What is the best IDE for PHP?

 

Visual Studio Code

If you're looking for a free, open-source IDE and want to maximize the use of your PHP development skills, then Visual Studio Code is the best option available. It supports various languages and has a lot of great features that make it ideal for use in PHP development.

Sublime Text 3

Sublime Text 3 is pretty fast, powerful, and easy to use. It is also customizable, lightweight (only around 7 megabytes), free to use (but you have to buy it eventually or stop getting updates), and available for all operating systems from Windows to Linux.

This PHP IDE has a plethora of features including split editing, multiple cursors, command palette that let's you do almost anything with just a few keystrokes, Python based plugin API, Goto Anything feature for jumping to a specific file or line number in your project. You can also do search and replace operations across multiple files/project at once using the find in files option. The built-in package manager makes installing different packages very simple and easy. It also comes with support for many languages including PHP of course.

Notepad++

Notepad is a great place to start. You can test PHP code without installing anything, and the program has a lot of options for customizing it. It's also easy to install, and you don't have to worry about viruses or malicious software getting installed alongside your IDE.

If Notepad doesn't have what you're looking for, try using FileMaker Pro or TextPad instead. Both projects are open source, very small in size, and very fast. They both have many of the same features as Notepad++ and are both easy to use.

PHPStorm

When it comes to tools, the only thing that matters is how well they serve your purposes.

If you're a PHP programmer, the best IDE you can get is PHPStorm (https://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm). It's built for professional programmers and integrates with a variety of the most popular version control systems, including Git and Subversion.

It features a custom debugger that is faster than Eclipse's debuggers by an order of magnitude and gives access to even more features than Eclipse's own debugging tools (like setting breakpoints on injected CSS).

NetBeans for PHP

NetBeans is a PHP IDE that is not only free and open source, but also cross platform, which means you can use it on Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. It also supports the development of all Java application types (Java SE, JavaFX, web, EJB and mobile applications) out of the box.

NetBeans support two major PHP frameworks: Zend and Symfony. The default installation has these frameworks embedded in it; however you can still configure other frameworks manually by installing additional plugins. Some of the features that make NetBeans great for PHP development include:

• Refactoring

• PHP debugging tools

• PhpUnit integration

• Smart code completion

Each has its pros and cons, but some are definitely better than others.

When you're first starting out, it doesn't really matter which IDE you use. So long as it has a code editor and a way to run the PHP code, that should be good enough for basic exploration. If you don't want to spend any money at all, I recommend Notepad++ (Windows only) or Sublime Text 2 (cross-platform). After exploring some tutorials and watching some videos on YouTube, though, you'll probably want more features.

You may still want to keep your costs low by choosing free IDEs such as NetBeans or Eclipse. These are two of the most popular choices among professional developers because they can handle projects of any size and have many powerful features. Eclipse is cross-platform; NetBeans is not (it only runs on Windows and Linux).

If cost isn't an issue, consider purchasing PhpStorm or Zend Studio. While these aren't necessarily "better" than their free counterparts—they are just different—I find that PhpStorm's interface is easier for beginners to understand and use than NetBeans or Eclipse.