Best Free Php Development Tools

You have lots of choices when you’re searching for the best free PHP development tools. If you are a beginner, it can be hard to know where to start.

That’s why we’ve rounded up the top PHP products for beginners and experts alike, with options for all kinds of different projects. Here are the best free PHP development tools and applications that we think are worth checking out.

Best Free Php Development Tools

free php ide for windows

Let’s start with the best free PHP editors that provide you with all the important features to read, create, and edit PHP files.

1. Visual Studio Code

• Supported operating systems: Windows, Linux, macOS
• License: MIT License
• Source code: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode
• Supported languages: PHP, HTML, CSS, SCSS, Less, JavaScript, JSON, TypeScript, Markdown, PowerShell, C++, Java, Python, Go, T-SQL, C#, .NET Core, and more

Visual Studio Code (VS Code in short) is a free and open source code editor by Microsoft that has gained huge popularity in recent years. It supports the PHP syntax by default, and you can download further PHP extensions from the VS Code Marketplace to make it an advanced PHP editor that suits your specific coding needs. You can customize every aspect of VS Code, from themes to key bindings to integrations and functionality.

Best features:

• syntax highlighting, autocomplete, and code navigation
• smart code completion with IntelliSense
• color theme picker
• built-in Git and GitHub integration
• built-in Emmet support
• extensibility (you can create your own extension)
• linting, debugging, refactoring
• integrated terminal
• live share for pair programming (with extension)

2. Atom

• Supported operating systems: Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD
• License: MIT License
• Source code: https://github.com/atom/atom
• Supported languages: PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, C, C#, Objective C, Perl, Python, Ruby, Go, XML, and more

Atom is the “hackable text editor for the 21st century”, according to its slogan. Originally, it was GitHub’s internal tool that later they made open source, but the project is still maintained by GitHub. It’s called hackable because you can customize every single aspect of the editor interface, such as the UI and syntax theme, key bindings, formatting, global and language-specific settings, and more.

In addition to the functionality of the core editor, you can download almost 9,000 packages that allow you to add basically any feature you need. To configure Atom as a PHP editor, you can add PHP-specific packages for debugging, refactoring, annotations, linting, and other development-related tasks.

Best features:

• customizable UI with 3,000+ open source Atom themes
• syntax highlighting and smart autocompletion
• file system browsing and multiple panes
• advanced find and replace tool
• integrated package manager (called apm)
• easy-to-access command palette
• extensibility
• real-time code collaboration (with the in-house-built Teletype package)
• direct Git and GitHub integration (with the in-house-built GitHub package)

3. Brackets

• Supported operating systems: Windows, Linux, macOS
• License: MIT License
• Source code: https://github.com/adobe/brackets
• Supported languages: HTML, CSS, LESS, SCSS, Sass, JavaScript, PHP, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, C, C++, VBScript, and more

Brackets is an open source code editor created and maintained by Adobe. As many of Adobe’s products, it primarily focuses on frontend development, but it supports several backend languages as well, including PHP. It has become popular for its inline editing feature for CSS that lets you see all the selectors belonging to a specific CSS rule.

If you do both frontend and backend development, Brackets can be the ideal PHP editor for you — especially if you also work with CSS preprocessors, such as Sass and LESS. That being said, Brackets is not the most advanced PHP editor in this list, but it’s free, lightweight, and easy to use.

Brackets has an extension registry as well, however, it doesn’t have as many extensions as Atom or Visual Studio Code.

Best features:

• vertical and horizontal split view
• live preview using a real-time connection with your web browser
• lightweight (written in JavaScript)
• inline editing (for CSS)
• custom themes are available via the Brackets Extension Registry
• support for CSS preprocessors, including quick edit and live highlight functionalities

4. GNU Emacs

• Supported operating systems: Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris
• License: GNU GPL vs 3
• Source code: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git
• Supported languages: Lisp, PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, JavaScript, Scala, Perl, and many others

GNU Emacs is a stable and well-established code editor that has been on the market since 1985. It was primarily created for the GNU operating system, but it supports many other OSs as well. Emacs’ design and functionality are both fully customizable using the Emacs Lisp scripting language.

Emacs supports a multitude of programming languages, including HTML and CSS, but it’s typically not used by frontend developers. This is not saying that Emacs is not recommended for you if you are looking for both a frontend and PHP editor. However, note that it has a steeper learning curve than most of the other editors in this list.

In addition to its awesome features, using Emacs certainly has a coolness factor in the programmer community due to the expertise you need to use it, and it even appears in popular culture, such as the Tron: Legacy and Social Network movies.

Best features:

• content-aware editing modes
• full Unicode-support
• customizable both via the command line (using Emacs Lisp) and a graphical UI
• open source package repository to extend the editor
• built-in documentation
• additional functionalities such as debugger UI, project planner, IRC client, calendar, and others

5. Vim

• Supported operating systems: Linux, Windows, macOS, Android, iOS
• License: Vim License
• Source code: https://github.com/vim/vim
• Supported languages: PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, Lua, JavaScript, Perl, C, C++, and many others

Vim stands for Vi Improved as it’s the improved version of the Vi code editor created for Unix systems. It adds several important features to Vi, such as comparing and merging files, syntax highlighting, search history, spell checking, split view, support for protocols such as HTTP, FTP, and SSH, and many others.

You can use Vim in six basic modes, respectively normal, visual, select, insert, command line, and ex (exit) modes — see this article by FreeCodeCamp for the main differences between Vim modes. Vim has a text user interface that you can manage using commands and key mappings. However, if you’d rather use Vim with a graphical user interface, you can download its Gvim (Graphical Vim) version as well.

Similar to Emacs, Vim is highly customizable and extensible and supports hundreds of programming languages. There are thousands of Vim plugins available, but you can also use Vim Script (also called VimL), Vim’s internal scripting language, or another scripting language to add extra functionality.

Vim is a very robust tool, but if you are a beginner or code only occasionally, it’s probably not the best choice for you because of its steep learning curve. However, if you want flexibility and custom functionality and don’t mind learning, Vim can be the ideal PHP editor for you. If you want to go that route, here’s a great tutorial by The Valuable Dev blog about how to configure Vim as a PHP editor.

Best features:

• 6 different editing modes
• easy mode for beginners
• Unicode and multi-language support
• editing functionality such as advanced search and replace, multi-level undo tree, split view, code completion, and more
• extensive plugin system
• built-in manual

Conclusion

Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

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