Top 5 Tools Every PHP Developer Must Use in 2021
PHP is the most favoured choice of a programming language when it comes to web development. And here are the top 5 tools every PHP developer must use for efficient and competitive development in 2021.
Hypertext Preprocessor or commonly termed PHP is the most popular and favoured server-side scripting language for web development. PHP powers nearly 82 percent of active websites with some of the most well-known names like Facebook, Wikipedia, MailChimp, Tumblr, and more. And the main reasons for this huge popularity of the programming languages is because:
PHP is fast
It is open-source in nature and is easy-to-use
It is well-documented
Has got a huge community support
Multiple ready-to-use documents and scripts
Well-supported frameworks
Flood with web development tools
The availability of a plethora of tools is one of the key reasons why every PHP developer loves to work with this language. These PHP development tools make web development more efficient and easier for programmers. Also, these tools or IDEs enhance the functionalities and performance of the websites, which makes them a popular choice among business owners as well.
Well, the market is now overflooded with these tools and this blog lists the top 5 ones in 2021.
PHPStorm:
Extremely fast, smooth, and lightweight, PHPStorm is one of the best choices of PHP development tools. The tool works well with most of the PHP frameworks including Zend, Yii, Symfony, CakePHP, Laravel, CodeIgniter, and more. It can also be used with much popular Content Management Systems like Magento, Drupal, WordPress, etc. This tool offers live editing for some of the major front-end technologies like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. Some of the other features of PHPStorm are unit testing, code refactoring, and easy debugging. PHPStorm also allows developers to integrate version control systems, databases, composer, remote deployment, rest client, and command-line tools.
Eclipse:
Eclipse is also one of the most popularly used PHP development tools now. With the liberty to choose from a wide range of plugins, the tool makes web development easier and simplifies the PHP codes. It also helps developers to customise and extend the tool as per the project requirements. Eclipse also supports both non-GUI and GUI applications. It is a cross-platform editor that is ideal for all large-scale PHP web development projects.
Netbeans:
Netbeans comes with several rich features, which support multiple languages. This PHP development tool was previously used for Java development as well. The latest version of this IDE is faster, lightweight, and supports PHP development services now. Netbeans also includes extensions for supporting other programming languages such as C++, C, and HTML5. And this open-source tool can work well with almost all the PHP frameworks including Symfony, Zend, FuelPHP, CakePHP, WordPress, and more.
Cloud 9:
Cloud 9 is an open-source IDE that offers a development environment for several programming languages JavaScript, PHP, C++, C, Python, and a few more. Developers can immediately start coding with the pre-configured IDE and build websites with features like live preview, browser compatibility, easy and quick testing, etc.
PHPDebugbar:
This is a PHP debugger, which can be run with all PHP projects and can be used to debug them. This tool has two main parts - data collectors and the mainDebugbar object. PHPDebugbar can be also used for inspecting the CSS elements and monitoring networks. It is an open-source tool that is now used by most PHP developers.
Apart from these, some more names that need to be mentioned in the list of the best ones in 2021 are Zend Studio, Sublime Text, and CodeLobster. Leading web development companies like PHPProgrammers have developers who are all well-versed in using these tools and use these during PHP development to end up with the best-in-class websites.
