Nice write up. I look forward to reading some of the reviews.

Zend Studio is the complete package. It is very easy to use(it reminds me of Microsoft’s Visual Studio, but for PHP). It has HTML capabilities. The only thing that is bad is that it is written in Java and it is slow when it starts up. It takes 3-5 seconds.

Zend Studio looses points on items 3,4,5,7,8. I am now testing version 5. Even after defragmenting and optimizing windows as much as possible it takes 20 seconds to start. The PC is 2.5ghz cpu with 756mb of ram running windows 2000 pro.

You might try EngineSite editor also. Cheaper and work better I think.

I have just downloaded Enginsite for PHP and was impressed by it. But then I tried working with it and it has some quirks that I consider bugs.

• if you click close all it not only closes all the files but also the project. Not good and irritating.
• The default project view shows all files in a straight list without directories. The files are in order by name so all the file with the name changelog.txt are put together and show in a row. To get directories you have to go to local view. But then you have to click on the highest point of the directory system and hunt down. The tree veiw is not open as a standard. This is one of my pet peeves so it puts this very nice editor on my crap list.

Check out NuSphere PhpED - http://www.nusphere.com. 4.5 is really, really fast, all bells and whistles are there too. Comes at $299 - was totaly worth it for me, they are native windoz and I hate Java UI.

The absolutely only IDE I have come across that comes close to what you are wanting. I have used Zend studio (3.2 through 5.X) and each revision sucks worse than the last. I have used PSPad, which is not an IDE, and it is OK, but it is really a glorified text editor. But Eclipse has absolutely kicked butt for me in recent months. And it is free. And comes with some pretty good features. In my opinion. But above all, I would totally not recommend Zend Studio to anybody anymore. Not as long as Eclipse is available.

http://www.ultraedit.com/index.php?name=Content&pid=150

It has most of what you listed and it is fast. :D

Code completion works fine with php built-in functions, but how can I get more detailed description? In php eclipse hovering mouse over php function would bring up detailed description.

This IDE is quite nice to use no doubt, but lacks true intellisense. It seems to me that alot of people who review these PHP editors / advise others to use product x or product y must be using php purely for scripting purposes.

It seems rather evident that creating OO based web applications is not very common amongst reviewers in general. I say this because the only IDE that even comes close to useful for large scale, OO based, web applications is Zend Studio. Nothing else evens come close.

When you create any piece of software, including medium to large scale web apps, you create upwards of 100+ classes which is essentially the guts of your entire app. That being said, you practically create your own library of classes that perform all the funtionatlity and get created from small php files!

For instance:
< ?

include(...);

$page = new Page();
$page->display();

etc, etc.

?>

Now any GOOD IDE would bascially require you to type

$page = new [a list of all your classes should drop down!!!!]
$page->[a list of all the public functions, etc should drop down from class Page only!!!, not every single class youve created as per php-eclipse]

this type of functionality is ESSENTIAL! it is not good enough to just auto complete php functions from thbe language itself or as PHP eclipse seems to do, show every single function from every single class. A good IDE also needs to give you a list of classes you have created when typing $a = new …

When you have a library of 200+ classes it is impossible for you to be expected to rememebr every single function / class name or even for you to need to type it out. It is beyond annoying and defeats the whole purpose of having a IDE if you need to browse through a list of classes, open the class you want to use to find the function name you need to call.

Sorry but for large scale developement of OO based webapplications, nothing else even comes close to zend that handles the above functionality i have outlined with ease. And so it should yells our Visual Studios and every other good IDE in history.

As far as debugging is concerned, alot of IDE’s i have tested (cant think of a PHP IDE that I have not) have similar debugging capabilities. Once again Zend handles this perfectly fine and in many cases it is almost impossible to use the debugging capabilities of any IDE due to the stateless nature of the web / AJAX.

I highly recommend Zend for anyone that demands an IDE to make life easier from an OO / large scale dev point of view. For small scripting purposes, or adding a bit of database functiontliy to website, I dont think it much matters what you use!

If php eclipse just had this functionality I would seruiosuly consider upgrading. Zend can be sluggish but really with a average dev computer of today (p4, 3Ghz, 1-2Gb ram, windows vista) you hardly notice it.

The IDE i was refering to in my above comments titled “The Ide is quite nice to..” at the beginning of my comments was PHP Eclipse. The title seemd to have vanished after editing, my apologies for any confusion.

I have not tried PHPeclispe yet. Right now we are using PHPed as a standard editor. But I am already not liking it because the pages will not parse if they are not a part of a project.

PHPed is the only thing i could use apart from Zend. It has the functionality outlined in my first post about true intellisense, though I feel Zends is faster and more comprehensive. Zend also tends auto complete html in php files, etc, though Zend lacks auto complete for css which is something they really need to implement.

Dare I no IDE for php i have used has auto complete for the javascript DOM model when coding with JS. PHPed is probably the closest to Zend i can find, and on my PC they both run as fast as each other. If version 5 PHPed is a decent improvement then Zend will probably be relegated to my second IDE of choice.

The biggest problem with PHPed is (as you pointed out) the annoying project configuration, where by all existing projects have to be re-created and each folder, re-created (at least I couldnt work out a quicker way to add a new project).

One other big minus to phped, is the lack of code folding (very useful when going through classes), there are a number of smaller features that i would also say phped lacks relative to zend.

Notepad2 and your own webserver, not XAMPP. Make your own, add php and sql yourself.

VS.php It has intelligent autocompletion of your classes and functions in addition to the built in stuff.

Great article and excellent points.

Well, here it is about two years after the article was written and I have to say that the quality of php ide’s is still pretty poor. I just spent a very frustrating couple of weeks installing lots of different ide’s from lot’s of different companies. Although I had been using a tolerable (free) editor (with a non-functioning debugger), my project got so large that I *had* to have a decent debugger. And it is terrible that the current state of php debugging is still so bad.

The bottom line for me was that NuSphere has a pretty good debugger, to the extent that I tested it, their debugger appeared to be better than anyone else’s. But I did not like their editor design, those pop out side panels drove me nuts, it felt like my screen was booby-trapped and I constantly had to be careful of where I put my mouse; also it’s totally PHP centric, no JavaScript support. Their code obfusticator is a pretty neat feature. I may yet end up buying a copy of NuSphere, but I do heavy JavaScript development and their editor just did not satisfy my needs. And besides that it also happens to be the most expensive one out there.

After looking at quite a few ide’s I ended up choosing RapidPHP/WeBuilder as the best all-around solution, it’s an outstanding editor with a tolerable debugger.

I think you will find that RapidPHP scores pretty high on most of the things that are on that list (their approach to project management takes some getting used to, but it works okay). It is not perfect, none of them are. But it does have some very responsive developers and an active community. Over-all, I strongly preferred their editor to any other, it has good multi-language support and very smart intellisense including html. And at $60 (USA) it also happens to be cheaper than any of the others (except the free ones). see http://www.blumentals.net

For source code control, I tried quite a few including the majors, and ended up using http://www.bazaar-vcs.org it has some very innovative technology. Has excellent handling for binary files and renames. The only downside is that because their network model is so different (and flexible) that it took quite awhile of reading the docs to figure out how best to use it. But if you are willing to invest the time, it is an outstanding approach.

Even though RapidPHP will do it if you really want it, I think that it is a very bad idea to save 10 zillion backups of your files in the same folder as this article suggests. What you end up with at the end is a huge clean-up headache. Far better to use a version control system and do a quick “commit”. Even though RapidPHP does not have built-in support for source code control like some of the others do, it’s not a problem because it does have support for adding your own commands to run other programs, and those commands show up on a menu. Besides, all the ones I looked at with built-in support only had support for one specific version control system, and it was usually cvs — which I won’t use for quite a few really good reasons. With RapidPHP plus Bazaar, you could create a menu item that all you do is click on it and your project is automatically updated in the version control system — result equals archived files with history tracking and no clutter.

So there you go, after a couple of weeks of effort of evaluating different ide’s and vcs’s. YMMV but what I came up with are:

RapidPHP / WeBuilder http://www.blumentals.net
and bazaar vcs http://www.bazaar-vcs.org

I also like http://www.winmerge.org for quick visual comparisions of files and branches.

After learning that RapidPHP could not do remote debugging of my Linux/Apache server, I chose http://www.wampserver.com as an easy way to install apache on windows. I rejected XAMPP for the same reason you did, it’s a kitchen sink approach that tries to turn your computer into a full blown ftp and web server with all the complexity and overhead that entails, when all that you really want/need is a minimal system for development and testing purposes.

One thing though, after you install WAMP, you need to downgrade the version of php (same thing applies to XAMPP). This is because of some as yet unfixed bugs in the windows version of php 5.2.5. Just replace the version that comes with WAMP, with the version available from RapidPHP. This one piece of advice will save you many hours of frustration.

– codeslinger (compsalot.com)

1) One-click Debugging. There should be an easy way to setup the project to, upload only the files you changed to a webserver (local or otherwise), hit debug, and test out that change you just made with one click. This is the biggest single speed-up an IDE can give to a programmer. The build process should be flexible enough to customize (Phing, Ant, shell scripts, FTP scripting, batch, etc).

2) Version Control plugins. Not having version control integration is primitive, and forcing users to stick to only one package is fascist. There should be support for a variety of version control systems out there (CVS, Svn, Clearcase) which are integrated with sensible defaults (check-out files on edit, update sandbox on opening project), which can be easily extensible.

3) Extension support. Give support to Smarty, CSS, HTML/XML, Javascript, PEAR, and PECL.

“#8… I always find myself making several copies of files as I work to give me a stepping back or history capability. ”

You want to tell me you are not using version control for this?

I just stumpled upon phpDesigner 2008 at http://www.mpsoftware.dk and this IDE for PHP and other webtechnologies seems to cover all the things an IDE for PHP must have!

It is fast, easy to learn and most important of all it support working with oop in php!! And yes, it covers the entire 10-list in the article!

phpDesigner 2008 is a “must” have web tool for every webdeveloper out there - I am very happy about it!!

/Sean

Did I forgot to mention that there is also full debug support in phpDesigner 2008 too? Yes there is! :)

My advice as a professional developer is: Just try it you won’t be disappointed! :)

My choice is Codelobster PHP Edition
It is free PHP IDE with Drupal, Joomla, WordPress and Smarty plug-ins available.