For beginners, PHP Development chooses what development tools, and phpstorm features and git integration essentials

As a novice in PHP development, in fact, it is easy to make a misunderstanding, as if for other languages I am not a novice, for the moment, I to which language are novice, hey. The previous use of programming language or VB 5.0 just launched the era.

Before I did not use other PHP development tools, query and consulting after a few, we recommend the tools are different, the views are basically divided into the opposite two factions: the school is that for beginners, should first use a text editor, such as notepad++ this kind, for PHP used to be relatively ripe, then the IDE, such as Zend Studio, Eclipse, the reason is that the IDE provides a lot of new things for beginners or simply do not understand the powerful features, this will only scare the small novice, and will make it difficult for novices to focus on the program to write, and the text editor because almost nothing and appear very simple very cute, for beginners easy to grasp, another faction of the opinion is just the opposite, said for the novice, should first use the IDE, when PHP used to be relatively ripe, then use a text editor, the reason is to put aside other functions do not say, At the very least, the IDE provides important and powerful code-completion features that are important "technical support" for small beginners who have a very good language and almost every instruction to book, not only to save time, but to often deepen impressions.

In combination with my own experience, I would like to say how I feel, and I suggest that for beginners, especially for independent developers, the IDE should be used. This is like when you first learn to type, strictly according to the standard fingering practice is much more difficult than the direct use of two fingers, but also much slower, but after one weeks, the huge contrast appears, once the initial pain period, you will find that the use of standard fingering people typing faster than with two finger-poked people much faster.

This is the same for beginners who first started PHP development. Admittedly, comprehensive consideration, from the difficulty, there is no doubt that the use of the IDE than using a text editor is much more difficult, but the benefits are much greater, because since you have to face the dazzling and confusing interface and functional chunks, you have to struggle to read the IDE's help document, When you see the extra files that are automatically generated in a moment, you can't get over it, for those terms you've never seen, or have never heard of, you have basically no shortcuts except to find out what's going on, and in the whole process you'll actually learn a lot about what's important to the development you're working on. Because the IDE is designed to meet the most powerful enterprise-level development, using the IDE will broaden your horizons even if you're doing a very small project. And with a text editor, you have more chances to become a frog in the pond.

Other PHP Development tools I'm completely useless, just talk about the phpstorm I'm going to use. After reading Phpstorm's help document last night, Phpstorm impressed me as a novice with three features:

One is that it works together with almost any common version control tool.

The second is that it itself comes with a very cool version control system--local history. For any version control system, including Git, it is always able to track and save every commit version, and for each time the specific changes made between two commits, the version control system is powerless, in other words, The tracking granularity of the version control system can only be refined to the commit level. The local history provided by Phpstorm can further refine this tracking granularity to the smallest particle you can imagine and actually take (if compared to a mobile screen, it reaches the retina level).

Third, it can help you create and apply patches. In other words, with this feature, you can easily create an upgrade package for your project.

Whole, just for the above three points, you can feel the phpstorm of the tall and exquisite.

Here are some key points in configuring Phpstorm:

1. In Setting (file->setting), click on the PHP entry to configure the language level of the PHP you are using and the location of the interpreter.

2. After creating or opening your project directory, select Enable Version Control Integration in the VCs menu. Choose the git you want to use. That way, you'll be integrating Git into the phpstorm, and your little project is instantly managed by git.

3. In Phpstorm, you are unlikely to use another terminal, so choose your git bash path and startup mode in the shell path in setting terminal. Similar to this:

D:\Program Files (x86) \git\bin\sh.exe--login–i

4. In setting's version control Git, enter your git path in path to git executable. Similar to this:

D:\Program Files (x86) \git\bin\git.exe

5. After installing Git in Windows, the default directory for each startup of Git bash is your personal folder, which is about this:

C:\Users\XXXX

To eliminate the hassle of having to use the CD command in bash to change the working directory to your project directory every time you start Git bash, you can right-click the Git bash icon on your desktop, select Properties from the popup menu, and then on the Shortcut tab, start position Enter the path to your project folder. After you start bash, it will be directly in your project folder.

At this point, you can easily use Git commands in Phpstorm to manage versioning.

Tips for Beginners to learn Phpstorm

1. Read the Phpstorm help document at once. Phpstorm Online documents look a lot, in fact, really read fast, a night basically can read. It allows you to quickly familiarize yourself with the functionality, concepts, terminology and design concepts of the entire software, as well as basic usage.
2. Put all the menus, menu items, Windows, and tools of phpstorm all those things that you look at in the past and don't know what to do with. Get a rough look.

After all this basically you will not be timid to phpstorm, can help you to quickly enter the state, you will soon realize the benefits of the IDE and use it to start your work.

For beginners, PHP Development chooses what development tools, and phpstorm features and git integration essentials