Free PHP Development Tools

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In the world of PHP there are a lot of free tools available. You can find them in numerous places either from their official website, developer’s blog. In this article I will present a bunch of tools which can significantly improve your working process and will definitely simplify your daily routine.

Each tool has different functionality but have one thing in common – they all have to do something with PHP.

UltraEdit

UltraEdit

  • Supported operating systems: Windows, Linux, macOS
  • Price: $79.95/year (up to 5 installs); 30-day free trial period
  • License: see EULA
  • Supported languages: HTML, CSS, Markdown, XML, JavaScript, JSON, PHP, MySQL, Python, Perl, Ruby, C, C++, and more

UltraEdit is a premium source code editor that has been on the market since 1994. It’s a stable and well-tested application with a user base of more than 4 million customers. UltraEdit works out of the box and features a pleasant and user-friendly onboarding experience. In addition to the customizable UI, it also comes with powerful developer features that help you work in the cloud or on a remote server, backing up files, managing projects, encrypting/decrypting files, and more.

If you work with large files that make other code editors crash, UltraEdit can be the best PHP editor for you, as it has a huge file handling feature — one of the reasons why it’s so popular among programmers. Besides UltraEdit, the license also includes UltraCompare Pro, a powerful file comparison tool that supports many different file types and integrates with the major version control systems, including Git, Subversion, and CVS.

Best features:

  • custom themes and layouts
  • powerful search functionality (in and across files)
  • live preview for HTML and Markdown
  • powerful command palette
  • multi-caret editing, multi selection, column mode, file comparison, configurable tab options, and more
  • support for the FTP/SFTP and SSH/Telnet protocols for remote development
  • cloud syncing
  • supports retina and other high-resolution screens

3. Rapid PHP Editor

Rapid PHP Editor

Rapid PHP Editor

  • Supported operating systems: Windows
  • Price: $49.95 for non-commercial use; $69.95 for commercial use; first 30 uses are free (evaluation period)
  • License: see EULA
  • Supported languages: HTML, CSS, LESS, Sass, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, XML, Smarty, .htaccess

Rapid PHP Editor is a commercial code editor for Windows operating systems. Even though the word ‘PHP’ is included in its name, it’s not only a PHP editor, but you can also use it to edit other file types. Rapid PHP Editor is part of a product line that features the same editor with incremental features. The main reason for this kind of setup is to keep the editor as lightweight as possible. For instance, if you need only HTML and CSS, you can use Rapid CSS Editor, but if you also need PHP support you can go with Rapid PHP Editor that’s essentially the same tool with extra functionality.

On its homepage, Rapid PHP Editor claims to be the fastest PHP editor on the market — and it loads very quickly indeed. It’s a beginner-friendly editor with an easy-to-understand onboarding wizard that helps with initial configuration (you can also opt out if you want). During the configuration process, you can integrate Rapid PHP Editor with your local web server so that you can preview your PHP files right inside the editor.

You can configure any aspect of Rapid PHP Editor, from design to layout to functionality. As it includes powerful features for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, it can significantly speed up your workflow if you do both frontend and backend development. It also comes at a friendly price. You don’t have to pay for the license annually, just a one-time fee.

Best features:

  • detailed customization options
  • built-in HTML/CSS validator
  • preview of PHP files (using your local web server)
  • real-time PHP syntax checker
  • multi-browser preview
  • PHP framework support (WordPress, Laravel, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Symfony, Yii, Nette, Prado)
  • built-in PHP debugger (Xdebug) and PHP beautifier
  • support for the Smarty template engine
  • SVN- and Git-integration
  • can save files directly via FTP/STFP/FTPS
  • extensible via plugins

Smultron

Smultron

Smultron

  • Supported operating systems: macOS
  • Price: $7.99 for single use license; $4.99 for upgrade license; free evaluation
  • License: see EULA
  • Supported languages: HTML, Markdown, LESS, Sass, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, PHP, XML, YAML, Swift, Go, Ruby, Java, Objective-C, and more

Smultron is a commercial source code editor for macOS devices, with support for multiple programming languages. Its name means ‘wild strawberry’ in Swedish, as it’s being developed by a Swedish programmer Peter Borg. Like most Mac-only applications, Smultron comes with a stylish design, intuitive user interface, and fast launch time.

It includes multiple features that you could expect from an advanced PHP editor, such as customizable design and key bindings, code snippets, split file view, file comparison functionality, HTML preview, auto-complete, and more. Smultron’s creator puts a big emphasis on privacy, so if you want a PHP editor for your Mac that doesn’t collect any data about you, Smultron is a good solution for you.

You can download Smultron from either its website or the Mac App Store. Even though the creator charges a small fee for the license, you can download and try Smultron for free before making a purchase.

Best features:

  • pre-designed themes
  • support for vertical text and RTL (right-to-left) languages
  • text scanning from the camera of your iPhone/iPad
  • advanced encoding settings (including support for UTF-8 BOM)
  • iCloud support
  • distraction-free mode
  • all-functions list view
  • advanced find and search functionality with support for regular expressions
  • full accessibility support

Eclipse PDT

Eclipse PDT

Eclipse PDT

Eclipse is a popular integrated development environment for the Java Virtual Machine, but it comes with support for several other programming languages as well. Eclipse PDT stands for PHP Developer Tools. It’s a plugin for the Eclipse platform, but if you don’t have Eclipse installed on your machine, you can also choose the ‘Eclipse IDE for PHP Developers’ option during installation, which automatically adds the PHP Developer Tools.

With Eclipse PDT, you get access to Eclipse’s highly configurable user interface and you can use it together with other Eclipse plugins as well. Eclipse PDT makes common PHP-related tasks, such as debugging, profiling, testing, refactoring, and syntax checking, easier and smoother.

You can also add your web server(s) that Eclipse will use for debugging and profiling PHP files. Eclipse PDT supports popular PHP tools, such as Xdebug, Zend Debugger, Composer, and PHPUnit, too.

Note that in order to run Eclipse, you have to install the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) or the Java Development Kit (JDK) on your computer.

Best features:

  • customizable UI, views, and panels
  • advanced PHP code formatting
  • PHP project and class wizard
  • pre-made code templates
  • easy code navigation and code formatting
  • support for remote projects
  • content assist, autocomplete, code navigation, and more
  • integrated web server to run PHP files
  • Git client

Komodo IDE

Komodo IDE

Komodo IDE

Komodo IDE is part of the ActiveState Platform that’s a set of advanced developer tools for open source programming languages. It’s a cross-platform IDE that includes support for PHP (besides other languages). Komodo IDE is the extended version of the Komodo Edit source code editor — you get access to all the features of Komodo Edit, plus a lot more, such as live previewing, unit testing, dependency detector, Chrome debugging, and many others.

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Even though Komodo IDE is available free of charge, it’s a commercial product. This means that you can use it for free until you are happy with community support. For professional support, you need to sign up for an ActiveState Pricing Plan that gives you access to email and chat support and private projects.

If you don’t need the IDE features and want to edit and manage PHP files without having to deal with the extra clutter, you can opt for Komodo Edit which is an excellent free and open source PHP editor application.

Best features:

  • auto-complete, multiple selections, minimap, change tracker, calltips, and other advanced editing features
  • code refactoring, code browser, visual debugging, regular expression toolkit, database explorer, HTTP inspector, and more
  • Docker and Vagrant integration
  • supports many version control systems (Git, Subversion, Mercurial, CVS, Perforce, and Bazaar)
  • onboarding and project wizards
  • DOM viewer
  • real-time collaboration
  • sharing via Slack
  • built-in tutorials

Eclipse Che (cloud IDE)

Eclipse Che

Eclipse Che

  • Supported operating systems: any (it runs in the web browser)
  • License: Eclipse Public License 2.0
  • Source code: https://github.com/eclipse/che
  • Supported languages: PHP, Java, .NET Core, ASP.NET, Go, C, C++, NodeJS, Python, Rust, Scala, and more

Eclipse Che is a Kubernetes-native cloud IDE that allows developer teams to build applications in pre-configured, containerized workspaces. This means that you set up and configure everything you need for your project— such as dependencies, runtimes, IDE, and project code — only once, and you can run your ready-made development environment wherever you want.

The Eclipse Che project started in 2014 as an Eclipse Cloud Development (ECD) project and can be thought of as the future of collaborative development. It was Codenvy who delivered the original codebase, but many tech giants are contributing to the project as well — such as IBM, Red Hat, Samsung, SAP, Microsoft, and Intuit, and others. The biggest things about Eclipse Che are the ability of real-time collaboration of even hundreds of developers, access to an online IDE that runs in the web browser, and easy access to container-based PHP development.

You can either install Eclipse Che on your Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster or create an online Che workspace at OpenShift’s web-based Che platform (you need a Red Hat account for the latter). The online platform has a couple of sample projects you can get started with. For PHP development, you can choose between four: Laravel with MySQL, Symfony with MySQL, plain PHP with MySQL, and plain PHP with an Apache web server (without MySQL). You can set up your pre-configured workspace with a single click and instantly begin to use the cloud IDE right inside your web browser.

What’s more, you can’t only configure your stack but can also choose between different editor interfaces. The default one is Eclipse Theia, but you can also opt for Eclipse IDE, Eclipse Dirigible, IntelliJ IDEA (Community Edition), Jupyter Notebook, and an open source distribution of Visual Studio Code. The features of your PHP editor interface will depend on the IDE you chose.

Best features:

  • access to pre-built PHP stacks
  • portability
  • use the editor interface of your choice
  • add container images from anywhere (Docker Hub, Quay.io, your own private registry, etc)
  • devfile templates
  • ready-to-use sample projects
  • terminal access to all containers
  • multi-user collaboration
  • extensible via plugins (available from the IDE interface)
  • all Che services are available via REST APIs

Conclusion

If you like to develop websites in PHP, when starting the development it’s very comfortable to create good-looking forms, tables and other visualities without coding. Such tool will help you to create all necessary elements in the quickly and easily.

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