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23 Best PHP Editors and IDEs (Free and Premium)Php editor for windows 10
- Php editor for windows 10
There are many options available in the market, and while they might look the same at first glance, each PHP editor has its unique features and optimal use cases.
They target different types of users from beginners who need a no-config PHP editor that works out of the box to experienced PHP programmers who want to work with a specific stack, framework , or toolkit. While most tools on this list are free of charge, I also added some premium ones that come with technical support and extra functionalities.
The main difference between the two is complexity. The main problem is that source code files are hard to read without syntax highlighting that lets you see different code structures, such as variables, keywords, and parameters, in different colors and fonts.
The best PHP editors come with multiple additional functionalities that help you write and edit PHP code, make sense of the structure of your file and project, and make fewer errors. For instance, line breaks, indentation, auto-complete, different views and editing modes, code completion, search and compare functionalities, and smart code hints are such features.
In addition to these advanced editing functionalities, modern PHP editors also have capabilities that help you with other tasks such as debugging , version control , refactoring, and others.
Note that most PHP editors are not solely for editing PHP files, but they are generic text editors that come with syntax support for many other source code file types too. The best PHP IDEs typically provide you with pre-made code templates and detailed project and class wizards, have numerous highly customizable views and panels that you can arrange however you want and come with integrated development tools, such as a built-in terminal , web server , or web browser , that you can use right inside the IDE interface.
They also tightly integrate with numerous third-party tools such as debuggers e. PHPUnit and Xdebug and container and virtual machine platforms e. Docker and Vagrant. There are also cloud PHP IDEs that let you set up an advanced coding environment in the web browser and save your files into a cloud server.
For example, you might need to add and configure the web server that will execute your code, define environment variables and PHP executables, and perform other advanced development tasks. But, if you need such features, a PHP IDE can significantly speed up your coding, testing, debugging , and profiling program analyzing work. PHP editors have begun to incorporate features that could be found only in IDEs before, such as built-in debuggers and terminals, highly customizable views and panels, and others.
Visual Studio Code VS Code in short is a free and open source code editor by Microsoft that has gained huge popularity in recent years. You can customize every aspect of VS Code, from themes to key bindings to integrations and functionality.
In addition to the functionality of the core editor, you can download almost 9, packages that allow you to add basically any feature you need. To configure Atom as a PHP editor, you can add PHP-specific packages for debugging, refactoring, annotations, linting, and other development-related tasks.
Brackets is an open source code editor created and maintained by Adobe. It has become popular for its inline editing feature for CSS that lets you see all the selectors belonging to a specific CSS rule. GNU Emacs is a stable and well-established code editor that has been on the market since This is not saying that Emacs is not recommended for you if you are looking for both a frontend and PHP editor.
However, note that it has a steeper learning curve than most of the other editors in this list. In addition to its awesome features, using Emacs certainly has a coolness factor in the programmer community due to the expertise you need to use it, and it even appears in popular culture, such as the Tron: Legacy and Social Network movies.
It adds several important features to Vi, such as comparing and merging files, syntax highlighting, search history, spell checking, split view, support for protocols such as HTTP , FTP , and SSH , and many others.
You can use Vim in six basic modes, respectively normal, visual, select, insert, command line, and ex exit modes — see this article by FreeCodeCamp for the main differences between Vim modes.
Vim has a text user interface that you can manage using commands and key mappings. Similar to Emacs, Vim is highly customizable and extensible and supports hundreds of programming languages. Bluefish is an advanced source code editor that supports many programming languages.
You can use it on different operating systems, but it also comes with a Gnome integration, so if you are on the look for a PHP editor for your Linux distro, Bluefish can be a great choice for you — its GUI is also consistent with the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines , so it even looks good on a Gnome desktop.
As Bluefish was created with web developers in mind, it comes with useful features such as Emmet formerly Zen Coding support, dialogs and wizards for HTML tags, Unicode character browser, and many others.
Its goal is to provide programmers with an editor that can be installed and set up as fast and effortlessly as possible. It was created as a replacement for Notepad, the default text editor that comes pre-installed with Windows operating systems.
It comes with syntax highlighting capabilities for almost 80 programming languages. You can change every aspect of the UI by choosing and customizing a theme, open multiple document views at the same time in different arrangements, and use developer-friendly tools such as a color picker, an HTML validation and repair tool, charmaps, text-to-HTML conversion, and many others.
The licensing of RJ TextEd is a bit unusual. However, you can still extend the functionality by creating an extension. If you have any questions to ask, RJ TextEd has an active user forum too. TextMate is an advanced source code editor for the macOS operating system. As it has been designed specifically for Mac, it integrates with the underlying Unix shell, therefore you can write custom actions in any programming language that works with the Unix Standard Streams stdin and stdout.
To make customization easy and straightforward, TextMate utilizes an extensible bundle system. A TextMate bundle can include language syntaxes, code snippets, macros, commands, templates, workflows, and more.
You can manage bundles with the help of a handy bundle editor. The first version of TextMate was proprietary software you had to buy a license for.
However, the current version, TextMate 2. If you are looking for a currently free PHP editor that runs natively on Mac devices, TextMate 2 is definitely worth a look. Even though premium PHP editors come at a price tag, most have a free trial or evaluation period, so you can give them a try without any risk.
If you find a feature, integration, or plugin that you want to use or need technical support , a premium PHP editor can be a good solution for you. Sublime Text 3 is the third major release of the notable Sublime Text source code editor. The new version added pane management and symbol indexing to the already popular editor and improved speed issues such as slow startup time.
If you go with Sublime Text 3 as your PHP editor, it has many plugins available for the PHP language for things such as comment generation, linting, testing, beautifying, formatting, and others. Plus, it has some plugins for WordPress development as well that can help you a lot with writing WordPress code.
The licensing of Sublime Text 3 is a bit weird. UltraEdit is a premium source code editor that has been on the market since UltraEdit works out of the box and features a pleasant and user-friendly onboarding experience. 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. 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. 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. It also comes at a friendly price. Smultron is a commercial source code editor for macOS devices, with support for multiple programming languages.
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.
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. 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 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. 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.
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. It runs on the Java Virtual Machine so you need to have the Java Runtime Environment installed on your computer , but it comes with extensions for multiple programming languages.
Its PHP runtime provides you with a full-featured PHP IDE that allows you to run, refactor, debug, and profile PHP applications — in addition to the typical features of a PHP editor such as syntax highlighting, customizable themes and views, goto definitions, and more.
NetBeans is an incredibly user-friendly tool. It has a helpful onboarding process that includes demos and sample projects of working PHP apps: a calculator and a to-do application. 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 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. The online platform has a couple of sample projects you can get started with.
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. When you first launch CodeLite, it starts with a setup wizard that helps you configure the IDE to fit your coding style you can opt out if you want. It has a clean and minimalistic user interface and a fast startup time — it launches just as fast as a simple PHP editor without any IDE features. In PHPStorm, you see everything only when you need it.
The top menu bar only becomes visible once you start a new project. Then, you can add extra windows for many things favorites, structure, todos, problems, terminal, event log, database, debug, and more , but all are optional and easy to toggle back and forth. However, you are not bound to the Zend ecosystem, as Zend Studio supports many other frameworks, debuggers, web servers, and tools as well.
Codeanywhere is a platform-agnostic cloud IDE that you can use either in the web browser or as a mobile application. Alternatively, you can use your own custom stack too. Plus, it comes with support for the Twig and Smarty template engines too. To help you manage your plugins, Codelobster includes an easy-to-use plugin manager where you can see all the available and activated plugins at the same place.
But, if you still have any doubts or questions about which PHP editor or IDE would be the best for you, here are some suggestions:. You can also install more than one editor for different types of projects.
For instance, you can use a lightweight, fast-loading PHP editor to quickly look into files but work with a feature-rich PHP IDE to develop, test, and debug more complicated applications. Finding the best development tools is a trial and error process, similar to programming itself. All of that and much more, in one plan with no long-term contracts, assisted migrations, and a day-money-back-guarantee.
Take a look at the homepage for Zend Studio, for instance, and you will see that it only supports as far as PHP 7.
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