PHP progress

[Buck <kc2hiz@xxxxxxxxx>]

I managed to have a learning experience at home installing PHP on a
Windows machine that already had Apache and MySql.  Also learnt that
Eclipse PDT is unobtanium for WDSC (based on Eclipse 3.2, the PDT binary
from that time was a 0.7 release candidate).  Downloading Eclipse 3.6
(Helios) was the right answer, much though I personally dislike the idea
of two separate Eclipses being open at the same time.  I learnt that the
Visual C compiler version is an important thing to know when trying to
get the Zend Debugger to work.  It didn't, so I resorted to XDebug.  In
the end, it all worked out and I have this goofy Ajax thinger that lets
me look at old radio contest logs in a whole new way.

Carried my Eclipse 3.6 project to work, downloaded Helios, imported it
and I'm able to edit PHP just like at home.  Very nice.  I still don't
like having two Eclipses open but I think I'm going to have to get over
it.  Had another learning experience with the debugger (open firewall
port 10000 to connect).

Can't really figure out remote debugging though.  I have a form on an
HTML page that fires a PHP action.  I want to fill out the form and have
the debugger stop when it hits the PHP action.  I do this every day in
RPG.  I set a SEP on the program I'm interested in, start at the menu
and the debugger lights up when it reaches the aforementioned program.

The PHP debugger interaction happens when the PHP engine sees the proper
parameters in the URI.  Of course the original HTML page has that, but
doesn't pass it to the action.php and so the debugger doesn't break.  I
can directly debug the PHP page just fine and then use the debugger to
'fill in' the form.  Is this what other people do?

At home, I loaded the XDebug Firefox addon which tells XDebug to start
up regardless of the URI.  That does not work for remote debugging.
And, strangely, neither does copy/pasting the parameters in the URI from
the HTML page onto the action page.

Hopefully, someone will point me to the Fine Manual where there's at
least an outline of how an IBM i programmer alters his brain to make
this 'fit'.  This is what I meant in the earlier thread about a guided
tour.  I'll eventually get ad astra per aspera, but I'd rather have a
less random experience.  At the moment my best guess is that someone
will tell me to use Zend Studio.  Another Integrated Development
Environment to install, manage and... integrate into my life.  Really?
  --buck