Opening CakePHP Files in Dreamweaver

I primarily use Adobe Dreamweaver to create and code all of my websites, mainly because of the code highlighting and the way I organise my sites in separate folders. I realise that there are loads of text editors out there but Dreamweaver is what I’m comfortable with and it does the job.

When starting out with CakePHP I quickly found out that Dreamweaver doesn’t open .THTML and .CTP files automatically and I had to do a bit of hunting on the web to get the problem solved. The solution is pretty easy so this is just a quick post to get Dreamweaver opening .THTML and .CTP files.

THTML and CTP Files

Although I’m using CakePHP 1.1 which uses .THTML files I’ll also add the latest .CTP files which CakePHP 1.2 use. This is just saving time and when I do cross over and start using version 1.2 I don’t have to fiddle around with Dreamweaver again.

Modifying the Necessary Dreamweaver files

There are ultimately 3 files that you need to edit. The first two are located in the folder that you installed Dreamweaver, in my case this is “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver CS3\configuration” although I’m using the latest version of Dreamweaver previous versions also have a “configuration” folder so go there.

Open up “Extensions.txt” and on the first line at the very end add THTML and CTP separated by commas, so the line should read:

,MASTER,THTML,CTP:All Documents

Similarly add these two extensions to the “:PHP Files” line.

PHP,PHP3,PHP4,PHP5,TPL,THTML,CTP:PHP Files

Next open the “DocumentTypes” folder and edit the “MMDocumentTypes.xml” file, just open it up using notepad or wordpad. Search for the line which has an id “PHP_MySQL” and add the THTML/CTP file extensions to both the “winfileextension” and “macfileextension” so the line should read:

winfileextension="php,php3,php4,php5,thtml,ctp" 
macfileextension="php,php3,php4,php5,thtml,ctp"

The final file is another version of the “Extensions.txt” which is located in your “Documents and Settings” Folder in my case this is “C:\Documents and Settings\James\Application Data\Adobe\Dreamweaver 9\Configuration” just add the very same things you inserted earlier.

Wrapping Up

Restart Dreamweaver and you should now be able to open up and edit .THTML and .CTP files with everything nicely colour coded. A short post but a needed one for those who use Dreamweaver.

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