I'm in the middle of a project created using CakePHP framework. I have been using notepad++ all along until now I am deciding to use Eclipse. The reason I like about notepad++ is its agility and simplicity. I tried opening eclipse today creating a new PHP project--it all seems more complex and complicated, I wonder what are the drawbacks if I changed in the middle of the way, to use Eclipse on my existing project. I also see there are some meta files along with misc. files automatically created when we start a project, does it mess up with the existing files? Ecplise prompted and asked to send data when we opened it, I wonder if that affects the privacy of our project.
Any advice related to the problems addressed would be appreciated. Thanks.
Best regards,
John Maxim
You could try Aptana 3.0. It's basically Eclipse optmized for PHP. Eclipse is a very configurable general IDE, but it can be daunting for new users, and there will be much functionality that you won't need.
Doing PHP with Eclipse is best with PDT (PHP Development Tools).
I use it with symfony and it's pretty good.
By default it does code completion, folding, syntax highlighting, bracket matching. If you use CVS you can also integrate that into Eclipse.
If you use XDebug or Zend Community that is also able to be integrated.
EDIT: Eclipse doesn't mess with your files, it adds three things to a normal PHP project (.settings folder, .buildpath, & .project). All of which are easy to remove and there are no lingering files/folders from Eclipse in your code.
Also, about security, I believe it just sends usage statistics, none of the code that you've written. But I'm not completely sure about this.
Another option is to try NetBeans.
I also used Notepad++ for all my work until a few months ago when I decided to give NetBeans a try. I had already tried it and Eclipse in the past but they both seemed to be too heavy for what I was doing. However, the most recent release of NetBeans worked out perfectly for me and has given me a great boost in productivity.
It does everything that I needed it to do and isn't as heavy as Eclipse, at least based on my limited experience.
I would suggest you give PHPStorm from Jetbrains a try. It's simpler than Eclipse or Aptana but much smarter than notepad++.
It's got code completion, source control integration (HG, Git, Subversion, etc.) Deployment setups that handle file copy, FTP, etc. I've switched from Dreamweaver to PHPStorm and haven't looked back.
There's a 45 day trial and the price is very reasonable. ($99 for personal license) Also, version 2.0 is imminent and packs a TON of new features.
Related
I've recently started using PHP for OO development. On OSX, I have outgrown Coda and feel like Textmate takes more time to set up than to actually use. I've downloaded a few of the "real" IDEs, but I feel like they are overkill and I can't find any way to ease myself into it and/or they are way too busy.
I'm looking for something that does code folding, validation, can colorize PHP/PDO/HTML in the same document, and hopefully do completion of my classes and methods that doesn't require 6 months to be productive again.
Can anyone throw me a bone?
Aptana
Eclipse PDT
Netbeans
Kate
Currently I'm using Aptana Beta 3 and there are a couple of bugs, but with the new IDE coming out in a couple of months it should be great. Been a avid Aptana user for a couple of years now.
NOTE: Aptana was Acquired by Appcelerator
I personally use netbeans 6.9.1 and have been very happy with it. Here are my favorite features:
-- functions, classes, comment blocks and other structures are automatically set up for code folding, but you can also highlight any block and make an arbitrary code fold.
-- syntax highlighting is good
-- full support for new php 5.3 features (namespaces etc.)
-- the autocomplete works, but also stays out of the way when I don't need it.
-- refactoring works really well
-- it has a lot of built in macros, plus you can create your own
-- it does nice, fast code validation.
-- completely supports xdebug through a local/remote web server.
-- has built in symfony support
-- tracks polymorphism well
-- I program a lot of c/c++ and java as well, so its really nice to get familiar with just one IDE.
-- it has seamless built in supprt for SVN/CVS and other SCMs. Things like renaming/deleting a file in the IDE play nice with your SCM. You can also commit, update, diff etc. in the ide. It also does live diff via colors on the left hand side.
-- I really like the scm diff features.
-- the learning curve isn't too steep, I feel the IDE's features/commands are pretty intuitive.
Overall I have been really happy with netbeans. I have used a lot of other IDE's and none of them are bad, but they just lack certain features that I need. netbeans is not perfect either, but for me its the best IDE I have been able to find. The things I don't really like about netbeans are:
-- everything has to be a project, you can't just work on some code without netbeans creating metadata. However, the location of the metadata storage is customizable, so it doesn't interfere with your source file directory structure.
-- profiling doesn't really work unless you install some weird solaris stuff.
-- it can't mount an svn+ssh working copy, you have to pull it down locally. if you want to use the SCM features.
-- it can be a little slow if you have a lot of large projects open at a time. You can close the projects so netbeans doesn't scan the source code continuously, and that helps. Re-opening a project isn't too slow or difficult either.
All in all, netbeans isn't really breaking any new ground, vim, eclise, phpide and others all do similar things. I just feel like those things work better in netbeans and are easier to access.
hth
I have to suggest vim despite potentially not meeting your last requirement: "doesn't require 6 months to be productive again".
Vim does everything you listed, but has a very steep learning curve. Not likely six months, but you will be fumbling around for a while. In the long run it you'll probably find it worthwhile.
I use Eclipse PDT on a regular basis, but have been thinking about checking out PhpStorm. It looks like it could be a nice alternative (albeit not free).
I suggest use of Nusphere php ide , its too great for php, it has auto complete features and in built server and you can debug run time, you can also set browser for debugging your code , its true php debugger, i am using this debugger since last 3 years ,it’s amazing and it has inbuilt ftp feature so you can also debug your ftp file.
I have been searching for the perfect web development IDE for some time now. I first started coding with notepad when all I wrote was HTML. Clearly, that was a relationship not meant to last.
Eventually I discovered Notepad++ and the wonderful syntax highlighting that it does. However, I got frustrated when I started working with server-side code and eventually moved to Netbeans, which I have been using for about a year now.
I enjoy using Netbeans quite a bit. The syntax highlighting is fantastic, the ability to push a button and step through your server side code (once you get your apache server set up properly). And the diff engine on it is fantastic for viewing code side by side. I dislike the learning curve (it seems awfully steep to me), and I've recently wanted to try Zen coding, which I can't do with Netbeans.
So, I am looking for an IDE that allows stepping through server side code, and the ability to install plugins such as zencoding. A good Diff engine would be fantastic (but not a dealbreaker), and making code versioning a bit easier would also be points for it.
Here are some choices:
EngInSite
Eclipse
Komodo
phpDesigner
Zend Studio
While I myself enjoy the simpler things in life such as VI or even notepad++. Your problem is going to arise when you want to do debugging, as you found it requires an apache plugin. My best recommendation to you would to look at zend studio although it is not free. I've used it with non zend framework apps, and its pretty handy.
As Stijntjhe mentioned zend studio , if you want free software , use eclipse or eclipse pdt.
Netbeans also could be good for it.
Hi recently i have started the same journey. And my main choices where eclipse with WPT, Aptana en Netbeans. And After a while I returned to Netbeans 7 beta. Which suits me perfectly fine. It is helps me in a robust way which in the end matter the most to me.
The Zeus IDE has support for HTML, CSS and Zen coding.
Zend Studio for Eclipse, I used it a while ago when I was still a windows user.
Html-Kit is also a good editor but if you're more advanced I prefer the first one.
Adobe Dreamweaver is also an excellent Web IDE. It is pricey (if you purchase it).
The best versions are MX2004, CS4, and CS5.
Surprised no one has mentioned UEStudio yet. It is not free, but is one of the more powerful editors out there.
And I second netbeans as well.
I've been battling with several IDE's so far without much success, so I decided it would be ask someone wiser. I'd love one to have these features:
Fast code completion;
Completion for HTML (with tags and tags' content), CSS and, preferably, jQuery;
Debugger which can work with WampServer installation;
Completion for native PHP commands as well
Shortcut to go to a file in the current project/workspace (like Ctrl+Shift+O in Netbeans) --> What I meant here is that a shortcut to open a window, where you can type beginning of a file name and it will show you all matching files in project; so a way to navigate the project with keyboard only.
I have already tried some of IDE's:
Netbeans:
It is slow, really slow. The slowest IDE of them all I believe
Debugger had issues and overall I failed to make it work
You can barely customize auto-formatting (at least in the way I'd like to customize it) - you can either disable it or live with it
I am using it right now but strive to change it!
Eclipse PDT
Kinda slowish, though faster than Netbeans
There was no code hinting for native PHP commands #_#
After restarting IDE, the Debugger decided to stop adding ?X-DEBUGwhatever stuff to links and it stopped working as result
Subclipse didn't work!
Nusphere PHP Edit
Fast and shiny, good for my netbook, but there is no "Go to file" command
No JS hinting
Komodo and PHPDesigner 7 were disqualified for some reasons I can't really remember now but they were severe.
I tested a wide variety of IDE's but there is a real lot of them and pretty difficult to test them all, which is why I'd appreciate some input about one which fits all the above specified needs.
Consider vim. It's painful at first, but it does meet all of your requirements, unless you also have a (as of yet unspoken) requirement for a Graphical User Interface.
Fast Code Completion: Fastest I've ever encountered, C-x C-o
Yes, Yes, and Probably.
vim can use xdebug to get this functionality. How to set up on linux.
Yes.
:o supports tabbed completion even.
PHPStorm is a relatively new contender in the IDE scene by the people who make IDEA and Resharper. I can't say it's blazingly fast, but it's geared specifically toward PHP and has a lot of nice features. I feel it is a considerable improvement over Netbeans or Eclipse.
You might want to try the pre-release of the next version, since they've added a lot of new features.
Funnily enough I decided to settle for Aptana 3 Beta. Though lots of features don't work it is awfully quick and I love the antialiased font. Thanks to all for help anyway!
I'm developing PHP apps that leverage several frameworks (though not the Zend Framework yet...) and I make good use of Javascript (mostly jQuery). All mark-up is XHTML, of course, with CSS, etc. I'm looking to move beyond the beautiful simplicity of Notepad++. I'm using Windows Vista. I'm trying to decide between Zend Studio 7 or Dreamweaver CS4.
They seem pretty on par with each other, but the price points are different. I've seen a few lists of "Good things about Dreamweaver" or "Good things about Zend Studio" but I've yet to find a head-to-head comparison.
Any suggestions on the next IDE to move up to? In addition to the language support and basic error checking (syntax-related, like missing semi-colons or something), I'm looking for two things that are absolutely necessary:
"Projects" or something similar --
open a project and it gives a tree
listing of all related files
beneath. I'm pretty sure both
support this.
As lightweight as possible. Vista's a hog as it is,
and I'd like to have a lightweight
enough IDE that having 10 files open
and moving between them won't drain
my resources.
Other niceties:
Automatic documentation (not sure
what the phrase is, the stuff in
comments above functions with the
#parm stuff).
Templating.
SVN
support.
FTP/File upload
capabilities.
... And, if Zend or Dreamweaver isn't the thing -- any suggestions about what is?
i would suggest Netbease IDE PHP 6.7.
In is free , not so huge like Zend Studio or Dreamweaver.
It has support for
Syntax-highlighting
Templates
PHP Unit
JQuery
Dojo
Code completion for JS / PHP / HTML
Version Control (SVN)
and much more..
Download Netbeans
I suggest try few open source alternatives
Eclipse PDT - Is very good for php but currently don't good support jquery.
Aptana - I build on top of Eclipse and has good support for JQuery. It also has page preview feature.
You can configure different debuggers to work with them like PDT, Zend, Xdebug... all of them can be configured easily.
Zned Studio is also build on top of Eclipse, I have never used that so I can't say anything about it.
I had the same question about year ago. From then I tried many different IDE environments and a found that the most suited one was Netbeans.
The deal with Netbeans was that due to some performance issues it was the solidest IDE there.
As sad as it may be, from my perspective it is much better product than the Zend Studio For Eclipse 6 or 7 witch costs about 400$, (trust me I tried it since I unfortunately wasted the money on licence before I actually tested all available options).
It has the best code completion inspection and assistance, witch you can check yourself by downloading these two IDE-s and trying to code complete chaining method calls.
Support for unit testing is also something worth mentioning since it works. ZDE also has that feature but it is not that stable since sometimes it wont run.
JavaScript support is also solid, actually I think that is better than one in the Aptana, but the only downside of it is that is pretty slow when working with huge libraries such as Dojo. Now some may argue about that but the fact is that (at least with Dojo&dijit) library it has the best code inspection, and fine code completion support.
My opinion is that the only downside is the lack of support for Zend Debugger, and not so intuitive debugging variable, callstack and breakpoint windows.
For now my felling is that this is the best PHP IDE available, something like the Zend Studio 5.5 when it came out.
Netbeans is the clear choice here as long as you aren't limited on memory. It's got a good-sized footprint, but there's no product that can compare...not even Zend.
That being said, the new Aptana 3 was supposed to bring back full-fledged PHP support that was removed from Aptana 2+ (PDT just isn't a good plugin folks), but now that Appcelerator has taken over Aptana I'm a bit skeptical that the focus toward PHP will continue.
Yes Aptana Studio is good for PHP and also Netbeans. I like Netbeans more because it feels more solid. But Aptana has propably the best auto-complete support for javascript of all editors, but I don't really like the appearance of the editor - looks too 'macish'.
I would recommend both actually, side by side as each has its strengths and weaknesses
Zend Studio is excellent for:
PHP class coding enables you to view and browse class hierarchies, provides autocomplete, one click access to PHP Manual
unit testing
debugging
profiling
version control integration
Dreamweaver CS4 for
HTML coding
CSS editing
Other visual design
To me, I still have that impression of Dreamweaver being drag and drop for web "designers" and creating horrible html output that does that validate sometimes. If this still happens with DW CS4, then I would definitely go with Zend Studio.
Zend Studio actually supports with all the Eclipse Plugins that I would like to add for unit testing and continuous integration.
But Aptana and NetBeans are free!!! Which I think Zend editor is not, haven't tried that. I like Netbeans!!! I like Dreamweaver CS4 and use it on daily basis at my job(but not coding php). It's quite nice but I feel it's strength is the help you get with css properties. Besides that it's not better than Netbeans. if you like a shiny cool look like DW so go for Aptana, it has the best javascript autocompletion - really cool!! Saves a ton of time!! Even auto-completion for your JQuery code and other JS frameworks I think.
Actually Dreamweaver has become more of a dev tool (but I'm not entirely convinced of that). It has integration with Subversion which is kind of cool.
I like NetBeans because I've done some Java coding in it before and now it has support for PHP which is real nice, and it feels like a real dev. IDE.
But DW has this cool gray colors..
I always strive to increase my productivity when developing applications and in the span of the last few years, I can say that I have made good steps towards increasing that productivity, but I still find I need more tools or methods. I need to edit faster and learn touch typing (currently in the process) and therefore I find a need to move to Vim. It has been now over one year I have trashed Windows and moved to Linux (Ubuntu to be more precise) and I am using the IDE Zend Studio combined with Aptana Studio for developing OO PHP5.3 websites. Although the IDE does everything I would need from an IDE (which I will enumerate shortly), it lacks the editing mode Vim would give.
So my question is: how would I have all the same following 'killer features' I already have within this IDE in Vim?
Here is the extensive list of features I need to keep the productivity at an high level for me:
Code completion for PHP5.3, not just PHP5 and not just the PHP functions, but any libraries that are added to the buildpath, such as Zend Framework and my own library.
Code formatting, I don't use it much, except for XML files, but that is something I would need soon as I will start to lead more people within my company and formatters will help to keep the code coherence.
I use Oxygen XML editor within Zend Studio (eclipse) for editing Docbook XML technical documentation. It has already proven of great quality to me and I would like to keep it.
Syntax validation for any file extensions that can be used on the Web, mostly for me would be PHP5.3 syntax, html syntax (not that important), CSS, Javascript (that's why I have Aptana Studio integrated with Zend Studio, their javascript editor is great with JQuery support)
Maybe a git integration just like EGit (eclipse plugin)? Not required but a nice addon.
Debugging features (already using it through the ZendDebugger)
Powerful searching within files
I know that is a lot, but I am already having all this within my IDE and as I said, I feel the need to move to mode based editors like Vim to be more productive when typing and I feel the learning curve and time invested in setting up all of this will be well worth the effort.
I know that there is Eclim, which integrates eclipse to its daemon and I am thinking of using just that, if anyone has feedback on Eclim used with Zend Studio that would be appreciated.
Along with Eclim, if I need more vim plugins to achieve my needs, I would gladly appreciate it if someone could direct me to them.
Aright, after playing around much with the tools that would increase productivity using vim I have made my choice.
I first installed GVim with the MiniBuffer, NERDTree, Bufkill, Matchit, PDV (phpDocumentator), taglist plugins and others to make sure I would be as much comfortable as I would need for replacing the functionnalities I already had within Eclipse. I also installed Eclim, which is a pretty good plugin to integrate with eclipse and it works great with completion assist when installed on Zend Studio 7.1 (although there is a minor bug within Zend Studio's completion assist that restricts its use on Eclim). I also followed those three blogs (O'Phinney's, Thomas Koch's and Schlitt's to make sure I was at the top of productivity). After trying my hands on all of that I still felt I was far from comfortable for some GVim editing.
Since I am already sold on the powers behind touch typing and Vim, there was absolutely no way I would return on bare editors such as the one Eclipse provide. Therefore I tried, viPlugin, Vrapper and vimPlugin, which were not what I expected from them. The viPlugin and Vrapper, which emulates vi into Eclipse, as opposed to vimPlugin who just integrates Vim as an external editor (rendering code completion, refactoring and such unusable), are not enough mature yet. Visual block is not working and some nifty bug gets on your way when you start to really use them. I am not bashing those plugins since they are still pretty good, but it was just not what I expected.
Then I just stumbled on Netbeans and their new version 6.8 released on December 2009, which now have fully support on PHP5.3, PHPUnit, Code coverage reports, refactoring, XDebug integration, Code completion. What made the grand finale is when I saw the jvi plugin which emulates vi into netbeans (and yes, visual block works!!). That plugin is just absolutely amazing and works very very well.
The only thing that was left out, as asked in my question, was the Oxygen XML Editor which is not integrated in a netbeans plugin, but I can still use their native editor so it was not even an issue for me. For Git integration, there is a plugin out there for netbeans, but I sticked with git gui.
If you guys out there want the best of both worlds just like I wanted, you should definitely checkout the new release for netbeans for PHP5.3 development, while keeping Vim as your main editor.
I'm interested in using Eclim with Zend Studio as well. However, I already have a Zend Studio Project and installing Eclim requires the creation of an "eclim project". That process, according to the eclim installation notes, will create a .project file in the root directory of the project. And that means it will likely overwrite the ZendStudio .project file...which will corrupt my project files... something I don't want to do in case I decide that eclim is not for me.
Let me know how it works out for you.