This how-to will describe how to configure Aptana Studio 3 on Windows with XAMPP and Xdebug to be able to debug PHP code.

Enable Xdebug in apache

The first thing, that we should do is to enable Xdebug on XAMPP. For this we must edit the php.ini file that configurates the php module.

So we need the following configurations:

[XDebug]
zend_extension = "C:\xampp\php\ext\php_xdebug.dll"
xdebug.remote_enable = 1
xdebug.remote_handler = "dbgp"
xdebug.remote_host = "127.0.0.1"
xdebug.remote_port = 9000
xdebug.trace_output_dir = "\xampp\tmp"
xdebug.idekey = ECLIPSE_DBGP

Note:
zend_extension = "<the path MUST contain the drive letter>"

Restart apache server after this changes.

To proof the activation of Xdebug you can use the phpinfo() function (XAMPP has already the function for this on the main page).

The output should be looks like on the following image:

Configuration of Aptana Studio 3

Now we must configure our Aptana Studio to be able to debug PHP code.

XDebug

Go to Window -> Preferences -> Aptana Studio -> Editors -> PHP -> Debug -> Installed Debuggers
mark XDebug and click to Configure

Now set the following settings in the configuration dialog:

Configuration dialog of Xdebug in Aptana Studio 3

PHP Interpreter

The next step is to add the PHP interpreter to Aptana.

Go to Window -> Preferences -> Aptana Studio -> Editors -> PHP -> PHP Interpreters

Now click to Add… and set the following settings:

Adding a PHP interpreter to Aptana Studio 3

Debug PHP Web Page

Now you can create the Debug launch configuration.

Go to Run -> Debug Configurations and add a new PHP Web Page with settings like following:

Create a launch configuration for debug a PHP web page

Now you should be ready to debug some PHP code.

Have Fun.