Eight PHP IDEs Compared

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Rick Grehen provides an in-depth comparative review of eight PHP IDEs: ActiveState's Komodo IDE, CodeLobster PHP Edition, Eclipse PHP Development Tools (PDT), MPSoftware's phpDesigner, NetBeans IDE for PHP, NuSphere's PhpED, WaterProof's PHPEdit, and Zend Studio. 'All of these PHP toolkits offer strong support for the other languages and environments (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL database) that a PHP developer encounters. The key differences we discovered were in the tools they provide (HTML inspector, SQL management system) for various tasks, the quality of their documentation, and general ease-of-use,' Grehen writes.'"

Comments

Do any of them assess performance?

[jeffmeden]

This is not a troll, I swear! Are there any good performance assessment tools used during development? If so, do they work well with any of these IDEs? I don't do a lot of PHP work but it would be nice to have a tool that could audit code, advise on which lines were the most resource-intensive, and recommend lighter weight procedures.

Re:Do any of them assess performance?

[IpSo_]

Have you tried using PHP's Xdebug extension with CacheGrind (I prefer KCacheGrind for KDE), it works wonders.

I haven't found any IDE's that integrate such functionality, but I don't really see a need for it as KCacheGrind works so well as it is.

Re:Do any of them assess performance?

[kestasjk]

You need to use Xdebug (you could use Zend's commercial platform software, but that's expensive and you don't need it). You activate it, and it'll log all sessions to profile data files if you configure it to. Then you download "WinCacheGrind" or something, which will open these profile data files for analysis.

However WinCacheGrind is an old piece of software that hasn't got new features for a long time. It does the job, but it's not great. It's a clone of a more advanced KDE application which does the same thing, but it definitely has fewer features.

VHS, x86, Microsoft Windows

[BadAnalogyGuy]

How is it that when given a set of options, the majority of users will select the worst possible one?

They didn't review Notepad, but I would wager that it is pretty well used by a majority of PHP "developers"

Re:VHS, x86, Microsoft Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Bluray didn't win.

I won, because I stopped buying DVDs, and now pirate 100% of my films.

Re:VHS, x86, Microsoft Windows

[Xest]

Hehe, I didn't notice that line for some reason when I made my reply, but to be fair he didn't use the term professionally so he's probably right- most PHP developers are far from professional after all ;)

Developing large scale web applications where you need more than just a bunch of php files and need a decent folder structure ala most MVC frameworks becomes a pain without a proper IDE as you note.

Re:VHS, x86, Microsoft Windows

[classified]

Yea, I thought it was weird that a review of PHP IDEs omitted Dreamweaver; I have tried at least 4 of the IDEs they list, and used Coda on Mac until I got Dreamweaver. My preference is still Homesite (the old Allaire product that morphed into DW after macromedia bought it). But, homesite only runs on windows, so on a mac IMO Dreamweaver CS4 works better than all of them and allows me to do a lot of pretty fast validation and integrity checking. /mike

yep

[stoolpigeon]

Two of the top choices are free and open. I don't know how people who build proprietary tools are going to stay in business. It's not like the commercial stuff crushed the open stuff in this comparison. I've moved to Netbeans for pretty much everything. It's a solid, multiplatform solution and the open nature is very nice. Komodo is built on an open editor, but moving up to the full featured IDE is pretty pricey. At $399 a pop I've never tried Zend Studio and based on this - I don't think I'm missing much.

Re:yep

[sopssa]

Personally I wasn't really happy with Eclipse or other open source solutions. The GUI plain and simply sucks, isn't that good to customize and provides too less information and actions. People say its a powerful tool once you learn to use it, but why should I spend time on that when there are better alternatives (and which provide more features)?

Personally I've tried pretty much all of the IDE's mentioned in this article and finally went and bought WaterProof's PHPEdit. In my opinion, it's the most comprehensive PHP IDE there is.
- Debugging options are *great* (like comparing vi to Visual Studio)
- GUI shows lots of information, but doesn't bloat it - panels roll in and out when they're needed (if wanted)
- GUI is totally customizable, there's scripting language to do it too. One of the first options I did was change ctrl+s to save local version, save cvs version and publish testing machine version, but not publish on live site, all on press of ctrl+s. On toolbar I added a separate button to publish the new version on live site.
- Another point about the great debugging options that the article mentions too, you can simultaneously debug PHP and Javascript. This is something you really miss in other IDE's once you've tried it.
- PHP files usually have mixed PHP, HTML, JavaScript and SQL. Once you move your cursor over a single block, it highlights and colors with the correct language and makes the other languages a little bit more transparent - you can easily see for example all blocks of JavaScript or SQL code.
- Preview lets you view what your site looks on all IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera
- Too many other features to list which I think should be in all IDE's, but are not :) And haven't even got around to learning all things yet.

Now that being said, it is probably too heavy for a PHP coder that isn't coding professionally. Many amateur C++ programmers go just with Dev-C++ too, but professionals and those coding for living almost always appreciate the powerful suite that Visual Studio is. Proprietary tools stay in business because of this - they're much more polished and complete than their open source alternatives. And if you're working on it professionally, paying for the good tools doesn't really matter that much if it saves you time and from headache.

Re:yep

[bl8n8r]

> it's the most comprehensive PHP IDE there is.

Perhaps. If you run windows. The lack of cross platform options is a massive fail IMO.

Eclipse PDT?

[KermodeBear]

Eclipse PHP Development Tools 2.1.2 received an overall score of 8.8. I'm not sure why. I have tried this on several occasions and I find the interface confusing, the software itself bloated and slow, and the internal plugin manager is always broken and can't download dependencies correctly - if at all.

Sure, there are posts all over the place that are supposed to help fix these issues: Download X from Y, and A from B, and then modify this configuration, and, and, and... ...and I shouldn't have to. It should 'just work'. I spent half a day trying to get the SFTP plugin installed and working and I gave up. I don't have time for that.

My personal favorite, as far as 'large' IDEs go, is Zend Studio - the last version before they moved over onto the Eclipse Framework.

Re:Eclipse PDT?

[ionix5891]

same here im still on Zend 5.5

new Zend based on Eclipse and Eclipse PDT and Netbeans are just to "slow" and i have a nice workstation

Coda

[acomj]

I use panic software's CODA for my php development (OSX). Its not really as full featured as these (no debugger), but for the fairly basic php web sites I code, it works great. I like that you can click a tab and snap into the page your creating in a functional browser. I use YourSQL for MYSQL database management, which still works but is no longer being developed.

Re:Coda

[stoolpigeon]

You might want to look at MySQL Workbench. I've been messing with it a bit for a couple weeks and really like it so far. I'm running it on Fedora but there is an OSX release.

Re:what i'd like in an IDE

[PsychoPingu]

Eclipse can do it with PHP and XDebug if its running on Apache: http://robsnotebook.com/php_debugger_pdt_xdebug

Re:PHP is cross-platform

[jeffmeden]

Gaming while you develop php? Wow either you are a God among men, or your games are full of chat like printf("fsck off you noob"); and your PHP code is full of wwwwwwwwaawwdadsdwwwwwwdadadwwwww...

do tell!

Re:Left out my favorite

[Xest]

Yeah, they also gave Zend 9/10 for tools and 10/10 for Value when it's basically just Eclipse PDT with a toolbar button for the command line tool that comes free with the Zend framework and costs $399 per year for the privilege.

Well, I suppose it can do more if you pay an extra $1195 per year for Zend server. Did I mention that Zend server is basically little more than just a pre-configured Apache setup?

Perhaps I've been spoilt by Visual Studio which actually costs much less and gives you far more, or the fact that 99.99% of Zend Studio's functionality is just inherited from Eclipse which is free, but the idea of giving Zend Studio 10/10 for value is er, baffling to say the least- at least their 9/10 for tools can be somewhat justified by the fact most of them are just inherited from the free tools Eclipse provides.

I suppose at least they still gave positive reviews of the other IDEs, but the idea that Zend Studio is somehow better than them, well, I'm not really sure there's a word for how simply not true that is.

So er yeah, still, most the article is probably one of the finest loads of bollocks I've ever seen which is quite impressive, sseing as I've often made the mistake of reading The Register which is basically like a bollocks farm.

I'm pretty over IDEs

[TofuMatt]

Aside from using XCode, I pretty much never use IDEs, especially for web development. I just use TextMate for anything not in XCode (and I even edit a lot of C/C++/Obj-C in XCode nowadays, and other apps for performance, testing, etc. (or write TextMate commands to run external commands).

Re:I'm pretty over IDEs

[larry bagina]

Aside from using one specific IDE, he pretty much never uses IDEs. Here are some more for you to practice on:

Aside from tylenol, I pretty much never use drugs.

Aside from kathleen fent, I pretty much never fuck fat girls.

Aside from New Year's eve, I pretty much never get shit faced.

vim/EMACS?

[Canar]

I know this is PHP, so it might be expecting too much, but what ever happened to using vi?

I'm a semi-pro (all told I've probably made nearly $100k) web developer and I've never felt the need for all these fancy IDEs. I've tried them before and they just slow me down.

Re:vim/EMACS?

[Ant P.]

It doesn't count as an "IDE" unless the code pane is 120x100px when the window's fullscreen and opening the program requires a splash screen.

you dont need to quote developers.

[unity100]

as if php is not something worth developing on or those who develop on it cannot be called real developers.

i am working in the industry since 2003 as a php developer and i use notepad++. it works very well too.

Re:you dont need to quote developers.

[kestasjk]

I use notepad++ for text files etc but it's not an IDE, is it? Does it have debugging, project management, variable tracking, object/namespace browsing and auto-completion? You're wasting your own time if you don't use a good IDE.

Re:PHP is cross-platform

[ianare]

Masochists.

Re:Left out my favorite

[kestasjk]

I support Zend in their quest to get money, because it lets them create great things like the Zend Framework (which is free). Those are business guy prices, for busy/lazy/rich IT staff who don't even want to configure Apache or set up debugging in Eclipse with Xdebug.

Want debugging? Eclipse and Xdebug, you can even get Zend's own debugging system by downloading their shared object file which is free. Same goes for profiling, auto-completion, etc, you can get it yourself with a bit of work if you don't want to pay.
If someone with too much money supports Zend out of laziness I'm okay with that.