Connecting to PHPCloud.com through Zend Studio 9

PHPCloud.com is the landing page for our new cloud offering.  Using the Zend Application Fabric you can build your applications in the same environment as you will be deploying your apps to.  The application is built on my.phpcloud.com and you can then deploy it onto any platform where the Fabric is supported.

But how do you get started?  Phpcloud.com has been built in a way where you can connect with any IDE.  With Zend Studio 9 that connectivity has been built directly in to the IDE.

Getting started is actually quite easy.

Step 1 – Create a new project

Step 2 – Give that project a name!

Unlike with local development it really doesn’t matter where you put the project, it’s not going to be deployed locally anyway.  By default you will be given two options, the document root of the local server or the workspace.

Step 3 – Configure deployment options

This is where you connect up with phpcloud.  You are not going to be deploying to a production server.  The DevCloud (the thing you’re connecting to) is NOT a production box (I will go over this many times until you GET IT! 🙂 ) .  The first time you deploy your application it will do a full deployment to phpcloud.com it will do a full deployment.  Then as part of that deployment an SFTP connection will be set up and any time you save a file it will automatically uploaded.  The first full deployment is not done now, it is done later on.  This just sets it up.

If you do not have an existing PHPCloud.com connection set up for Studio you will need to enter in the username and password for PHPCloud.com as well as specifying your private key.  If you forgot to save the one that you were given you can always generate a new one from the UI.

Step 4 – Write Code

Ahhh.  Geek nectar.  Code.  Write some code.  If you have already deployed your application this code will automatically be uploaded to your container.

Step 5 – Launch the app

On the deployment page (double-click deployment.xml) click on the Launch a PHP application link.

Step 6 – Specify deployment params

Prior to launching the application you will need to specify the container that you want to deploy to as well as the URL.

Step 7 – Admire your work

Once the application has deployed it will be brought up in Studio’s default browser.