Best PHP Development Tools Of 2020
If you would like your website or web app to do great on the web, you are an entrepreneur or a website developer. The key to building websites or web apps is the language and tools used to create them. For 78.9 percent of all the websites whose server-side coding language was studied by W3Techs, PHP is used primarily as a server-side scripting language.
As a leading PHP web development company, we have experience using PHP language in developing over 300 projects. A range of PHP tools has been used to create the best results for our work. So, we decided to help our readers find the best tools for PHP development that are out there.
PHP is now the most commonly used server-side scripting language for websites and web apps. The experts have built different PHP development tools to increase coding efficiency and make PHP work easier.
These tools aim to create a perfect PHP IDE ( Integrated Development Environment), a platform for PHP developers to build PHP projects that are innovative, intuitive, and feature-rich.
There are too many tools and software for PHP development available on the market. Choosing tools for your assignment can, in itself, become a task. So, for you, we made it more comfortable. Here are the best PHP development tools you can choose for your project as a business owner or novice developer.
Top PHP Development Tools
1. Zend Studio
A majority of websites are written in version 7 of PHP. Zend Studio is ideal for PHP 7 and is used for the same purpose by most developers. Zend Studio has the specialty of providing maximum speed. Without investing any additional time, you can write and debug code using Zend Studio and Zend Debugger.
X-ray, Xdebug, and Zend Debugger are combined, and PHP scripts are debugged. It is a robust PHP IDE, and it comes with an advanced collection of features that can deploy applications, including those in the cloud, on different servers. There is also an option for developers to use Eclipse plugins and extend Zend Studio.
Few major unique points of Zend Studio:
1. Enables better code with an insightful code editor
2. Allows (independently or with the Zend server) debugging and profiling
3. Interoperability leverage: Git, GitHub, CVS, SVN, and
4. Deployment is easy, and it is possible to deploy apps on private and public clouds.
5. DPI scaling and other HiDiPi displays' resolution capabilities
6. Supplementary specialties:
7. It supports PHP, Visual Basic, JavaScript, C, C++, and C## in different languages.
8. Multiple platforms are supported, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS.
A majority of websites are written in version 7 of PHP. Zend Studio is fit for PHP 7 and is used for the same purpose by most developers. Zend Studio has the specialty of having optimum speed. Without spending any additional time, you can write and debug code using Zend Studio and Zend Debugger.
X-ray, Xdebug, and Zend Debugger are integrated, and PHP scripts are debugged. It is a complete PHP IDE, and it comes with a unique set of features that can deploy applications, including those in the cloud, on different servers. There is also an option for developers to use Eclipse plugins and extend Zend Studio.
Some unique Zend Studio points:
⚫ Enables better code with an intelligent code editor
⚫ Allows (independently or with the Zend server) debugging and profiling
⚫ Interoperability leverage: Git, GitHub, CVS, SVN, and
⚫ It is easy to deploy, and apps can be deployed on private and public clouds.
⚫ DPI scaling and other HiDiPi displays' resolution capabilities
2. Code Lobster
Codelobster IDE is an IDE developed by the software firm Codeobster. Among all the PHP development tools, the developer community considers this to be a favorite. You might have heard of PHP frameworks like Laravel, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Joomla, Drupal, and Symfony, which our PHP developers love. All of these are supported by Codelobster, which is one of the contributing factors to its popularity.
If it was not for the quality of CodeLobster to simplify and organize it, the development process could be complicated. Another thing that developers find helpful is that for languages such as JavaScript, HTML, Cascading Style Sheets, and the names of cases, functions, and characteristics, it has implemented auto-complete tag features. That implies that there is no fear of forgetting them.
Using its internal PHP debugger, developers can also locally validate their code. Besides all this, this tool also detects the current server settings automatically and configures the needed files, making it more comfortable for you to use the free debugger.
Some unique CodeLobster points:
⚫ The PHP debugger contains all the information you get when a compiled language is debugged.
⚫ Helps to find the root cause of complicated, challenging, and easy bugs
⚫ Plugins for many standard WordPress, Joomla, and Magento frameworks
⚫ Keywords, DOM elements & their properties are autocompleted.
Supplementary specialties:
⚫ Supports languages such as PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and HTML
⚫Windows, Fedora, Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, Mac OS, and Mint are Supported Platforms:
⚫Content Management Systems Supported: Drupal, Magento, WordPress, and Joomla
3. Sublime Text 3
For the PHP developers out there, it is one of the most classy and sturdy text editors. It has the elegance and robustness of the Sublime of PHP. It has unusual designs and feature-rich features that make it one of the developer community's favorite source code editors.
It is incredibly lightweight in addition to this also supports OS X, Windows, and Linux. Sublime Text 3 is not at all an IDE, but you can install specific plugins/packages and make it an appropriate editor for various PHP apps to be developed. The debug client-CodeBug, Sublime PHP companion, Simple PHPUnit, CodIntel, and PHPDoc is essential packages.
It is indeed a customizable cross-platform text editor with a custom UI toolkit that you can use to use appropriate vital shortcuts to climb across symbols, words, or lines.
Some unique Sublime Text points:
⚫Allows multiple sections to make more than ten changes at a time,
⚫Allows multiple lines to interact at once and modifies variable names and other attributes
⚫Supports editing splits
⚫Has immediate project switch functionality
⚫Effective Palette of Commands
⚫It has a free distraction mode.
⚫Many APIs and Packages for Plugins
Supplementary Specialties:
⚫ Almost all popular programming languages are supported,
⚫ Platforms supported: Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.
4. NetBeans
NetBeans is a PHP IDE initially developed by Sun Microsystems as an open-source and was later owned by Oracle. It is now moving towards Apache and is known as NetBeans Apache. It was created for Java development and was slow, but PHP development services are more supportive of the new version and faster. It has over 18 million downloads and operates in an open-source, integrated development ecosystem with one of the largest developer groups.
Using NetBeans, you can develop large-scale web apps, and a range of languages such as English, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Brazilian, Russian, and Portuguese are also supported. Apart from this, the popular PHP frameworks such as Zend, Smarty Doctrine, and Symfony2 have incredible support resources. It also uses Laravel-IDE-helper to help Laravel and allow other frameworks such as FuelPHP, CakePHP, Yii, and WordPress Content Management System.
NetBeans' top features such as generating getter setter, effective project management, completion and editing of smart code, quick fixes, hints, code templates, and refactoring are the reason why it is so popular.
When it comes to NetBeans, debugging is very useful as well. Locally and remotely, developers can use a command line or xDebug together. Moreover, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS are also taken into account by NetBeans, and web development is supported. NetBeans is one such PHP IDE that has Git support and comes with SSG support.
Some unique NetBeans points:
⚫Folding of code and formatting
⚫Completion of smart code and editing
⚫Supporting cross-platforms
⚫Rectangular choice
⚫Getter Generation Setter
⚫Helps write bug-free code
⚫The rapid development of user interfaces
⚫Try/catch the completion of code.
⚫Highlighting syntax
⚫Additional Specialties:
⚫It supports PHP, JavaScript, C, C++, and HTML5 in multiple languages.
⚫Supported Platforms: Windows, Linux, macOS, and Solaris
5. AWS Cloud 9
AWS Cloud 9 is a cloud-based IDE. Using just your browser, you can code, execute, and debug your code. It has a code editor, debugger, and terminal and is a complete solution. The most satisfying part is that all you need to use an internet-connected computer is that your location does not matter at all.
This open-source cloud IDE provides a development environment for hundreds of programming languages such as C, C++, JavaScript, and Python, not just for PHP or web development. It has pre-packaged tools and environments that developers can use to start coding and develop web applications with features such as live preview and testing for browser compatibility.
With collaborative coding or programming functions, the developers collaborate with their colleagues. This implies that developers can share with their peers and fellow developers their development environment.
It also enables them to pair a program and track real-time inputs with colleagues or team members.
The significant part of using Cloud 9 is that it allows you to create and execute apps without servers, define resources, and debug them. It is effortless to build a serverless application, and they can code without problems in their browser.
Some AWS Cloud9 Unique Points:
⚫Carry out analysis of real-time language
⚫File Management Marking or Tabbing
⚫The process of debugging is integrated.
⚫Directly Iterate Your Code
⚫Allows AWS services to be accessed
⚫Picture-editor built-in
⚫Code Reformatting
⚫Additional Specialties:
⚫PHP, JavaScript, C, C++, and HTML5 languages are supported.
⚫Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Solaris Platforms are supported.
Conclusion
These are the top tools for PHP creation that you can use for your web app or website projects. These PHP tools are only a handful of the many available tools available on the market. The best part is that most of them are open-source and have excellent debugging features, such as syntax highlighting.
We hope you have found this article helpful. Feel free to bookmark it as once we review, we will continue to add more PHP resources to the list.