Are there any good and FREE PHP IDEs out there

Question

Most of the good PHP IDEs i find are not free, so does anyone know of a good, yet free PHP IDE???

As in an IDE with features like

• auto completion
• debugging
• code formatting
• code highlighting
• database previewing
• etc

Answer 1

NetBeans.

Answer 2

It has been a while since I used it but Eclipse with PHP Development Tools

Answer 3

NetBeans and Eclipse (with PDT, search for that one) are the most powerful. Then you'll have plenty of editors, etc... but those two are probably the best out there (though may be a bit complex to master at the beginning, eclipse especially).

Answer 4

You might want to take a look at this: Eclipse PHP Development Tools.

Answer 5

The two most powerful, and probably the two most used too, are Eclipse PDT, and netbeans

I've been using the first one for several years -- it's a real good IDE.
Only thing is you'll need a quite powerful computer : at least 2 cores, and 2 GB of RAM.

• auto completion : OK
• debugging : Yes, with Xdebug
• code formatting : yes ; not perfect, though -- but good enough for me
• code highlighting : yes
• database previewing : you'll need to install some other Eclipse plugin, to get that
• etc : yes : it's based on Eclipse, and there are lots of great Eclipse plugins -- like for HTML/CSS/JS editing, Subversion integration, remote-system access, ...

Answer 6

Take look at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/579330/what-is-the-best-open-source-php-ide-out-there and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6166/any-good-php-ide-preferably-free-or-cheap

Answer 7

My suggestions, the best the first :

• NetBeans IDE :

A dedicated PHP coding environment and complete integration with web standards.

• Eclipse PHP PDT :

The PDT project provides a PHP Development Tools framework for the Eclipse platform. This project encompasses all development components necessary to develop PHP and facilitate extensibility. It leverages the existing Web Tools Platform (WTP) and Dynamic Languages Toolkit (DLTK) in providing developers with PHP capabilities.

• PHP Coder :

PHP Coder is a free IDE developed for PHP programmers. Through tight integration of the PHP interpreter and the PHP documentation, PHP Coder gives you a time-saving Development Interface. Some features are Integrated Preview window, Full Syntax Highlighting for HTML and PHP, AutoComplete for frequently used text constructs, Project manager, and Tag Buttons.

• PHP Designer : free for personal use only

phpDesigner is more than just a powerful and lightning fast PHP IDE and PHP editor, it is also a full-featured HTML, CSS and JavaScript editor and even more! -- for both beginners and professional developers! phpDesigner assists you with editing, analyzing, debugging and publishing applications and websites powered by PHP, HTML and many other web languages!

Answer 8

Highly recommend you try Eclipse. Not just because it supports php, but because it's so useful for sooo many other languages as well, with plugin support, other libraries, xUnit integration - it's definitely worth a try.

There are at least two PHP plugins - PHP Eclipse and the PHP IDE Project, probably worth reading about each before you decide which is best for you.

Answer 9

I'm using Komodo Edit 5.2

URL: Visit Komodo Edit 5.2 website

• Alot of greate extensions are available for it. You can download/install them the same way as FireFox does.
• Works on Mac, Windows and Linux
• Komodo Edit supports PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl and Tcl, plus JavaScript, CSS, HTML and template languages like RHTML, Template-Toolkit, HTML-Smarty and Django.
• Autocomplete and calltips
• Support for adding third-party libraries
• Syntax checking
• Syntax coloring
• Vi emulation
• Emacs keybindings

And alot more

I've been using Komodo edit more more than a year now and I love it.

Answer 10

Couple of notes:

1. Most people suggested NetBeans and Eclipse. I love NetBeans myself (their auto-completion is superb - it gives you the formatted PHPDoc in a tooltip form besides the function name), but neither has word-wrap of any kind! For me, it's a deal breaker, especially since I deal with Drupal, where insanely long lines is the norm.

2. phpDesigner, as you figured out, isn't really free. phpCoder - at least the version linked here, is really old (circa 2000, php4 etc.)

3. Personally, I don't use an IDE. I do miss the debugger,and I guess that for complex debugging I could always pop back to NetBeans, but my editor (Notepad++) has syntax highlighting, some auto-completion and a function-list plugin. Plus it loads really fast, so I end up using it for 99% of the time.