blog.nielslange.de

Since my study at the Hochschule Furtwangen University I’m using Eclipsse PDT. And what can I say? I really love it. But even within a fantastic IDE like Eclipse sometimes problems appear. Today I got such a problem. I was working on a PHP project and I was wondering why the auto complete function was not working. This article should answer the question “How to change default project into PHP project in Eclipse“.

A little research results that the project I was working on wasn’t defined as a PHP project. Therefore Eclipse PDT didn’t provide PHP support. Another reserach delivers the following solution:

1. Close desired project in Eclipse
2. Open file .project of specific project, e.g. with Notepad
3. Replace

   <buildSpec>
   </buildSpec>
   <natures>
   </natures>

   with

   <buildSpec>
     <buildCommand>
       <name>org.eclipse.php.core.PhpIncrementalProjectBuilder</name>
       <arguments></arguments>
     </buildCommand>
     <buildCommand>
       <name>org.eclipse.php.core.ValidationManagerWrapper</name>
       <arguments></arguments>
     </buildCommand>
   </buildSpec>
   <natures>
     <nature>org.eclipse.php.core.PHPNature</nature>
   </natures>

After changing the .project file and reopening the project it will be detect as a PHP project by Eclipse PDT. Now everything should work as expected.