ColdFusion Article

Customizing the Eclipse IDE for robust ColdFusion application development

Why CFEclipse?

You may be asking yourself, why should I change my current IDE? Every developer has his or her preference, and Eclipse may not be for you; however, it provides a long list of features:

• It is free and open-source.
• It provides a dictionary view of functions, scopes and tags.
• It enables you to use snippets and use SnipEx servers to share snippets with coding team members.
• It enables you to create to-do lists that you can track within your code.
• It supports additional plug-ins such as the Frameworks Explorer.

In addition, you can change the perspective view (explained later) to switch from one coding environment to another. For example, you could be coding in ColdFusion, switch to a Flex Builder perspective, and then switch to a Java perspective, all within the same IDE with a click of a button.

Installing the CFEclipse plug-in

Download and install the Eclipse Classic version linked to in the Requirements section on page one. Unzip the download and place the output folder wherever you'd like. There is no install wizard, so it will be up to you where you'd like to put these files. Once you have this unzipped, open the Eclipse folder and run the Eclipse executable, eclipse.exe. You will be prompted to choose a workspace location. Again, it is up to you. In this tutorial, I chose to install it at the root of my C:/ drive, and that's how I will refer to the path throughout this tutorial.

The next step will be to add the CFEclipse plug-in to Eclipse. The easiest way to install CFEclipse is to use the built-in installation and update management tools that come with Eclipse. Unlike downloading an installer file and running it on your computer, using this updater tool will enable you to install and remove different plug-ins without leaving the Eclipse application.

To install CFEclipse, use the following steps:

1. Select Help > Software Updates > Find and install.
2. Select Search for new features to install and click Next.
3. Click New Remote Site.
4. Enter a name for the update site: for example, "CFEclipse." In the URL textbox, enter "http://www.cfeclipse.org/update" and click OK.
5. You should now have a CFEclipse node in the "Sites to include in search" box.
6. Select Stable CFEclipse and click Next.
7. Eclipse will contact the CFEclipse site and retrieve the list of available plug-ins. Select the plug-in with the highest version number (the most recent update) and click Next.
8. Agree to the license, install the software and restart Eclipse.

Click the perspective button (see Figure 1) and select Other from the dialog box. An Open Perspective window will open. Select CFEclipse from the list and click OK.

Figure 1. Changing the perspective to CFEclipse.

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