PHP seems to have held over-the-top positions for a long time when developers are hunting for server-side scripting for web applications. This works wonders even for custom development projects.
It's simple, flexible, and highly extensible. Apart from the language's features, these tools can help developers ease the overall development process. The landscape of these PHP tools that developers for improving various development aspects.
If you're a PHP developer looking for a tool to help you get more done with your job, this is the article for you!
NuSphere PhpED
If you are looking for PHP IDE that allows you to write code and edit it in real-time, then this is it. It has an integrated PHP class browser, syntax highlighting and code completion support, debugger features, breakpoints and step-through functionality.
The main advantage of using this tool for custom PHP development is that it's very easy to use because it comes with all of the basic functions needed by every developer:
- File management (rename), copying/moving files around on disk, managing imports/exports (importing another class).
- Viewing compiled output from your project
- Debugging your source code using breakpoints or stepping through variable values during execution time
- Viewing variable values from different points within your program (e.g., before executing a function call).
PhpStorm
This PHP IDE is built on top of JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA platform. It provides first-class support for PHP, including the latest features and frameworks. You can also use it to develop Java and Python applications in addition to your own custom scripts.
The core features include the following:
- Code completion (phpstorm has more than 1 million packages installed)
- Live coding with auto-completion (phpstorm has over 100 plugins)
Refactoring (rearranging blocks or functions)
NetBeans
A full-featured cross-platform IDE for developing Java, JavaScript and PHP applications would help the developers to develop the websites. It has been around since 1995 and has built a reputation as one of the best tools to use when developing web applications in PHP.
NetBeans IDE offers many features that make it easy to work with:
- Intuitive code completion and debugging tools
- Code refactoring capabilities (e.g., renaming variables)
- Integrated test runner that can run any unit tests or integration tests on your local machine
CodeLobster
CodeLobster is an online IDE that lets you edit PHP, HTML and CSS code. It has features like syntax highlighting, code completion, debugging tools and more. The editor supports many programming languages, such as JavaScript, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Python and C++.
CodeLobster offers a free website builder tool that allows users to create their own websites without having any knowledge of HTML or CSS design skills. You can also publish your website to the Google index so that it can be seen by everyone in the world who searches for certain keywords related to your content on Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Atom
This open-source text editor is available for free on Windows, macOS and Linux operating systems. The development team behind Atom includes GitHub employees as well as contributors from other companies and organizations such as Google.
It was first released in 2010 by GitHub employees who wanted to create an editor that would be easy to use while still being powerful enough for developers working with large code bases.
Sublime Text 3
Do you need a sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose?
Sublime Text 3 it is.
It's available for OS X, Windows and Linux. It's written in Python, so it's lightweight and highly extensible.
You can use a powerful open-source editor on all your custom PHP development projects—whether they be websites, scripts or even applications.
Conclusion
The development world has changed since we started compiling this list. There are now many more tools to choose from, and some of them have made big leaps forward in their capabilities.
While the ones on this list will continue to be the most popular for many years, it's important for you as a PHP developer to keep up with all of your options so that you can make an informed decision about which tool is right for your needs.