Can UES edit remote files on my hosting service?

[SAbboushi]

I have uploaded files to my hosting service and wondering if UES can edit them / debug them remotely? I'm clueless about FTP - is this related?

[fgeurts]

No UES can't edit the file remotely. If you have your files saved on a remote host you will need to set up an FTP account in UES for that host so that you can connect to it. When you open a file on the host server from your UES FTP connection, it will be downloaded to your PC for editing and then when you click the save button it will be saved back to the host server.

Cheers...

Frank

[SAbboushi]

Bummer... and thanks!

[rhapdog]

There is no other method for editing files remotely. This is what all editors that edit files via FTP do.

However, by using "Open from FTP", it will indeed open that file from the server into your editor for you to edit, and when you click save, it will save it back to the web server. So it is "virtually" as if you are remote editing.

I do this all the time to directly edit files on my FTP server.

[SAbboushi]

What about the debugging aspect?

[SAbboushi]

Seems that UEStudio does not support remote debugging:

UEStudio supports debugging PHP scripts through integration with a web server run locally (Apache) and XDebug, which is installed and run externally.

How do you guys debug on a remote web server?

[SAbboushi]

Hmmm... I'm reading stuff that leads me to believe that XDEBUG is the determining factor re: whether the IDE can remote debug http://derickrethans.nl/debugging-with- ... walls.html

Can anyone confirm?

[rhapdog]

Personally, as a general rule, I only do the remote editing when I'm not needing to do any debugging or I am not doing "programming." Such as editing the text on an HTML page or something of that nature.

When working with PHP applications and scripts, I have a local server set up, and I have a "mirror" of my web site on my local server. I have a batch file that enables/disables domains to be rerouted by replacing lines in my windows hosts file, so that I can access the domain as if it were local on my machine. When I'm done debugging, I simply upload the site.

Of course, this only works if you're the only developer working on the site. I have never attempted to debug remotely through FTP. Not something that I've needed to do, since most of my work is currently doing desktop development. I haven't done any PHP in about a year and a half now.

[SAbboushi]

When working with PHP applications and scripts, I have a local server set up, and I have a "mirror" of my web site on my local server. I have a batch file that enables/disables domains to be rerouted by replacing lines in my windows hosts file, so that I can access the domain as if it were local on my machine. When I'm done debugging, I simply upload the site.

Thanks for your response rhapdog. Could you please give some more details, esp. "I can access the domain as if it were local on my machine". I'm not clear on what you are doing, but it sounds useful since I am the only developer on the site.

[rhapdog]

What I do is edit my Windows "hosts" file.
It is found on my machine at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

hosts is the name of the file. No extension.

In that file I place a line like so:

Code: Select all

127.0.0.1       www.danielwmoore.com


That causes www.danielwmoore.com to redirect to my localhost, 127.0.0.1 IP address. Any requests my web browser makes for www.danielwmoore.com from that point forward will be redirected to my local apache server.

I then have a VirtualHost set up in my apache config file.

Code: Select all

  <VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName danielwmoore.com
    ServerAlias danielwmoore.com www.danielwmoore.com
    DocumentRoot "/local/path/to/www/"
  </VirtualHost>
  <Directory "/local/path/to/www">
    AllowOverride All
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 127.0.0.1
  </Directory>


Of course, you have to enable the VirtualHost setup from the apache config as well, or it won't work. It takes some serious effort and time to learn how to properly set up a web server on a local machine, so don't expect to be able to do it in under 20 minutes unless you've been doing it for a long time. I think the first time I did it the time table was more like 3 days to get it running, because I had to stop and read so many manuals on what I was doing. In the process, I learned the workings of the server software very well and ended up teaching others at one point on how to set up server software to run their web sites.

If you are new to all this, then it will take some serious effort on your part to get up to speed. But hey, everything worth doing is worth doing well, so do it with all you've got, and best of luck. I really don't have time to do seminars anymore, so this is about as far as I will go on this subject here. I've got to get busy to pack up for another little vacation I'm going on. This one with the whole family for the next four days or so. I sure love being semi-retired.

[SAbboushi]

He He! Thanks and enjoy your vacation.

I'm already running Apache on my pc so hopefully that will shorten my learning curve.

If I understand, it seems that your setup treats "www.danielwmore.com" in the url as if it were "localhost". But I am not clear on the benefit of doing this...

[Mofi]

But I am not clear on the benefit of doing this...

This could be simply required. There are websites which work only with relative paths. For such websites it is usually not really necessary to edit the hosts file, putting there the IP address of localhost for the domain name and configure a virtual host.

But there are also websites like the UltraEdit website which contains in head of every HTML file a base url definition resulting in loading all other files directly from the domain server using full address even if the HTML file is opened locally and all other files would be present also locally. For such websites it is necessary to redirect all domain address requests to localhost. Also there could be JavaScript, Perl or PHP code which checks the URL and make something different if the URL does not contain the expected domain name.

So the benefit is that the local copy of the website works exactly as on server (if PHP/Perl interpreter have same version and are configured identical). This gives the developer the possibility to test and of course fast debug scripts without disturbing the operation of the server hosting the domain. In my point of view developing scripts directly on server while the website is online for visitors is bad practice. If a mistake is made in an important script used by many or all webpages on this website, visitors could be suddenly confronted with error codes or wrong displayed pages which does not give a good impression.

[rhapdog]

It's best to run the same version of PHP and Apache that the web server uses, as well as Perl or any other languages that you'll be using. That way you'll have an exact match and know it will work on the web server.