The IDE is your development environment. It  might be overwhelming at first sight, but if you understand the basic functionality, you're good to go. While using, you will discover new features that you can use while building your applications.         


The IDE is built upon a standard development workflow:

This sequence is followed by the sequence of the menu of the IDE:


Project Toolbar



Load and save the project        

 

quick button to open a project



    • New: create a new project
    • Open: open an old project
    • Open Sample: open a sample project
    • Save as: save the current project under a different name.


  By default, the IDE will load the last project worked on.


Localisation        

Localisation functions are used to make your applications multilingual. Tip: create your basic application first and use simple (short) label names. Using the functions all labels will be harvested for translation is configurable languages.



    • Locales: Setup the locales and available languages
    • Translation: Setup the translation tables.


PHsPeed generates PHP application with translation tables. Labels will be changed to placeholders that will be replaced by the translations


Generic functions

       

    • Properties: dialog to setup different parameters regarding your project. (see create project)
    • Bulk edit: dialog to change settings over all your (selected) PHP modules. 
    • To do: add a to do item to your project (it is stored in your PHP code)
    • Report: list of references to your to do list.
    • Auto loader: Setup an external module for the autoloader (PHsPeed uses an autoloader of its own and is able to replace the default loaders that are used in different packagers).


Import/Export

The import and export functions allows you to export a full or partial project.


The module only exports the project and code, NOT the (modified) themes, templates, data model and database connection with data)


File Toolbar

These funcions allows you to work with individual PHP files.



Wizard toolbar


Create basic application

PHsPeed currently supports three types of application types:

  • Application: a regular PHP module
  • Building block: a PHP class that can be reused (i.e. for lookups, drilldown functions).
  • Blank: a PHP module without a form, but can use all the non-form components (can be used for api's etc).


Application wizard.

The application wizard is the quickest way to start your applications. After generating the module, you can modify the module any way you want. Everything the wizard does, can be done by hand, it only takes (a lot) more time. The application wizard is explained in detail in one of the following paragraphs. With the wizard it is also possible to append other module as a quick start to a master-detail form.


  • Form: Simple crud form
  • Grid: Simple database grid, or editable grid
  • Grid + form: Simple grid with a form. The grid is connected, selecting a record in the grid refreshes the content of the crud form.
  • Grid + popup form : Simple grid with a popup crud form. 


The Database grid is a very powerful component with a lot of features, like calculations, edit symbols etc.


Utilities

The utilities contain functions to create the database tables, and PHP classes for:

  • RBA: Role-based access module. Two options here: simple mode for just a logon, or advanced mode containing users, usergroups etc. The function also supports 2 factor authentication (TOTP)
  • Audit Trail: Works in combination with the use audit-trail property of the root components (see components). Logs access, inserts, updates and deletes and keeps track of the old and new version.
  • Preferences: This function creates a lookup kind of table to allow the storage of preferences. Can be considered as a software solution for the registry or ini files.
  • Templates: This functions maintains templates that can be used for configurable emails, or other output.


Edit toolbar

The edit toolbar contains generic function to search data, to undo or redo changes or to cut/copy paste.


Shortcuts

  • ctrl-f: search
  • ctrl-z: undo
  • shift-ctrl-z: redo
  • ctrl-c: cut
  • ctrl-v: paste


Form components toolbar

The form components toolbar contains all the components that PHsPeed supports. The components are described in detail in the components section



Database toolbar

The database toolbar contains a number of (important) function to maintain your database connections, and to setup your php environments



  • Connection / PDO: Opens a dialog to set up your IDE and PHP database connection. 
  • Manager: Opens a dialog to a simple database manager, mainly for debugging while developing.
  • Query builder: A visual tool to create queries and to view the result. This builder is also used in the components to set up filters, cloud connectors (to pass key info to another module)

Enabled PHP/PDO database drivers

Series of databases that can be enabled. This dialog maintains the PHP.ini file. You can find the basic settings of the database in the database setup section. 

Note: PHsPeed comes with a pre-installed MariaDB/MySQL instance. If you want to use other databases then you have to install those manually, and sometimes you need to install the appropriate PHP PDO drivers.


Database Managers

These functions start the embedded phpMyAdmin (MySQL/MariaDB) or Adminer database management tool in the internal browser. You can always use a specific (desktop) database tool that belongs to your database, or some other tools like DBeaver, Toad etc.


Run/Debug toolbar



Many of these functions are also accessible through the debug toolbar, which will be discussed later. 


Generate code 

This function can generate all the code, or only the changed modules

Deploy images

Images are deployed independent from the code generation. That is because images are usually referenced by location, and because the images usually need to be deployed once. If you have images in your project which are not deployed and you generate code, then use these functions to move the project images into the deployment folder. 

Run

The run buttons can run your application directly or in debug mode. 

Options

Opens a dialog editor to set some debugging options. Disable what you don't need, as it influences the overall performance, especially on older or limited workstations.

Deployment toolbar



If you have finished developing, then you need to deploy the application to your internet/intranet website. To start fresh it is advised to first purge the deployment folder and regenerate your application. This will remove any PHP modules that you have created but are not using anymore, like orphans, test functions etc. After generating the full code use the images button to move the images into your deployment. If you use private libraries, then you need to copy the Run Time. By default PHsPeed uses shared libraries, then you should NOT perform this step (mixing shared and private libs can cause obscure problems). Create your database connection for production (if you want to use a static connection) Then Promote your code to get rid of any debug info in the source code. Then upload. Once you have uploaded your project, use the restore run-time to restore the original run-time as this code is also processed by the promotion procedure. 

Deploy local

Images: Copies the defined images from your project into your production environment

Selection: Copies the selected images from your project into your production environment

Prepare deployment

Promote: PHsPeed generates a lot of code, including code that enables the IDE to intercept messages, errors etc. Before you can deploy your application you need to remove this code.

DBConfig: This opens the database connection dialog to create your database config file for production. If you have intercepted the logon procedure (i.e. for Saml, or you want to use the dynamic configuration) then you can skip this step.

Deploy

there are several ways to deploy your application. You can use the build-in FTP client or use a zip file. If you use shared libraries, you can consider to upload the full folder from the Xampp server using a separate FPT tool like Filezilla. The FTP client of PHsPeed is very basic and using a tool like Filezilla is a lot faster.

Restore RTM

This will restore the shared libraries to their original state.

Files

Deployement folder: this function will open a dialog starting with your deployent folder. Here you can verify files. 

Purge deployment folder: this function will fully purge your project deployment folder. Very handy to get rid of trash, or old stuff. You can generate your project to get a fresh new start. 

Save/Load project preferences.

Saves/load database configuration file.

Packager

Opens a dialog to maintain PHsPeed packages. In general you should not need to modify. This function is obsolete.