The evolution of technology has brought forth new tools for developers. One such tool is the PHP development tools for Mac that developers can use to create powerful websites or web applications. Before this, there was no native IDE for PHP, but now you can take advantage of resources like Vim or even Eclipse to develop dynamic programs via the PHP language. This article seeks to provide information on each of these tools so that you can pick one suitable for you amongst all its benefits.
You’re just about to master the art of PHP development, and who knows? Maybe one day, you’ll become a master developer. I know it won’t be easy. There will be days that feel like you’re walking up a steep incline with no end in sight — and it might even get dark — but I promise… you will make it to the top. The point is, you need all the best tools at your disposal if you want to get there. I have included tools that you will need to work with the editors as well.
Alfred
Quick special-purpose searches
Alfred is the newest addition to my productivity family. It pops up a command bar sort of like Spotlight, but with added capabilities. You can create workflows to do relatively complex tasks, but my big use so far has been four custom searches. When I hit Alt-Space, Alfred’s bar pops up.
If I type “codex,” it will take whatever follows and use that as a search string to the WordPress developer codex. Typing “plugin,” searches the WordPress plugin repository. Typing “zdme,” searches ZDNet for articles I’ve written with the search string. I use this constantly for placing links into articles. Now, these may seem simple, and you can set up Chrome to do custom searches, but again, as with Shortcut Bar, this saves mouse moves and keystrokes. If I need to see the definition for a WordPress function, a tap gets it for me, without ever needing to go to the mouse.View now at Alfred
Codelobster (Editor)
Codelobster is an Integrated Development Environment that eases out and modernizes the PHP development processes. Its users do not need to worry about remembering the names of functions, attributes, tags, and arguments; as these are enabled through auto-complete functions. It supports languages like PHP, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS and platforms such as Windows, Linux, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mac OS, Linux, and Mint. Additionally, it offers exceptional plugins that enable it to function smoothly with myriad technologies like Drupal, Joomla, Twig, JQuery, CodeIgniter, Symfony, Node.js, VueJS, AngularJS, Laravel, Magento, BackboneJS, CakePHP, EmberJS, Phalcon, and Yii.Offerings:
- It is an internal, free PHP debugger that enables validating the code locally.
- It auto-detects the existing server settings followed by configuring the related files and allowing one to utilize the debugger.
- It has the ability to highlight pairs of square brackets and helps in organizing files into the project.
- This tool displays a popup list comprising variables and constants.
- It allows one to hide code blocks that are presently not being used and to collapse the code for viewing it in detail.
Netbeans (Editor)
Netbeans, packed with a rich set of features is quite popular in the realm of PHP Development Services. It supports several languages like English, Russian, Japanese, Portuguese, Brazilian, and simplified Chinese. Its recent version is lightweight and speedier, and specifically facilitates building PHP-based Web Applications with the most recent PHP versions. This tool is apt for large-scale web app development projects and works with most trending PHP frameworks such as Symfony2, Zend, FuelPHP, CakePHP, Smarty, and WordPress CMS. It supports PHP, HTML5, C, C++, and JavaScript languages and Windows, Linux, MacOS and Solaris platforms.Features:
- Getter and setter generation, quick fixes, code templates, hints, and refactoring.
- Code folding and formatting; rectangular selection
- Smart code completion and try/catch code completion
- Syntax highlighter
DreamWeaver (Editor)
This popular tool assists one in creating, publishing, and managing websites. A website developed using DreamWeaver can be deployed to any web server.Offerings:
- Ability to create dynamic websites that fits the screen sizes of different devices
- Availability of ready-to-use layouts for website development and a built-in HTML validator for code validation.
- Workspace customization capabilities
Aptana Studio (Editor)
Aptana Studio is an open-source PHP development tool used to integrate with multiple client-side and server-side web technologies like PHP, CSS3, Python, RoR, HTML5, Ruby, etc. It is a high-performing and productive PHP IDE.Features:
- Supports the most recent HTML5 specifications
- Collaborates with peers using actions like pull, push and merge
- IDE customization and Git integration capabilities
- The ability to set breakpoints, inspecting variables, and controlling the execution
Functions:
- Eases out PHP app development by supporting the debuggers and CLI
- Enables programmers to develop and test PHP apps within a single environment
- Leverages the flexibilities of Eclipse and also possesses detailed information on the range of support for each element of the popular browsers.
Atatus – PHP Performance Management
Atatus is an application performance monitoring tool with PHP performance monitoring and PHP error handling functionalities. It keeps track of your application’s performance and errors, giving you total visibility into how they affect your end user’s experience. You may receive actionable insights into root cause issues, increase business metrics, and optimize the performance of your application using the Atatus PHP Monitoring tool.
It digs into the most time-consuming transactions, the slowest database queries, slow network calls, exceptions that affect your users with a complete stack trace. With the full analysis we provide, you can rapidly improve the efficiency of your PHP application and the end-user experience.
To make bug repair easier, every PHP error is logged and captured with a full stack trace with the specific line of source code underlined. To resolve PHP exceptions, gather all necessary information such as class, message, URL, request agent, version, and so on. You can investigate failure rates and application problems to find defective APIs or third-party services. Also, you will receive notifications for application errors and exceptions through Email, Slack, PagerDuty, or using webhooks.
Feature of Atatus:
- Auto instrumentation
- Error tracking
- Transaction monitoring
- Real-time observability
- Resolve issue quickly
Loggly – PHP Logging
All of your PHP logs can be centralized with SolarWinds Loggly, making PHP monitoring and analysis easier. It’s a cloud-based log management system that makes it easier to manage and monitor your PHP logs. It enables centralized PHP error logging, making it easier to keep track of your PHP log data across several devices and servers.
Loggly’s agentless architecture makes it simple to submit logs to the service via PHP Syslog or PHP logging libraries like Monolog. You can also preserve your PHP logs for any period on AWS S3 buckets for compliance or other reasons.
The Loggly interactive charts and dashboards help you keep track of your logs and events by spotting repeating patterns or trends with only a few clicks. You can also share dashboards with your team to encourage cooperation and ensure that everyone is on the same page. If you wish to share the dashboard with other stakeholders, you can also save it as a PNG picture.
Feature of Loggly:
- The agentless architecture allows you to use PHP Syslog to send logs to specified timeframes
- For quick troubleshooting, advanced filters and search capabilities are available
- For visibility into logs from before and after problematic events, use the surround search utility
- The live tail function allows you to track events in real-time
#3 XAMPP – PHP Development Environment
XAMPP is the most popular PHP development environment which is an offline PHP development environment that allows programmers to test their code as if it were running on a web server. XAMPP open-source software has been designed to be extremely simple to set up and use. Developers can use this tool to polish PHP code on a local test server before deploying it to a live server, resulting in fewer performance issues.
Along with XAMPP’s simplicity of deployment, a developer can quickly and easily install a WAMP or LAMP stack on an operating system with the added benefit that common add-in applications like WordPress and Joomla! can also be loaded with comparable ease using Bitnami.
XAMPP is set up with all capabilities enabled to make it easier for developers. Commercial use of XAMPP is free. There are presently Windows, Linux, and OS X distributions available.
Features of XAMPP:
- Open-source
- Online community and a large support network
- Bitnami can be used to install CMS components on it
- Versions are updated on a regular basis and available to all
- Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux compatible
#4 Aptana Studio – PHP Web Development IDE
Aptana Studio is a PHP development tool that works with a variety of server-side and client-side web technologies. Some of these technologies are PHP, Python, CSS3, Ruby on Rails, Ruby, and HTML5. It includes debuggers and a command-line interface to make PHP application development easier. It helps PHP programmers to create and test web applications all in one place.
It includes SFTP, FTP, and IDE customization options. This robust web development engine takes advantage of Eclipse’s flexibility and includes information about the breadth of support for each element in the most popular web browsers. Aptana Studio is a high-performance PHP IDE with a variety of useful tools to boost your productivity.
Features of Aptana Studio:
- Supports the most up-to-date HTML5 specifications
- Merge, pull, and push operations are used to collaborate with peers.
- Customizing the IDE
- Integration with Git and a built-in terminal
- Set breakpoints, control execution, inspect variables
#5 PHPUnit – PHP Testing
PHPUnit is a PHP code testing tool that is open source. It is well-known for consistency and scalability testing, making it particularly appealing to businesses that are experiencing or anticipate significant expansion. It is the most extensively used unit testing framework. To find errors and defects in the code, the code is tested the unit by unit. The process is a little slower and takes a long time, but due to unit-wise testing, the chances of finding a bug at the end are reduced.
Features of PHPUnit:
- Test classes, sets, and functions.
- Mocking objects
- Code coverage analysis
- Output test results are in JUnit XML and TestDox files
#6 Xdebug – PHP Debugging
Xdebug is simple to set up and use, and it doesn’t require any code changes. In 2002, this strong PHP profiler was released. It has experienced exceptional growth since then and continues to be popular among PHP developers. Stack and function tracing, code coverage analysis, remote debugging, and script profiling are some of its key features. It gives the developer detailed information about the script’s performance and helps in the identification of slow code sections. The data is then saved in a cachegrind compatible file and evaluated with one of the external tools, such as KCachegrind, WinCacheGrind, xdebugtoolkit, or Webgrind, a web-based analyser.
Feature of Xdebug:
- Code Coverage Analysis
- Garbage Collection Statistics
- Profiling
- Command Line Debug Client
- DBGp Proxy Tool
- Supported Versions and Compatibility
#7 phpDocumentor – PHP Documentation
phpDocumentor is a PHP project documentation application. Your project can also benefit from their 20 years of experience in documenting PHP applications and defining the standard. This free software allows you to create documentation directly from PHP source code.
You might wish to use this tool if you need to provide users with more information about source code functionality than the user interface can show. Additionally, phpDocumentor has certain code analysis features. You can extract important data, such as reporting errors. Graphs and reports can also be used to view essential code information.
Features of phpDocumentor:
- A web-based command-line interface
- Simple PHP code parsing with documentation output in DocBook, PDF, CHM, or HTML formats
- A flexible system for configuring templates, allowing you to modify how you output code
- The capacity to link and cross-reference documents is a valuable asset.
Conclusion
PHP is, hands down, the most popular dynamic language for web development. Here at Cloudways, we have collected some of the best PHP tools for Windows and Mac to help you work faster with development.