Best IDE for PHP: Edit, code, Autocorrect, run & debug

Let me begin this time with a theoretical answer- Nothing is good or bad. What suits you best is best for you!

Amused! Now, let Anwar come to the real analysis and advice.

I have seen people settling with Aptana now a days. It's reasonably fast, but chokes on large files when syntax highlighting is on. Setting up PHP debugging is hard. But three good things about Aptana: easy plugin installations, very fast and intuitive Subversion plugins, lighting fast file search.

I tried Eclipse PDT and Zend for Eclipse, but they have nightmare interface when it comes to PHP code. Installing plugins is a living horror of version mismatches and cryptic error messages.

I also use Komodo. Komodo has a very intuitive interface, but is ridiculously slow, chokes on medium sized files with syntax highlighting. File search is intuitive, but rather slow. Subversion integration is not that great - slow and buggy. But trust me on this, if you are using 16 GB RAM laptop or computer, Komodo will beat up on any rivals.


There is again another good player in this field. Enters PhpDesigner!!
The main pro of this one is that it's NOT Java based. This keeps the whole thing quick. I am listing its features that i collected from an internet post (Why to type again if its listed. Thanks to that man!)

Intelligent Syntax Highlighter - automatic switch between PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript depending on your position! Lets see the languages supported!

PHP (both version 4 and 5 are supported)
SQL (MySQL, MSSQL 2000, MSSQL 7, Ingres, Interbase 6, Oracle, Sybase)
HTML/XHTML
CSS (both version 1 and 2.1 are supported)
JavaScript
VBScript
Java
C#
Perl
Python
Ruby
Smarty

Support for both PHP 4 and PHP 5

Code Explorer for PHP (includes, classes, extended classes, interfaces, properties, functions, constants and variables)
Code Completion (IntelliSense) for PHP - code assist as you type
Code Tip (code hint) for PHP - code assist as you type
Work with any PHP frameworks (access classes, functions, variables, etc. on the fly)
PHP object oriented programming (OOP) including nested objects
Support for PHP heredoc
Enclose strings with single- or double quotes, linefeed, carriage return or tabs
PHP server variables
PHP statement templates (if, else, then, while…)
Powerful PHP Code Beautifier with many configurations and profile support
phpDocumentor wizard
Add phpDocumentor documentation to functions and classes with one click!
phpDocumentor tags
Comment or uncomment with one click!
Jump to any declaration with filtering by classes, interfaces, functions, variables or constants
Debug (PHP):

Debug with Xdebug

Breakpoints
Step by step debugging
Step into
Step over
Run to cursor
Run until return
Call stack
Watches
Context variables
Evaluate
Profiling
Multiple sessions
Evaluation tip
Catch errors


Please note that the above features are decision making attributes. I analysed all other IDEs as well, over these parameters and able to reach some conclusion. Atleast for me i know who the bride would be. Ah! Bridegroom for all those female readers ;)

Coming  to my final verdict. I find its the Komodo that wins!
It has the best debugging facilities of any PHP IDE I have tried, is a very mature product and has more useful features than you can shake a stick at. Of note, it has a fantastic HTTP inspector, Javascript debugger and Regular Expression Toolkit. You can get it so that it steps through your PHP, then you see your Javascript running, and then see your HTTP traffic going out over the wire!

It also comes in free (Komodo Edit) and open (OpenKomodo versions). And, remember, Komodo is best suited for many other languages as well like Python.

Cheers!
* Please note: I am having messed up times because of two sweet angels at ma home. The frequency of posts have decreased, but i promise to come up with more researched book that i promised. And guess what, the poetry book that i was working upon is almost complete now. My wife is so enthusiastic for it :)

Covmerge : Merging two Bullseye Code coverage reports

Merge or combine two .COV Files

Bullseye is a nice tool for Code coverage computation. And I have been using it for quite some years now. There is a pretty nice feature about bullseye utility which we tend to forget in our day to day work with it.
This feature of Bullseye you should know. It is the ability to merge reports.

This is pretty useful when you have one report from your unit tests and one from some other type of test run. Particularly useful in following scenarios:

Merge two Bullseye reports .cov files together

how to Merge Bullseye code coverage reports gathered from different test runs

Merging Blackbox test automation code coverage reports with White box API Unit testcase coverage report

Whatever be your objective, Use this command to merge reports with Bullseye:
covmerge.exe -c -fMerged.cov file1.cov file2.cov

Obviously, for this command to Work, the bullsye installation directory path must be in your environment variables. ;)

Tell me how did you use this utility.
For more tutorials on Bullseye, see my earlier posts. You can read details, download the tutorial and software directly from BullsEye Official Website

Scroll bar in HTML Table using DIV and CSS without Javascript

This one was really really tricky. The internet is full with hundreds of different implementations, i dont know why. There are multiple Javascripts mentioned for this. Cross platform concerns are raised for this. Google Chrome not supports..., and Firefox not supports...I dont know what not are mentioned on the internet. A simple google search saying scrollable table in html also does not helps you out.

You can see instances of same problem replicated at hundreds of places some of which are mentioned below. Check out them before reading below. All are awesome workarounds, but none of them tackles the problem.

1) See long javascript implementation at Click here. But problem not solved.
2) See CSS+Javascript workaround at Click here
3) See a solution at Stackoverflow.com at Click here

As mentioned, all the above implementations are ingenious ones. But i dont know why so much pains have been taken up for a simple problem. this also kept me wandering from one solution to other when I wanted one for my own implementation in the facebook application created by Mohd Anwar Jamal Faiz. [Obviously me ;) ]

You can check out this implementation in live at Facebook Application ICEBREAKER. You can search for this App using your facebook account or may also click here Click for FaceBook App Icebreaker. Or if you want to open The icebreaker app direcly in you Facebook account, you may click here For Icebreaker in Facebook account directly

Obviously man! you have to be logged in your facebook account. In case you are not, it may ask you to login. The screen shot is attached here, where you can see the Table having scroll bars. You may click on the photo to enlarge it. [Also, you must click on a few Advertisements. it wont cost you anything, but will help me posting more valuable stuff without trying to find new means of livelihood. Hahaha ;)]



For all the evangelists and critiques, I have tested this implementation over IE6.0+ to IE 9 , FireFox, Google Chrome, PDAs OS and browsers, Blckberry, MacOSX. So I guess I have done a pretty much stable implementation. Hmmm... I think you are appreciating me. ;)


The solution is utterly butterly simple. The trick was straight but only a few can thing it that ways. The scroll attribute can be easily produced using a div element insite the row or column of the table. Undoubtedly, the div will have its inline CSS. you may obviously govern its property using external CSS, but that is obviously not the question.

For example if you have a table code as follows:

<table id="xyz">

<tbody>

<tr>

<td>

blah blah blah

</td>

</tr>

</tbody>

</table>




You must rewrite it as follows:

<table id="xyz">

<tbody>

<tr>

<td>

<div id="Anwar_jamal_table_div" style="overflow:auto; height:100px;width:200px;">

blah blah blah

</div>

</td>

</tr>

</tbody>

</table>

</blockquote>




You can adjust The height,Width As You like.

Time for me to end this post. Write to me or comment here, if something really messy you want to do and this post does not helps you. in all cases, click on a few of the Advertisements, as that is my bread and butter boss!!
Cheers ;)