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PHP Development Environments?
rbolkey queries: "I've been looking for a comparison between Zend's PHP IDE, NuSphere's PHPEd, and Maguma's PHP4EE, but have failed to find any. Does anyone know how these IDEs compare? Are they useful? Are they worth the price?" We last handled this question
over a year
ago. PHP has changed since then, and I'm sure more development
tools for PHP have been released since then. What recommendations do
you have for PHP coding environments? What features do you find the
most useful?
Activestate's Komodo has an excellent interface, excellent color coding as well as the ability to debug XSLT files, if you are so inclined. It also has an excellent regular expression builder (handy if you ever delve into PERL), it doesn't do too bad with TCL, either.
It works with windows or Linux and is available on a trial, educational, or professional license basis.
I've been using it for about 3 months and it's been rock solid so far. Better than anything else I've used.
btw, activestate's developer network is an excellent resource, too.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
I find Quanta to work very well for me.
With integrated language references for HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP. Syntax highlighting for PHP, Perl, SQL and HTML. It works very nicely indeed. Good 'project' grouping as well.
Not a user-interface that really gets in the way - just one that lets me get on with the job.
Quanta development was languishing for a while, but Eric Laffoon has recently taken over and is kicking it back into gear and things are starting to move.
The pre-nusphere one works great, except for a few bugs. I like the purty colors and it gets the job done. I tried the new zend beta and i must say, no matter how hard they try, I cant get used to the java gui.
And for the people who say, "I use vi or emacs", go plow a field with oxen , then try it with a john-deer. And if your a real man go hammer some nails with your head, if you have some spare time you can widdle me a new chair for my desk with a butter knife.
is UltraEdit 32.
You can get a PHP Syntax plugin.. Works beautifully.
I end up jumping around languages a lot. PHP, ColdFusion, Java, and even the ocassional ASP. Homesite handles them all very well. Excellent text manipulation, tons of color coding options, and snippets allow you to build your own add ins.
I've only used Komodo a little bit, but it was rather klunky, and at $300, way too over priced. Haven't used the ones you mentioned, but I'd be glad to hear about them.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
I own Nusphere's IDE and it's a real pain to get working on a different box than the one you develop on. I've yet to get the debugger wroking on it. The other problem is the editor only runs on Winshit. Can't wait for a Linux version of the editor. Since I need to run a M$ OS, I've installed Macromedia UltraDev and added the open source Phakt PHP extension. Very nice RAD GUI dev based mostly on ADO. I was able to develop a site based on 5 MySQL tables, including joins, relatively simply. Much faster than coding everything by hand. In fact, I intend to buy the commercial version, ImpAKT when I get home. Again, I REALLY wish Macromedia would get their shit together and create a Linux port of Ultradev. I would hock one of my guitars for that!
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
To be honest I've never felt the need for an IDE. My favourite text editor, a webserver, a command line version of PHP, and very occasionally a PHP debugger do me just fine.
:)
Every IDE I tried was either slow, unstable, missed basic features of a good editor, or just Crap[tm].
It's not as if PHP is the hardest language in the world to fit in your head, you don't need an IDE to constantly try to stop it leaking out. Well, maybe you do, but I don't
Since PHP doesn't really allow you to do anything interesting that a normal IDE would allow (like, say, DEBUGGING!), we just use Vim and migrate to Perl.
MMM allows you to run two major modes within the same buffer.
.emacs:
:submode php-mode
:front "")))
;; C-c C-f is used by pgsml
;; C-c C-m is used by pgsml
So first, go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/mmm-mode/
and get and install mmm-mode.
Next, get php-mode from http://php-mode.sourceforge.net/ and install that.
Then, put this in your
(require 'mmm-mode)
(setq mmm-global-mode 'maybe)
(mmm-add-mode-ext-class nil "\\.php[34]?\\'" 'html-php)
(mmm-add-classes
'((html-php
(autoload 'php-mode "php-mode" "PHP editing mode" t)
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.php[34]?\\'" . html-mode))
(defun insert-php-region ()
(interactive "*")
(let ((php-template '(" n p n "?>" > n )))
(tempo-insert-template 'php-template tempo-insert-region)
(mmm-parse-buffer)))
(defun my-php-hook ()
(define-key php-mode-map
"\C-cd"
'php-search-documentation)
(define-key php-mode-map
"\C-cb"
'php-browse-manual)
(define-key html-mode-map
"\C-c\C-p"
'insert-php-region)
(c-toggle-hungry-state t))
(add-hook 'php-mode-hook 'my-php-hook)
Now you will have HTML syntax highlighting and indenting for the HTML bits, and PHP syntax highlighting and indenting for the bits.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Get it here
Not really an IDE but a super editor with a lot of customization capability. Does syntax highlighting for a ton of languages out of the box and you can define new highlighting patterns and export/import them to/from files. It's what I do the majority of my PHP programming in. It's free to boot. I also use Bluefish some for the HTML work. It's pretty decent with some specialized PHP support. It's nice for forms, you don't need to remeber the exact syntax for all the different input types.
I agree. I haven't had a Mac for 3 or four years, but the one thing that I really miss is BBEdit. No editor for Unix or Windows matches BBEdit's perfect balance of ease and power, all wrapped up in a clean interface. And, even 5 or 6 years ago, it provided HTML tools superior to anything I have found since. Who needs wysiwyg when the tools are that easy?