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Eclipse Day 2 - Sync Manager - FTP remote file editing

Day 2. I must admit, I am having some Dreamweaver withdrawals. I can see how they can ‘vendor-lock’ you in when they perfect the basic programming tasks. Improving your productivity is an investment, it is a continuous learning experience. You can’t settle with just having the basic tools available at your disposal, you want tools that will make your life easier!

What would you prefer? Manually edit 1,000 files that need updating, or create a script with a regular expression to do the editing for you? That is the beauty of learning, you can apply what you learn to help reduce your workload.

I have been tinkering with a few features that I think would benefit many programmers out there.

FTP remote file editing:

Yes I know should be a something basic that should be at your disposal, but I am new to EasyEclipse/Aptana! This is the equivalent of the ‘Manage Sites’ feature found in Dreamweaver. Right from the start this was a snap getting this up and running.

1. From the bottom left side window of your default Aptana ‘perspective’, make sure you have the ‘File’ tab selected.
2. You should see a tree break down of what is currently on your computer right now. Right click on the FTP listing, and click ‘Add new FTP site‘
3. From there, enter your FTP login credentials and you should be good to go, thats it!.
4. Double click on the files you wish to edit, and your good to go!

Sync Manager

Here is the problem I was encountering and how Eclipse made my life easier. When doing some major editing and I am on the road where internet access sucks, I cant really work on some projects because I am in need of working off the live website. Sure I can download them, modify them, and re-upload them with my FTP manager once I am done, but this is too much work even for me.

With the sync manager, you can download the latest snapshot of your working website, tinker with the files, and re upload them with minimal effort.

This method is only recommended if you are NOT using SVN to manage a particular project. Downloading a snapshop and re-uploading them to the website could overwrite work performed from other team members on the live website. I will explore further the SVN features that comes with EasyEclipse when time permits.

How I got it to work,

1. First, get an FTP site up and running [from the first part]
2. On the top left of the Aptana default perspective view, click on the ‘Sync Manager’ tab.
3. On the top-right section of that tab, there should be a two-way arrow, click on that ‘Add Site Connection’.
   
4. From here you will be prompted to a add connection dialog.
   1. 
   2. Connection Name: Name the connection name to whatever you would like
   3. Path: Specify the local path you would like to save the snapshot of the website.
   4. Remote: Select the FTP server you wish to sync up with.
5. You will now be prompted to download/upload/sync the directories.
   
6. Downloading the files to your local directory should suffice for now.
7. Once you are finished editing your files from your localhost and have committed your changes, you can sync them right up, or upload your localhost files to the remote FTP server.

I do have other features I wish to discuss at a later date. Everything continues to look promising though =) If you have any suggestions, please let me know as I am eager to know! [I noticed a few comments below and will be updating as I read them]

-Jose