PHP has become a popular server-side scripting language as most of the leading website development company prefers this for building website and web apps. It is the fastest language, along with many superior features in comparison to other server-side languages like Python and Ruby. The detailed documentation, numerous ready-to-use scripts, a huge community, and well-supported frameworks are some of them.
Moving one step ahead, experts have developed several PHP development tools to make it easier and increase the programming efficiency. These PHP tools are meant to account for a perfect Integrated Development Environment (IDE) where developers can efficiently build engaging, innovative and feature-rich projects.
Here are the top PHP development tools gaining popularity in 2021 among the web development communities.
PHP Storm
PHPStorm is lightweight, extremely fast and smooth and becomes the most standard choice to other PHP development tools. It works well with PHP frameworks like Zend Framework, Laravel, Symfony, CakePHP, Yii and with standard Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress, Drupal and Magento. This PHP IDE offers live editing support for the main front-end technologies like CSS, HTML5, JavaScript, and others; even for code refactoring, unit testing and debugging. Developers using this IDE are able to integrate with databases, remote deployment, version control systems, command-line tools, composer, rest-client and many other tools.
Zend Studio
Zend Studio offers optimal speed, and this is the reason why most web developers opt for it. Developers are not required to put any extra effort or time to write and debug code in Zend Studio. It supports PHP 7 and debugs PHP scripts by integrating X-ray, Xdebug, and Zend Debugger. It’s a comprehensive PHP IDE that comprises an exciting set of features and power to deploy applications on various servers including, on the cloud. Moreover, developers can extend Zend Studio using Eclipse plugins.
Eclipse
While searching for the best PHP development tools, Eclipse appears the most common one in the result. It allows selecting from a broad range of plugins, making it easier to develop as well as simplify the complex PHP code. It also supports customization and extension of the IDE to address the needs of the project. Eclipse can support both GUI and non-GUI applications. This cross-platform PHP editor is ideal for large-scale PHP projects.
NuSphere PhpED
PhpED is NuSphere’s patented integrating PHP development tool that comprises an advanced PHP editor, Profiler, PHP debugger, and database client & code insight. It provides several tools and tweaks that make the entire web development process less tedious and smooth. PhpEd speeds up the application development process with the help of the commercial PHP accelerator called PhpExpress. When it comes to developing complex websites and web applications, this IDE seems an ideal option. It supports JavaScript, HTML, and CSS3 while offering massive support for PHP 7.1. This IDE has refactoring capabilities that allow developers to improve their code and work through the most popular PHP frameworks like Laravel, Zend, and Yii.
Netbeans
NetBeans comes with features to support multiple languages. Initially, it was used for Java development, but the current version is lightweight, faster as well as supports PHP development services. It even includes the extension to support other programming languages like C, C++, and HTML5. It’s an open-source PHP development tool that works with almost all popular PHP frameworks, including Zend, Symfony 2, CakePHP, FuelPHP, Smarty and WordPress CMS.
Cloud 9
Cloud9 is yet another open-source cloud IDE that provides a development environment for hundreds of programming languages- PHP, C, C++, JavaScript, Python, a few names. It offers a pre-configured environment, called workspace, where developers can start coding immediately and build web applications with features like browser compatibility testing & live preview. They can also team up with their colleagues using collaborative coding features.
It offers a flawless experience for creating serverless apps that let the developers define resources, execute serverless apps and debug at the remote. As Cloud9 ensures the effortless building of serverless applications, coding can be done on the browser.
Code Lobster
A popular one among the PHP development tools CodeLobster IDE from Codelobster software firm, supports most of the PHP frameworks like Symfony, Laravel, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Magento, Joomla, and Drupal. CodeLobster IDE streamlines as well as simplifies the development process. Developers don’t require to remember the names of the arguments, functions, attributes, and tags – it has implemented all these with autocomplete features for HTML, JavaScript, PHP, and CSS. It allows validating the code locally using its internal PHP debugger. It also supports CMS like Drupal, Joomla, Magento and WordPress.
PHPDebugbar
PHPDebugbar is a debugger that can run with any project and display data from a broad range of web apps. This PHP development tool consists of two parts, namely: mainDebugBar object & data collectors and the render. A StandardDebugBar includes a pre-configured built-in set of collectors. PHPDebugbar can catch bugs in PHP, JavaScript and HTML bugs and can inspect CSS elements, monitor network, and check JavaScript code. It can be the best option for profiling data from any web application.
All the above-listed tools are feature-packed and help the developers to create PHP websites without any hassle. However, you can find many other PHP development tools available in the market – free and paid. The tools we have listed are the ‘best PHP development tools’ used by a leading website development company to design and develop flawless websites.
However, things in technology evolve faster. You should keep an eye out for the latest trends of PHP IDE that appears almost every day.
To get the most engaging and intuitive website, you can get in touch with Webmobril Technologies. It’s a leading website development company that uses the latest trends and technologies to design and develop high-end customizable and responsive websites.