then change your php.ini settings so that xdebug gives you loads of info.

This is my php.ini

PLAIN TEXT
CODE:
  1. zend_extension="/opt/lampp/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613/xdebug.so"
  2. xdebug.remote_enable=1
  3. xdebug.remote_host="localhost"
  4. xdebug.remote_port=9000
  5. xdebug.remote_handler="dbgp"
  6. xdebug.remote_mode="req"
  7. xdebug.profiler_output_dir = "/tmp/xdebug/"
  8. xdebug.profiler_enable = Off
  9. xdebug.var_display_max_data = 9999999999
  10. xdebug.var_display_max_children = 99999999999
  11. xdebug.var_display_max_depth = 10
  12. xdebug.collect_params=4

Note you will need to change the path to Xdebug for your system.

After that, just load Netbeans, create a new project and select with existing source, then select your root Magento folder and that's it.

Netbean's will take a little time to scan through all of the files, but once that's done you can navigate through the code architecture easily.

You should also be able to set breakpoints and use Netbeans/Xdebug to step through the execution of the code. That's a whole other issue though and my advice is to learn how to use Netbeans properly first and then worry about starting to do that kind of debugging.
 

 

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