Migrate from Eclipse to PhpStorm

No workspace

The first thing you will 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.

No perspectives

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.

Tool windows

Just like in Eclipse, in PhpStorm you also have tool windows. You can find a full list of all available tool windows at View | Tool Windows. Selecting a tool window will open it. Tool windows are also accessible from the tool window buttons on the tool window bars.

If you do not 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: Alt+1

• Commit: Alt+0

• Terminal: Alt+F12

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 Shift+F12)

For more information, refer to Layouts.

Multiple windows

Windows management in PhpStorm is slightly different from Eclipse. You cannot open several windows with one project, but you can detach any number of editor tabs into separate windows. To move the tab to a separate window, right-click the tab and select Move Tab to New Window (or press Shift+F4).

Always select opened files

By default, PhpStorm does not navigate to the file in Project tool window when you switch between editor tabs. However, you can enable it in the Project tool window settings:

No 'save' button

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 is 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. To change the autosave behavior, open settings by pressing Ctrl+Alt+S and navigate to Appearance & Behavior | System Settings. On the System Settings page, find the Autosave section.

Save actions

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 | Tools | Actions on Save.

Actions on commit

When you commit your changes, you can run various actions automatically. For example, you can automatically run tests, reformat your code, optimize imports, and so on.

Eclipse keymap

In Settings | Keymap, you can choose to use the Eclipse keymap which closely mimics Eclipse shortcuts, in case you don't want to learn new shortcuts:

Find action

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

Quick-fixes

To apply a quick-fix in PhpStorm, press Alt+Enter:

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

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

Code completion

PhpStorm provides different types of code completion, which include:

• Basic completion

• Second basic completion

• Type-matching completion

• Second type-matching completion

• Statement completion

Templates

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

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.

Postfix templates

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.

Surround with live template

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

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

Refactorings

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

Undo

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 Ctrl+Z.

Search

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

Edit VCS settings

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 Alt+9.

Checking projects out

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

Working with local changes

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 Alt+9 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.

Working with history

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:

Working with branches

PhpStorm lets you create, switch, merge, compare and delete branches. To access these operations, you can click the Git widget with the name of the branch that is currently checked out:

All VCS operations are available from the VCS main menu: