PHP development tools_PHP tutorial

1 Design Tools

UML and related design tools
- Argo UML
UML drawing tool, supports PHP stub generation. (commercial spin off is Posideon) – written in Java.
- Umbrello UML
UML drawing tool, supports PHP stub generation. Requires Unix/KDE.
-Dia
Drawing tool that supports UML - Use AutoDia to generate PHP.
- XMI 2 PHP
Generate PHP code from XMI document, using XML to describe a form of UML.

Two coding tools

Recommended IDE / Editor

- PHP Eclipse
PHP plug-in for Eclipse IDE
- PHP Edit
Probably Windows Download the best free IDE
- JEdit
An IDE that supports PHP (plus loads more). Written in Java, so platform independent.
- Jext
The twin brother of JEdit.
- gPHPEdit
The best(?) PHP editor under Gnome/Linux.
- SciTE
Cross-platform editor
- PHP Mode for Emacs
PHP Mode for Unix EMACS IDE

Three testing tools

Debuggers and Profilers
- XDebug (recommended)
Excellent debugger and profiler extensions
- Advanced PHP Debugger
George Schlossnagle’s debugger
- PEAR::Benchmark
Benchmarking and profiling tools written in PHP
- DBG
PHP Debugger
Unit testing framework
- Simple Test (recommended)
Excellent documentation and support about mock objects
- PEAR::PHPUnit

Four deployment tools

Build/Deployment Tools
- PEAR Package Manager (recommended)
Allows you to install PEAR packages (over the network) and package your code for installation. Run http://pear.php.net/go-pear on the command line. Written in PHP.
- PEAR::PackageFileManager
Automatically generate the package.xml file used by Package Manager. Written in PHP.
- Phing
PHP’s build tool, equivalent to Apache ANT. Worth looking into when building larger projects. Written in PHP.
- ZZ/OSS Installer
PHP-based installation wizard for publishing professional PHP modular applications.

Accelerator
- Turck MMCache (strongly recommended)
Integrate OPCODE Cache, script encoder, profiler and dynamic content cache (read persistence) in one. Windows version available.
- PHP Accelerator (recommended)
OPCODE Cache

Five management tools

Document generation tool

- phpDocumentor (recommended)
Comment with source code Generate API documentation (like Javadoc). Output can be "templated" and supports HTML, PDF and CHM formats. Written in PHP.
- PHPXref (Recommended)
Create a "cross-reference" of the source code, allowing you to see where a variable/method/function is declared and where it is referenced. Written in Perl.

Version control tool (this part is added by Easy)
-CVS
An open source version control system. Many large projects, including PHP itself, use it to manage code.
-CVSNT
CVS server program for Windows NT (XP also works)