I am wondering whether there is a IDE (integrated develop environment) for php? I have looked for some books, but there is no one tell about this. I think an IDE will be a great help to php development. So, what are you guys using for php development, only a text editor?

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There are a lot of IDEs for working with PHP.

Dreamweaver 8/ CS3, PHP Designer 2007, Zend Studio these are paid versions

the free one is Eclipse IDE with PHP Plugin.

Download Eclipse here,

Download the PHP plugin for Eclipse IDE, http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=57621

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I use Geany, it's very nice. When i start typing out an IF statement, it finishes it off for me. When i type in a PHP function, it pops up a drop-down menu for quick selection and when i reach the starting paranthesis, a tooltip pops up telling me what the function requires or takes—this is quite useful, i don't have to constantly keep looking into the PHP manual. If i close the program with documents open, when i re-open the program, it leaves me where i left off: it has all the files i had open, open, and it even places the cursor/blinker on the line i was at before the close.

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PHP Designer 2OO7 and all versions of this editor have the personal version which is free for non-commercial use and thats what i use at the moment, if i were to use it for commercial use then i probably would buy the full version as its a nice peice of software that respects the fact not everyone can buy software all the time.

Ill have to look at geany though, sounds similar but maybe better than PHP dev.

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For php development i use the eclipse IDE with the PHPclipse plugin. I is a very good IDE since it has all of eclipse's benefits and features along with the colored syntax, linking, etc. It will check you code to make sure it is valid and correct for what ever type set you are using (XML, XHTML, etc.). For me its great cause i do almost all of my development in eclipse so i never have to use a different program to update a website, correct code in an application, etc.

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Thanks all!

I will try all what you have said.

I ask this question because I was very puzzled no any book I read tell me about the IDE. And it's really not so easy to use a text editer to do the PHP job, there is no keywords prompting, you will never know if your code is correct until you get it to the server and browse it.

I think with an IDE of Geany or eclipse the debug work can also be done is that right? I will try it.

Thanks a lot!!

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Will definitely try out the php pugin for eclipse and geany. btw, any good sites or tutorials for learning php, I would prefer hands-on approach or samples to learn,thx.

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