This article contains a list of text editors with features specific to the PHP scripting language.
Free editors[edit]
To start with, you can download Eclipse package for PHP developers which comes packed with PHP language support, XML Editor, Git client and Mylyn. The download is available for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. You can read more about Eclipse PDT here at – eclipse.org/pdt/. Rapid PHP editor is a faster and more powerful PHP code editor for Windows combining features of a fully-packed PHP IDE with the speed of the Notepad. Rapid PHP is the most complete all-in-one software for coding PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and other web development languages with tools for debugging, validating, reusing, navigating. Zend Studio is your proven PHP IDE, that can be used as a standalone solution or used with Zend Server as a wholly integrated solution.
Editor | License | Latest Version | Platform | Autocompletion | File Browser | GUI builder | Internal Browser | Version Control | PHP Debugger | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Linux | macOS | Windows | Other | Local | FTP | SFTP | SSH | ||||||||
Aptana Studio | APL/ GPLv1 | 3.6.1 | Yes | Yes | Yes | JVM | Yes | ? | Yes | Yes | ? | With XDebug [1] | |||
Atom | MIT | 1.13.1 | Yes | Yes | Yes | FreeBSD[2] | Yes[3] | ? | No | Yes | ? | ||||
Bluefish | GPLv3 | 2.2.9 | Yes | Yes | Yes | FreeBSD[4] | Yes | ? | Yes | Yes | ? | ||||
Brackets | MIT | 1.8 | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | ? | No | Yes | ? | ||||
CodeLite | GPLv2 | 9.2 | Yes | Yes | Yes | FreeBSD[5] | Yes | ? | No | Yes | ? | ||||
Eclipse PDT | EPL | 7.0 | Yes | Yes | Yes | JVM | Yes | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | With XDebug [6] | |||
Geany | GPLv2 | 1.29 | Yes | Yes | Yes | FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD[7] | Yes | ? | Yes | Yes | ? | ||||
gedit | GPLv3 | 3.22.2 | Yes[8] | Yes | Yes[8] | FreeBSD | Yes[9] | ? | Yes[9] | Yes | ? | With XDebug [10] | |||
GNU Emacs | GPLv3 | 27.1 | Yes | Yes | Yes | BSDs, OpenSolaris | Yes | dired (builtin) | tramp (builitin) | tramp (builtin) | tramp (builitin) | Yes | Yes | vc (builtin) | ? |
jEdit | GPLv2 | 5.5.0 | Yes | Yes | Yes | JVM | No | Yes | Yes[11] | Yes[12] | Yes[13] | No | Yes | ? | |
Kate | GPLv2 | 16.08.1 | Yes | Yes | Yes | FreeBSD | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | ? |
KWrite | GPLv2 | 16.08.1 | Yes | Yes | No | FreeBSD | No | ? | No | Yes | ? | ||||
KDevelop | GPLv2 | 5.0.3 | Yes | Partial[14] | Yes | FreeBSD[15] | Yes | ? | Yes | Yes | ? | ||||
Komodo Edit | MPL | 10.1.2 | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | Yes | ? | Yes | Yes[16] | No[17] | ||||
NetBeans | CDDL/ GPLv2/ LGPLv2.1 | 12.2 (December 7, 2020; 43 days ago) [±][18] | Yes | Yes | Yes | JVM | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | With XDebug[19] |
Notepad++ | GPL | 7.2.2 | No[20] | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | With XDebug[21] |
SciTE | GPLv2 | 3.7.1 | Yes[22] | Yes | Yes | FreeBSD[23] | No | ? | No | Yes | ? | ||||
TextMate | GPLv1 | 1.5 | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | ? | No | Yes | ? | ||||
Vim | Vim License | 8.0 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes[24] | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | |
Visual Studio Code | MIT | 1.52.1 (December 16, 2020; 34 days ago) [±][25] | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes[26] | ? | No | Yes | ? |
Cross-platform[edit]
- Aptana Studio – Eclipse-based IDE, able to use PDT plugins, visual JS editor. Open-source, free project. (Community edition merged in).
- Atom – free and open-source[27] text editor with out-of-the-box PHP support.
- Bluefish – a multipurpose editor with PHP syntax support, in-line PHP documentation, etc. With GVfs, supports SFTP, FTP, WebDAV, and SMB.
- Brackets – free and open-source editor in HTML5/NodeJS by Adobe Team the best for integration frontend
- CodeLite – an open source, cross platform IDE for C/C++ and PHP. The built-in plugins supports SVN, SSH/SFTP access, Git database browsing and others.
- Eclipse – PHP Development Tools (PDT) and PHPEclipse projects. With additional plugins supports SVN, CVS, database modelling, SSH/FTP access, database navigation, Trac integration, and others.
- Editra – open source editor. Syntax highlighting and (partial) code completion for PHP + HTML and other IDE-like features like code browser etc.
- Emacs – advanced text editor. The nXhtml addon has special support for PHP (and other template languages). The major mode web-mode.el is designed for editing mixed HTML templates.
- Geany – syntax highlighting for HTML + PHP. Provides PHP function list.
- jEdit – free/open source editor. Supports SFTP and FTP.
- Komodo Edit – general purpose scripting language editor with support for PHP. Free version of the commercial ActiveState Komodo IDE.
- Netbeans – IDE with PHP support and integration with web standards. Supports SFTP and FTP. Full support for SVN and Git since 7.2 and powerful plugin support for added functionality.
- SciTE – PHP syntax highlighting, compiler integration, powerful config via Lua API.
- Vim – provides PHP syntax highlighting, debugging.[28]
Windows[edit]
- ConTEXT – *No longer under development* Freeware editor with syntax highlighting.
- Crimson Editor – Lightweight editor. Supports FTP.
- Microsoft WebMatrix – A combined editor, server and publishing environment, syntax highlighting for HTML, PHP, Razor, node.js, C# and JavaScript and publishing through WebDeploy and FTP. Supports multiple file encodings as of version 2.
- Notepad2 – Simple editor with syntax highlighting
- Notepad++ – FLOSS multi-language editor with macro support, syntax highlighting (possible export to HTML), code completion, php.net function reference, foldable code blocks etc.; expandable via plugins, e.g. (S)FTP support, version control (Git, SVN), documentation generators, snippet support, spell checking, custom classes completion, code beautifiers
- PSPad – Supports FTP; syntax highlighting.
- RJ TextEd – Text editor with many great features
macOS[edit]
- Coda (web development software) - Shareware IDE/Editor
- TextWrangler – Supports SFTP and FTP
Linux[edit]
- Kate – Supports any file access protocol that is supported by KIO. This includes HTTP, FTP, SSH, SMB and WebDAV.
- KDevelop – Supports everything as Kate above with addition of references of functions and syntax parser.
Commercial editors[edit]
- ActiveState Komodo IDE – Support for PHP syntax checking, debugging, trial available (NOTE: As of 2020, ActiveState Komodo is now completely free, and only requires that you register an account in order to use)
- Adobe Dreamweaver – Supports SFTP and FTP; Trial available
- BBEdit – Supports SFTP and FTP; Trial available
- Cloud9 - Online editor (supports multiple languages) [29]
- Coda – Supports SFTP and FTP; Trial available
- CodeCharge Studio – Supports FTP
- Codelobster – Editor with syntax highlighting, debugger, code validation, supports FTP.
- Codenvy – Cloud development environment.
- Embarcadero RadPHP (formerly Delphi for PHP) – Focus on web (Facebook, Google) and mobile (iOS, Android) development; Trial available
- HTML-Kit – Syntax highlighting, supports FTP.
- HyperEdit – Integrates PHP, JavaScript and HTML in an only interface WYSIWYG.
- JetBrains PhpStorm – PHP IDE with editor, on-the-fly code analysis and other web development specific tools including FTP/SFTP synchronization; Trial available
- Komodo IDE – Cross-platform integrated development environment for PHP as well as Python, Ruby and Perl.
- Microsoft Expression Web – Full PHP support with syntax highlighting, etc.; Trial available
- NoteTab – Allows you to have multiple tabs open for different files, has FTP support, comes in two trial versions (NoteTab Standard, NoteTab Pro) and one free version NoteTab Light. NoteTab Pro highlights tags.
- NuSphere PhpED – A PHP development environment and integration with modern web standards. Supports SFTP, WebDAV, and FTP. Native support for CVS source control system, SVN and Git support can be added using Tortoise Windows Shell plugins.
- PHPEdit – Supports SFTP and FTP
- PHP Tools for Visual Studio PHP syntax highlighting, debugger, code validation, testing, support for other languages, among others. One- month trial available
- Rapid PHP Editor – Support for PHP syntax checking, auto-complete, debug and support for CSS, Javascript and HTML
- SourceLair - Online IDE for PHP,[30] as well as JavaScript and Python
- TextPad – Trial available
- Top PHP Studio – Supports FTP
- UltraEdit – Supports SFTP and FTP; Trial available
- Zend Studio – (Cross platform) professional PHP IDE, based on the PHP Development Tools plugin for the Eclipse platform; Trial available
References[edit]
- ^http://php.tutorialhorizon.com/how-to-debug-php-in-aptana-studio/
- ^Instructions for building Atom on FreeBSD are all that are officially available. No official binary releases are available.
- ^With the atom-autocomplete-php package.
- ^Fresh Ports www/bluefish
- ^Fresh Ports editors/codelite
- ^https://wiki.eclipse.org/Debugging_using_XDebug
- ^ThirdPartyPackages
- ^ abOutdated packages available only: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Gedit.
- ^ abPlugin: https://github.com/addiks/gedit-phpide
- ^Plugin: https://github.com/addiks/gedit-dbgp-plugin
- ^With the FTP plugin
- ^With the FTP plugin
- ^With the SSH Console plugin
- ^No pre-built binaries are available. Build instructions are available for macOS.
- ^devel/kdevelop-kde4 Port
- ^With the Komodin Git addon
- ^[1] The PHP debugger is supported in Komodo IDE, not in Komodo Edit
- ^https://netbeans.apache.org/download/nb122/nb122.html
- ^https://netbeans.org/kb/docs/php/debugging.html
- ^Will run in Wine, however
- ^http://thecancerus.com/debugging-php-using-xdebug-and-notepad-part-i/
- ^But it is not free
- ^editors/scite Port
- ^Has been ported to virtually every Unix/Unix-like system and various others. Reference: download : vim online.
- ^'Releases · microsoft/vscode'. GitHub. Microsoft. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
- ^With the PHP IntelliSense extension.
- ^Henry, Alan (5 October 2016). 'Atom, the Text Editor from GitHub, Goes Free and Open-Source'. Lifehacker.
- ^How to Debug PHP with Vim and XDebug on Linux
- ^'Cloud9 - Your development environment, in the cloud'.
- ^'PHP support in SourceLair'. SourceLair Help.
Great editors can help you code faster, find syntax errors, and much more. Below is a roundup of code editors that will help your web development without breaking the bank.
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Editors Choice: Atom.io
Now over the years, many text editors have been created, but only a few have stayed and improved over the years. Atom.io right now is used by all my programmer friends, myself include.
If you want to use the best WYSIWYG HTML editor, that will save you tons of time when coding or doing any editing use Atom. Just try it, you’ll thank me later. Oh and watch their demo video, it’s super cool as well. Best of all.. Atom.io is free and it’s made by Github!
If you don’t love it – come back here and you can call me the meanest words, but I know that will never happen!
1. Aptana Studio (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) (FREE)
Aptana Studio is a complete web development environment that combines powerful authoring tools for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, along with thousands of additional plugins created by the community.
Features of Aptana Studio:
- Unified Editing for Web Apps
- Ajax and JavaScript Libraries
- Ruby on Rails, Python and PHP
- Desktop Ajax
- Free, Open Source and Cross Platform
2. SlickEdit (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X)
SlickEdit is the multi-platform, multi-language code editor that gives programmers the ability to create, navigate, modify, build, and debug code faster and more accurately.
Features of SlickEdit:
- Display symbol details with List Members, function/method argument help, and formatted Javadoc/XMLdoc/Doxygen comments
- Analyze symbols and hierarchy with a rich set of tools including Symbols, Class, References, and Find Symbol tool windows
- Check in and check out from version control
- Diff files and directories
- Preview the definition for the symbol under the cursor automatically without lifting a finger. The Preview tool window shows the definition and formatted Javadoc/XMLdoc/Doxygen comments.
- Edit files up to 2 GB
3. jEdit (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) (FREE)
jEdit is a mature programmer’s text editor with hundreds (counting the time developing plugins) of person-years of development behind it.
Best Mac Php Editor
Features of jEdit:
- Built-in macro language
- Plugins can be downloaded and installed from within jEdit using the “plugin manager” feature.
- Auto indent and syntax highlighting for more than 130 languages.
- Supports a large number of character encodings including UTF8 and Unicode.
- Folding for selectively hiding regions of text.
- Word wrap.
- Highly configurable and customizable.
4. IntelliJ IDEA (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X)
IntelliJ IDEA is a code-centric IDE focused on developer productivity. IntelliJ IDEA deeply understands your code and gives you a set of powerful tools without imposing any particular workflow or project structure.
IntelliJ IDEA is your dream pair-programmer who knows its way around the codebase, makes great suggestions right when you need them, and is always ready to help you shape your code.
Features of IntelliJ IDEA:
- Advanced Code Editing
- Supported Languages
- Technologies & Frameworks
- Teamwork Facilitation
- Code Quality Features
- Integrated Environment
- Customization & Extensibility
5. Notepad++ (Windows) (FREE)
Notepad++ is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.
Features of Notepad++:
- Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
- WYSIWYG
- User Defined Syntax Highlighting
- Auto-completion
- Multi-Document
- Multi-View
- Regular Expression Search/Replace supported
- Full Drag ‘N’ Drop supported
- Dynamic position of Views
- File Status Auto-detection
- Zoom in and zoom out
- Multi-Language environment supported
- Bookmark
- Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting
- Macro recording and playback
6. SCREEM (Linux)
SCREEM is a web development environment. It’s purpose is to increase productivity when constructing a site, by providing quick access to commonly used features. While it is written for use with the GNOME desktop environment in mind it does not specifically require you to be running it, just have the libraries installed.
Best Php Editor For Mac 2015 Download
Features of SCREEM:
- Broken Link Checking
- CTags Support
- Cut / Paste
- CVS Support
- Document Structure Display
- DTD/Doctype Parsing
- Helper Applications
- Inline Tagging
- Intelliclose
- Link Fixing
- Page Previewing
- Page Templates
- Publishing
- Recent documents / Projects
- Search / Replace
- Select Context
- Spell Checking
- Syntax Highlighting
- Tag Trees
- Task management
- Wizards
7. EmEditor (Windows) (FREE Trial; €32.15)
EmEditor is a lightweight, but extensible, commercial text editor for Microsoft Windows. Although designed for Windows XP, the program is also certified for use with Windows Vista. Available editions of the program include the 32-bit edition and the 64-bit edition, and the program also includes a portability option to set up a removable drive, such as a USB drive, through an Import and Export Wizard.
Feature-wise, the program includes unicode and large file support, a tabbed window design, and is extensible via plugins and scripts (macros), many of which have been written by the users.
Features of EmEditor:
- New Snippets Plugin
- Brackets/Quotation Mark Auto-Complete
- Narrowing
- CSV, TSV and DSV
- Full Screen View
- Clipboard History
- Wildcard Support
- Workspace Including Undo Information
- New External Tools
- Pin to List
- Save in Protected Folder
- Supports Windows 7 Jump List
- New Buttons on Toolbar
8. Programmer’s Notepad (Windows)
Programmer’s Notepad is an open-source text editor targeted at users who work with source code.
Features of Programmer’s Notepad:
- Bookmarks (both numbered and plain)
- Code Folding/Outlining
- Docking tool windows
- Excellent external tool support with user-configurable output matching
- Export to HTML (using CSS) and RTF
- File association manager
- In-file method/definition navigation (using Ctags)
- No limit on file size (although large files may take a while to load)
- Non fixed-width font support
- Projects and Project Groups with multi-level folders and file system mirroring
- Quick Search toolbar with links to Google and Google Groups
- Regular expression search and replace
- Support for unicode files
- Support for windows, unix and macintosh file formats
- Syntax highlighting for many languages through “schemes”.
- Tabbed MDI interface
- Text Clips
- Unlimited number of schemes supported, powerful syntax highlighting supporting both user-defined and built-in schemes
- User-defined schemes (XML)
- Word-wrapping
9. PSPad (Windows)
PSPad editor is a freeware text editor and source editor intended for use by programmers.
Features of PSPad:
- Work with plain text
- Create web pages
- Want to use a good IDE for their compiler
10. HTML-Kit (Windows)
HTML-Kit is an HTML editor for Microsoft Windows. The application is a full-featured HTML editor designed to edit, format, validate, preview and publish web pages in HTML, XHTML and XML -languages.
Features of HTML-Kit:
- Navigate tags and scripts
- Code Folding
- Batch Search and Replace
- Upload Options
- Incremental Search and Go-To
- File Versioning and Auto Backup
- HTML-Kit Shorthand
- Not Lost in Translation
- Remote Editing with Local Copy
- Dockable Plugins
- Paste Plus
- Native Unicode Support
- Multi-Page Templates
- Re-order Document Tabs
11. EditPlus (Windows)
EditPlus is a text editor, HTML editor, PHP editor and Java editor for Windows. While it can serve as a good Notepad replacement, it also offers many powerful features for Web page authors and programmers.
Features of EditPlus:
- Multiple document interface
- Overlappable windows
- Tabbed document interface
- Window splitting
- Spell checking
- Regex-based find & replace
- Encoding conversion
- Newline conversion
- Syntax highlighting
- Multiple undo/redo
- Rectangular block selection
- Bracket matching
- Auto indentation
- Auto completion
- Code folding (Text folding)
- Compiler integration
12. Crimson Editor (Windows)
Crimson Editor is a professional source code editor for Windows. This program is not only fast in loading time, but also small in size (so small that it can be copied in one floppy disk).
Features of Crimson Editor:
- Edit multiple documents
- Syntax highlighting
- Multi-level undo / redo
- Project management
- Directory tree view window
- Find & Replace
- Column mode editing
- Natural word wrapping
- Spell checker
- User tools and macros
- Edit remote files directly using built-in FTP client
- Print & Print preview
13. Coda (Mac OS X))
Coda is a $99 commercial web development application for Mac OS X, developed by Panic.
Features of Coda:
- Plugins
- Open quickly
- Smart Spelling
- Subversion
- Find across files
14. BBEdit (Mac OS X) (FREE Trial; From $49 to $125)
Whenever you need to work with text, whether you want to create or maintain a website, write a program or shell script, search log files and extract data, or write a few paragraphs (or pages, or books), BBEdit offers what you need to make accomplishing your task quicker and easier.
BBEdit 9 adds over one hundred new features and over one hundred improvements over the previous version.
Features of BBEdit:
- Text Handling
- Web Development
- Programming
- File Handling
- Display
- Search
- UNIX & Admin
15. TextMate (Mac OS X)
TextMate brings Apple’s approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.
Features of TextMate:
- Ability to Search and Replace in a Project
- Auto-Indent for Common Actions Like Pasting Text
- Auto-Pairing of Brackets and Other Characters
- Clipboard History
- Column Selections and Column Typing
- Completion of Words from Current Document
- CSS-like Selectors to Pinpoint the Scope of Actions and Settings
- Declarative Language Grammars for Graceful Mixing and Hacking
- Dynamic Outline for Working With Multiple Files
- Expand Trigger Words to Code Blocks With Tab-able Placeholders
- File Tabs when Working With Projects
- Foldable Code Blocks
- Function Pop-up for Quick Overview and Navigation
- Plug-able Through Your Favorite Scripting Language
- Recordable Macros With No Programming Required
- Regular Expression Search and Replace (grep)
- Run Shell Commands from Within a Document
- Support for Darcs, Perforce, SVK, and Subversion
- Support for More Than 50 Languages
- Switch Between Files in Projects With a Minimum of Key Strokes
- Themable Syntax Highlight Colors
- Visual Bookmarks to Jump Between Places in a File
- Works As External Editor for (s)ftp Programs
- Works Together With Xcode and Can Build Xcode Projects
16. SubEthaEdit (Mac OS X)
SubEthaEdit is a powerful and lean text editor. And it’s the only collaborative one that is a joy to use. By combining the ease of Bonjour with the world’s best text collaboration engine, it makes working together not only possible but even fun…
Features of SubEthaEdit:
SubEthaEdit includes various advanced features: A UNIX command line utility to enable complex and interactive pipe workflows with your terminal. Overhauled printing, including all bells and whistles, even with collaborative metadata.
Exporting to HTML, again with metadata. Completely user customizable syntax highlighting through styles. Support for editing files as administrator. Improved AppleScript support to allow control of sharing features.
17. CSSEdit (Mac OS X)
Design beautiful, innovative and fast-loading web sites… with a beautiful, innovative and fast app. CSSEdit’s intuitive approach to style sheets and powerful previewing features will make you deliver awesome standards-based sites in no time!
Features of CSSEdit:
With CSSEdit, you see changes to your style sheet applied in real-time. Without saving. Without uploading. Without hassle. For any Web App or HTML file. You can edit style sheets for absolutely any site, on- or offline.
Thanks to our innovative Override technology, you can even apply your open style sheets to any site and see it change instantly! Styling a Web App used to be a cycle of type — upload — refresh. CSSEdit destroys this waste of time. Making your Web 2.0 App beautiful is now easy and productive.
18. Taco HTML Edit (Mac OS X)
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Taco HTML Edit is the premier HTML editor and PHP editor for the Mac. As an HTML editor, Taco HTML Edit empowers its users to rapidly create their own web sites. It is designed exclusively for Mac OS X and has many advanced features including spell checking, live browser previewing, PHP previewing, syntax checking, and much more.
Features of Taco HTML Edit:
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- Component Library
- Code Coloring
- Preview
- Code Completion
- Syntax Checking
- Live Preview
- Code Clips
19. skEdit (Mac OS X)
skEdit is a text editor for Mac OS X, aimed at web designers and programmers.
Best Mac Php Ide
Features of skEdit:
- Tabbed interface
- Project based site management
- Code hinting and completion
- Code folding
- Code snippets
- Syntax highlighting
- File uploading and remote editing (using FTP, SFTP or WebDAV)
- HTML Tidy integration
- Search and replace with support for regular expressions
Which software for coding is your favorite? Do you use any of these code editors? If you haven’t got one, now you certainly have some promising programs to choose from!
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