Serving Files from Outside of XAMPP for Simpler Local Development

I recently started working with Aptana (customized build of Eclipse) for PHP and web development and wanted to simplify publishing to the local XAMPP server I use for development.  Copying files back and forth was fun, but there is an easier way...

Using Apache virtual hosts, you can easily setup a second document root to serve content directly from your Aptana/Eclipse workspace (I'm on Windows, but same will work for any OS):

1. Open C:\xampp\apache\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf in your favorite text editor.
2. Uncomment (remove the "#") line 19 - "NameVirtualHost *:80"
3. Uncomment the block of XML starting at line 27 to read as follows:
   
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "C:\your-aptana-workspace-directory"
ServerName workspace.localhost
<Directory "C:\your-aptana-workspace-directory">
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog "logs/workspace.localhost-error.log"
CustomLog "logs/workspace.localhost-access.log" combined
</VirtualHost>

4. Open C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc with Notepad, running as Administrator.  (This is for Win7, hosts file exists elsewhere on other systems.)
5. Enter the following and save:


127.0.0.1 localhost workspace.localhost


Restart XAMPP and browse to http://workspace.localhost/your-project-name and you should be good to go. Simple.

Update: After reviewing, I noticed that you will also need to add a second virtual host so that localhost continues to respond as previously.


<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "C:\xampp\htdocs"
ServerName localhost
<Directory "C:\xampp\htdocs">
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog "logs/error.log"
CustomLog "logs/access.log" combined
</VirtualHost>