Migrate from Eclipse to PhpStorm

The first thing you'll notice when launching PhpStorm is that it has no workspace concept. This means that you can work with only one project at a time. While in Eclipse you normally have a set of projects that may depend on each other, in PhpStorm you have a single project that consists of a set of modules.

If you have several unrelated projects, you can open them in separate windows.

If you still want to have several unrelated projects opened in one window, as a workaround you can attach them to the current project.

The second big surprise when you switch to PhpStorm is that it has no perspectives.

It means that you don't need to switch between different workspace layouts manually to perform different tasks. The IDE follows your context and brings up the relevant tools automatically.

Just like in Eclipse, in PhpStorm you also have tool windows. To open a tool window, click its name in the tool window bar:

If the tool window bar is hidden, you can open any tool window by hovering over the corresponding icon in the bottom-left corner:

If you want to make the tool window bar visible for a moment, you can press Alt twice and hold it.

If you don't want to use the mouse, you can always switch to any toolbar by pressing the shortcut assigned to it. The most important shortcuts to remember are:

• Project: Alt01

• Commit: Alt00

• Terminal: AltF12

Another thing about tool windows is that you can drag, pin, unpin, attach and detach them:

For more information, refer to Arrange tool windows and Tool window view modes.

To help store/restore the tool windows layout, there are several useful commands:

• Window | Layouts | Save Current Layout as New: save the arrangement as a new layout.

• Window | Layouts | Restore Current Layout: reset changes in your current layout. (also available via ShiftF12)

For more information, refer to Layouts.

Windows management in PhpStorm is slightly different from Eclipse. You can't open several windows with one project, but you can detach any number of editor tabs into separate windows.

By default, PhpStorm doesn't change the selection in the Project tool window when you switch between editor tabs. However, you can enable it in the Project tool window settings:

PhpStorm has no Save button. Since in PhpStorm you can undo refactorings and revert changes from Local History, it makes no sense to ask you to save your changes every time.

Still, it's worth knowing that physical saving to disk is triggered by certain events, including compilation, closing a file, switching focus out of the IDE, and so on. You can change this behavior via Settings/Preferences | Appearance & Behavior | System Settings:

If you are an experienced Eclipse user, you are familiar with save actions: the actions triggered automatically on save, such as reformatting code, organizing imports, and so on.

PhpStorm also features save actions that you can find and enable in Settings/Preferences | Tools | Actions on Save.

On top of that, PhpStorm offers you to run the corresponding actions automatically on commit:

Or manually:

• Code | Reformat Code CtrlAlt0L

• Code | Optimize Imports CtrlAlt0O

• Code | Code Cleanup

For Eclipse users who prefer not to learn new shortcuts, PhpStorm provides the Eclipse keymap which closely mimics its shortcuts:

When you don't know the shortcut for some action, try using the Find action feature available via CtrlShift0A. Start typing to find an action by its name, see its shortcut, or call it:

To apply a quick-fix in PhpStorm, press AltEnter:

All quick-fixes are based on inspections configured in Settings/Preferences | Editor | Inspections:

If you want to apply a quick-fix to several places at once (that is to a whole folder, module or even a project), you can do it by running the corresponding inspection via Code | Analyze Code | Run Inspection By Name... or by running the whole batch of inspections via Code | Running Code Cleanup with profile ''{0}''…:

Apart from outright problems, PhpStorm also recognizes code constructs that can be improved or optimized via the so-called intentions (also available with AltEnter):

The key action for generating code is Code | Generate, available via AltInsert:

PhpStorm provides different types of code completion, which include:

• Basic completion

• Second basic completion

• Type-matching completion

• Second type-matching completion

• Statement completion

By default, PhpStorm doesn't show the Documentation popup for the selected item, but you can enable it in Settings/Preferences | Editor | Code Completion | Show the documentation popup in:

If you don't want to enable this option, you can manually invoke this popup by pressing Ctrl0Q when you need it:

When the caret is within the brackets of a method or a constructor, you can get the info about the parameters by calling Parameter Info with Ctrl0P:

In PhpStorm, Live templates let you insert frequently used constructs into source code.

require "";

public static function ()
{

}

foreach ( as $item) {

}

echo "";

The list of available templates can be found in Settings | Editor | Live Templates. There you can also add your own templates or modify any existing ones.

In addition to 'regular' templates, PhpStorm offers the so-called postfix templates. They are useful when you want to apply a template to an expression you've already typed. For instance, type a variable name, add null and press Tab. PhpStorm will turn your expression into a if (...==null){...} statement.

To see a complete list of available postfix templates, go to Settings | Editor | General | Postfix Completion.

The surround with templates is another addition that works similarly to live templates but can be applied to the selected code with CtrlAlt0J.

To define your own surround with template, go to Settings | Editor | Live Templates and use $SELECTION$ within the template text:

try {
    $SELECTION$
} catch ($TYPE$ $$$VARIABLENAME$) {
    Logger::log($$$VARIABLENAME$);
    $END$
}

The following table maps the shortcuts for the most common refactorings in Eclipse with those in PhpStorm:

Sometimes, refactorings may affect a lot of files in a project. PhpStorm not only takes care of applying changes safely, but also lets you revert them. To undo the last refactoring, switch the focus to the Project tool window and press Ctrl0Z.

Below is a map of the most common search actions and shortcuts:

Every VCS may require specific settings, for example, Path to Git executable, GitHub/Perforce credentials, and so on:

Once you've configured the VCS settings, you'll see the Version Control tool window Alt09.

To check out a project from a VCS, click Get from Version Control on the Welcome Screen, or in the main VCS menu.

The Changes view shows your local changes: both staged and unstaged. To simplify managing changes, all changes are organized into changelists. Any changes made to source files are automatically included in the active changelist. You can create new changelists, delete the existing ones (except for the Changes one), and move files between changelists.

Right-click the unversioned file or folder you want to ignore in the Local Changes tab of the Version Control tool window Alt09 or in Project tool window and select Git | Add to .gitignore or Git | Add to .git/info/exclude.

If you want ignored files to be also displayed in the Local Changes view, click on the toolbar and select Ignored Files.

The Log tab of the Git tool window lets you see and search through the history of commits. You can sort and filter commits by the repository, branch, user, date, folder, or even a phrase in the description. You can find a particular commit, or just browse through the history and the branch tree:

PhpStorm lets you create, switch, merge, compare and delete branches. For these operations, either use Branches from the main or context VCS menu, or the VCS operations popup (you can invoke it by pressing Alt0`, or the widget on the right of the status bar:

All VCS operations are available from the VCS main menu: