Thoughts on IDE's??

[amy.damnit]

I am new to PHP, but eager to become a "pro" ASAP!

 

What does everyone think about using an IDE with PHP?

 

What tools do you use?

 

I installed Eclipse PDT All-In-One on my MacBook.  I am getting the hang of it, but it still doesn't seem as user-friendly as the code editors/IDE I'm used to in the Microsoft world.  *sigh*

 

It is also frustrating in that there aren't any active and dedicated forums on Eclipse PDT, so I am hoping my fellow PHP developers can help guide me.

 

Happy Holidays,

 

 

Amy

 

[revraz]

http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php/topic,54859.0.html

[JasonLewis]

You won't become "pro" over night. ASAP could be a year. PHP, like anything, takes time to become good at. I don't think an IDE makes someone any better either.

[amy.damnit]

You won't become "pro" over night. ASAP could be a year. PHP, like anything, takes time to become good at. I don't think an IDE makes someone any better either.

 

Oh, I know it is a life-long pursuit, but at the same time, good "tools" can help get a person up-to-speed quicker.  (This I know from experience.)

 

It seems to me that being able to "step-through" code and trace variables is an enormous help, no?!

 

I have done quite a bit of Access/VBA, and I know the IDE/Debugger that comes with MS Access has been a life-saver for me, so I was looking for something similar with PHP for Mac.

 

My Eclipse PDT supposedly has a "Debugger", but I don't see how it works... 

 

 

Amy

 

[laffin]

U will be looking at 3 debuggers that I know about

• Zend I have used Zend Studio, its a great ide, howver it's slow (Java). But still is one of the best environments out there, the debugging facility is top notch.
  
• NuSphere I have used PHPEd with NuSphere's Debugger, its not bad but it does have a few faults that Zend has no problems with. Easily recognized by the DBG Listener tool
  
• XDebug I havent used at all, but due to some recent decisions, I thought I wud try a smaller development environment and started looking for tools to build a minimal environment.
   
  Taking a post about this development environment taken from another forums, which explains a lot more.
  

  
  Recently I had to reformat my system, and ya know how that goes afterwards when ya installing apps. Ya begin to to experiment with diff apps and so forth. Well this one was trying to keep my php development  small and fast. So I went out hynting for some new Toys, not to say they are perfect, but its a nice environment to get some coding projects done without apache hogging everything.
   
  Anyways here are the apps I've been playing with (Yes, all freeware/open source)
  

  1. PHP 5.2.8 I grabbed the big zip package, removed a bunch of crap I didnt need, prolly still some residual crap i can further remove.
     
  2. PHPConfig Ya ever hate going thru php.ini trying to set it up, this is a nice tool, but still needs updating, but still a nice tool nonetheless. Warning: This tool removes all comments in yer saved version of php.ini (it prompts u to which file ya are saving the .ini to)
     
  3. QuickPHP Whats this? QuickPHP is small webserver (still under developement), but its SMALL, and has a very interesting feature QuickPHP Mod, which is a replacement system for apache modules.
     
  4. XDebug An excellant debugger module for php, however it can be a pain to set up and get rolling.
     
  5. DevPHP2/3 A Very Interesting IDE for PHP, small & Fast.
     

   

  SO Far so good, but remember QuickPHP is still being developed, so it lacks a lot of features (And some basic ones as well), but this was an idea to stray off the bloated path of Apache development environment. And it does this quiet nicely.

   

  When working with DevPHP, Do not save XDebug PHP.ini settings, this will overwrite yer php.ini with only xdebug settings.

   

  PHP.ini XDebug Settings

  This is how i have my xdebug set to in my .ini

  [Xdebug]
  zend_extension_ts=C:\quickphp\ext\php_xdebug-5.2.5-2.0.3.dll
  xdebug.default_enable=On
  xdebug.debug_log_file=C:\quickphp\logs\devphp2.log
  xdebug.remote_enable=On
  xdebug.remote_mode=req
  xdebug.remote_handler=dbgp
  xdebug.remote_host=localhost
  xdebug.remote_port=9000
  xdebug.idekey=devphp
  xdebug.profiler_enable=On
  xdebug.profiler_output_dir=C:\quickphp\profiler\
  xdebug.profiler_output_name=timestamp
  ;xdebug.remote_autostart=1

   

  my quickphp folder looks like apache layout

  • QuickPHP
    • bin - I put QuickPHP & PHP executables here
      • mods - Custom modules for QuickPHP MOD system
        

    [*]logs - log files of course

    [*]profiler - for XDebug profiler information

    [*]data - Used for php session path

    [*]ext - php extensions

    [*]tmp remporary space (upload path)

    [*]webWeb Folder

    • QuickPHP - extra scripts that I am writing for QuickPHP MOD system
      

    [*]include - A PHP included folder for some libs I want to be acessible by all scripts

   

  so far this ways in at under 25MB (PHP is HUGE still so will be trimming this down further.

   

  Not bad for a complete development environment

   

  Anyways good luck

   

  So Far its a great setup (Except a bug I encountered, cant view a page in browser when ide is also open). But thats okay as devphp2 does have its own integerated broswer (IE & Mozilla). Other from that it does a pretty good job.

   

   

[BloodyMind]

I use Zend Studio but not sure there is a version for Mac there is one of Linux and MS Windows

It's so helpful auto complete, instant call to php manual to search for a php function

and u can ctrl+click on a function call, then it links to the resource of the function pretty brilliant,

 

it doesn't support smarty nor Javascript but I guess they have fixed that in the 6.1, don't download version 6.0 it has got a bug in the smarty templates which u might wanna use after sometime

 

'PHP Designer' is also good for a beginning

 

wish u good luck