Searching For A Good PHP Development Environment?

kill-9.ws asks: "I'm a PHP developer, and up until this point, I've been using either Pico or EMACS to write all of my code. A text editor is fine for writing PHP, but I'm starting to look for more. I'd like to have some nice things like an editor that can do syntax highlighting for PHP and perhaps a function reference. Throw in a built-in FTP client, and that would be perfect. Does anyone know if such a thing exists?"

Comments

Here are some editors with PHP syntax highlighting

[buttfucker2000]

Windows
Good:
Php Coder - builtin interpreter and function reference
EditPlus
Bad:
MPS PHP Editor
Indifferent:
HTML-Kit
Unix

*strike*code warrior*strike*Latte*strike*Glimmer

- this is the best notepad-style (with tabs for multiple files) Unix text editor - extensible, with adjustable background images, etc., scriptable in Python
[note the syntax highlighting file is suboptimal -

should be

Crossplatform
Emacs
Vim (PHP highlighting not very good)

But basically my personal recommendations:
syntax highlighting good, all else redundant

So choose the best editor out there; there's not much else you can do with PHP - it's not WYSIWYG suitable, and the functions are so high level, things *like* dialog editors are redundant. As for ftp, I strongly recommend that if you're on Unix, you install your system's PHP & Apache packages, and on Windows install PHP Triad, an integrated MySQL/PHP/Apache installer. This way you don't have to worry about FTP till you're finished [just a warning: always make sure your local PHP is *older* (or the same) as the one on the web server - v3, apart from having fewer functions, also has a lot of weird and undocumented bugs and misfeatures - e.g., you get errors if you call something $file (or class file); in v4 you can instantiate

class classname {
// No constructor
}

with $object=new classname();
but v3 only allows brackets when the class has a constructor.

Here's how I work:

editor w/syntax highlighting, editing files direct - so much nicer than FTP, and without the FTP problems
browser window set to PHP manual (locally, for speed)
browser set to view PHP pages (Opera is good for this purpose because of its MDI (hint: use 4 and 5 to tab between windows), which generally sucks, but is good in this case cos you don't have to open lots of windows)

VI

[AlexA]

The version of vi that I use (vim 5.6) has syntax highlighting for a bunch of languages, including PHP. You can turn it on with the command :syntax on, or alternatively you can add the line syntax on to your vimrc file.

Re:VI

[buttfucker2000]

He's running vi rather than vim - he's probably installed only vim-minimal and not vim-enhanced.

Start it as vim.

Bluefish, Quanta

[mitchy]

Bluefish is more of a gnome-based editor. Quanta is kde2, I think.

Both rock, although I like Bluefish the best (Olivier, you rock!) Supports projects (collections of files) and you can create your own highlighting rules. Has a function list build in, and a whole host of other features.

Besides, I can run bluefish from within sawfish, after eating monkfish and pulling a stalefish on the way back to the office.

Re:Here are some editors with PHP syntax highlight

[buttfucker2000]

My comments on the scripting file got slashcoded:
item name="string" start="\"" end="\(\"\|\n\)" color="string"
should be
item name="string" start="\"" end="\"" color="string"
item name="string" start="'" end="'" color="string"
otherwise your highlighting gets screwed if your strings span multiple lans

[the item tags need html greater and less than signs around]

Zend.com

[Frodo]

Zend will be releasing PHP IDE in coming monthes (When It Will Be Ready (TM) of cousre :). It would be Java-based, and would have an IDE and Debugger.
It would not be free, and neither Open Source, I guess.

Re:Here are some editors with PHP syntax highlight

[buttfucker2000]

Oops:

PHP Triad
Vim
Emacs

I happen to like TextPad

[dmatos]

It has syntax highlighting for just about every language available, as well as the ability to create your own, by writing a .syn file.

TextPad has actually become my text editor of choice. I use it for everything from writing/compiling Java to viewing log files. There is a free trial version (full version costs $27, I think) at the TextPad Site.

PS - Windows only, methinks.

K PHP Develop

[Jason W]

There hasn't been much activity from the project lately, and I haven't tried it myself, but from the screenshots it looks like just what you need. SourceForge project page, and homepage.

Re:Here are some editors with PHP syntax highlight

[nkg]

You have missed out two of the best Editors for Windows, both of which have features he's looking for. Home Site Has FTP built in, syntax highlighting, you can map your files locally through Apache. You can Have Code Snippets of often used code. I think someone has added the PHP manual to the built in help (look at the contributed area on the Allaire website). Also there's Edit Plus which has FTP built in & syntax highlighting. I've been using this more recently, mainly because my laptop is only a Pentium 120 which is to slow for Home site. But Edit Plus still flys. Neil

DreamWeaver UltraDev

[Vulture-X]

If you have the cash and you want an editor that does more for you than Emacs/Vi/nedit/Scintilla/whatever, my recommendation in Dreamweaver UltraDev.

Advantages:
- The best GUI web editor around
- Cool "Live Edit" features
- Flexible: It is modifiable to work with many different "application servers".

Disadvantages:
- Proprietary software with a big price tag.
- Windows/Macintosh only.

At any rate, I find UltraDev to be a really awesome "first pass" by Macromedia: I can't wait to see what the next version of it can do.
--
Evan Jones http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/Students/ejones/
"Computers are useless. They can only give answers." - Pablo Picasso

HomeSite included with Dreamweaver

[Overbyte]

I picked up a copy of Dreamweaver a couple months ago which included HomeSite 4.5. HomeSite supports syntax highlighting for HTML, PHP, etc. I understand Dreamweaver is coming out with version 4.0 soon.

EditPlus

[zerOnIne]

i've been using EditPlus 2 for a while now, putting together scripting for an online comic at http://www.mad-ink.com/ ... it has great syntax highlighting, and allows you to edit files remotely via FTP... you just hit "Open Remote" and go to your favorite FTP site... then when you hit "Save" the program will automatically upload the new file for you... very slick... unfortunately, it's Windows only... but i'd definitely recommend it...

It's full of the monkeys!

EditPlus (Win) Or Nedit (*nix)

[Enoch]

I, like the others listed above, use EditPlus on my Windows boxes. In *nix, I use Nedit. Actually, I do not know whether or not Nedit has syntax highlighting for PHP; but you can check it out.

Jeremy

Re:try ultraedit (for windoze)

[_wintermute]

for win32, ultra-edit is just about the best editing program i have found -> simple, clean, but with enough real features to enhance productivity. i have created an PHP4 wordfile for syntax highlighting that includes variable highlighting as well... http://www.info-architects.net/downloads/php_wordf ile.txt.

Emacs is all you want aparently.

[_typo]

It has ftp suport. Just put /user@host port:/blabla/file.php on the file open thingie (C-x, C-f) and then saving and all that just works directly to the FTP server.

As for syntax highlighting M-x c-mode was fine for my needs last time I edited PHP, but there's probably a php-mode somewhere already.

Re:Emacs is all you want aparently.

[ksheff]

In addition to ftp, there is ssh/scp support with the tramp package at ftp://ls6-ftp.cs.uni-d ort mund.de/pub/src/emacs/tramp.tar.gz.

The following links may be useful for writing php code in emacs:

• http://funq.org/turadg/software/,
• http://www-publi c.t u-bs.de:8080/~y0008422/krabutzig/emacsphp.html,
• http://www.ontosys.com/reports/PHP.html

php ultraedit wordfile (again)

[_wintermute]

sorry, the first link was wrong http://www.info-archite cts .net/download/php_wordfile.txt

UltraEdit32 (on windooze)

[cymen]

If you use windows UltraEdit 32 is a nice editor that supports syntax highlighting for almost everything (and I do mean everything) plus a whole lot more. It is a very handy editor.

Dreamweaver

[paf_the_french]

If you are under Win, Dreamweaver from Macromedia can do great things; but I think, color-highlighting is only for the html mode. It has a ftp client too. Nevertheless I tried it with asp and I'm not sure that it will be as great with php. But you could search in this way. Under Linux, Vim can do Color-highlighting for php, but I thought Emacs did it well too.

try ultraedit (for windoze)

[hyperstation]

i didn't notice if anyone mentioned this already, but i use UltraEdit32 for all of my php programming in win. it has syntax editing, and yes, you can "save to ftp" as well...it's pretty neat

download it here:

http://www.ultraedit.com/downloads /in dex.html

...and get your php wordfile here:

http://www.ultraedit.com/down loa ds/additional.html

i think the wordfile (for syntax highlighting) may be for php3, but it works the same

BBEdit for the Mac

[waldoj]

Since you didn't say that you wanted it for Linux...

BBEdit for the Mac is fantastic. BBEdit 6.0 has PHP syntax highlighting, built-in FTP, and even breaks each page down into sections by function. If I could get a decent PHP editor (read as: BBEdit...I've tried lots of others) for Linux, I swear I'd switch to it as my primary desktop environment.

-Waldo

PHP and HTML

[Chacham]

I wish some editor would allow the mix of both HTML and PHP, supporting echoing HTML from PHP. I'ts a tall order but it would sure make it _a lot_ easier.