Comparison of 7 kinds of popular PHP integrated development tools

This article explores all the uses of the integrated development environment (IDE) and compares the costs and benefits of the 7 popular Ides.

Writing a series of articles on PHP gives me a deeper understanding of the world of PHP developers. I've talked to a lot of PHP programmers, and what surprises me most is that only a few people use the IDE. Most programmers use text editors, such as Notepad, Emacs, or Vim on Microsoft Windows.

The text editors I mentioned (and I didn't mention them) are pretty good-I don't want to talk about which editor is better. However, I would like to emphasize that not using a text editor will give you a deeper insight into the PHP code. Almost everyone sees the PHP project as just a file directory (a very one-sided view). Now let me take you into the world of the IDE and show you what the IDE can-or should-bring to you, and introduce you to the seven most popular Ides.

What is an IDE?

In short, the IDE provides a one-stop service for coding work. The IDE includes an editor in which you can edit code, debug your code, view the code in a browser (usually embedded), and check in and check out source control. To support these features, the IDE has a set of features that are not found in basic editors, such as Notepad or Vim. Of course, you can do this by extending the editor, but the IDE includes all of these features in a thin package-and preconfigured:

Project

A key feature of the IDE is that it sees a PHP application as a project, not just a set of files. This concept--project--maintains additional information, such as source control configuration, database settings for debugging, and location of a critical directory.

Debugging

Another convenient feature is integrated debugging. With this feature, you can set breakpoints in the editor and stop when the PHP interpreter executes to this script. Starting with a breakpoint, you can examine the value of the local variable and diagnose the problem in your code. You can use the Echo statement to check values in your code, or you can use the error log to get the value of a variable.

Code Intelligence

PHP is a very regular programming language, which means it follows a simple pattern. These patterns not only make your code easy to write, but also make it easy for the IDE to check your code in your project. In addition, they can help you write programs by displaying the results of a check. For example, if you define a class named MyClass in your project, when you type the keyword new, the IDE immediately provides a pop-up window that includes the MyClass as an option. When you use an object of that type, the IDE displays its available methods and instance variables. When you start typing a function command, the IDE displays its available parameters. To be fair, this is the primary reason why you should use the IDE instead of a text editor. This kind of code intelligence can effectively reduce the wrong class name, method name and parameter.

Class View

Another effect of the code intelligence engine in the IDE is that the IDE can produce a Class view of the project. Instead of displaying files, the system displays different classes that have been defined, regardless of the file they are in. When you click a class, the editor accesses the appropriate file and displays the corresponding class, method, or instance variable. This is a very good navigation method in large projects.

Multi-language support

Each of the Ides mentioned here supports not only PHP but also related language sets: JavaScript, structured Query Language (SQL), hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Because HTML and CSS are simpler, the IDE supports them best. Support for JavaScript often highlights syntax, but support is better than unsupported.