Blog → 5 Of The Best IDEs You Should Consider For Drupal Development

As a developer, you'll certainly want to be more productive. Being productive means making fewer mistakes and writing quality code. Needless to say, that all depends on you, but using IDEs (integrated development environments) can help you accomplish those goals in an easier and quicker manner. However, choosing the right IDE can be a daunting proposition, as you need to consider a lot of aspects before making the final choice.

For instance, if you're a developer and searching for a suitable IDE for your Drupal project, then selecting a PHP based IDE can significantly alleviate speed and quality of development. More importantly, a PHP IDE helps to avoid some of the most common programming mistakes, developers often make when carrying out development using the Drupal CMS. The IDE provides several benefits such as:

• Highlights syntax for great readability
• Offers support for code hinting for classes and functions used in your project
• Helps debug the code and more...

Through this post, I intend to help you provide a compiled list of some of the popular and most widely used Integrated Development Environments for Drupal (and PHP) development.

1. Eclipse PDT

Perhaps the most popular IDE for Drupal is the Eclipse PDT. As the name implies, Eclipse PDT provides a PHP IDE framework for the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment. It provides support for Drupal development. It is an open source IDE and thus is available for free.

Pros

• It's easy to configure and allows to adjust everything.
• It comes with a powerful source code editor that contains a rich set of features including code folding, configurable syntax colouring, etc.
• The newer versions keep growing in terms of features and performance.

Cons

• Cannot run PHPUnit tests from within the integrated development environments.
• Eclipse PDT performance is slow, especially when you need to refresh a page or source code.
• Eclipse PDT supports Xdebug and Zend Debugger tools, but setting them up can be very painful. Even though, you can configure Eclipse PDT in the same exact manner as you want, but you'll have to perform a lot of configuration work.
• It has a steep learning curve.

2. NetBeans

In case you're looking for a full-fledged IDE with a good version control, then NetBeans is exactly what you need. This IDE is free to use. It comes with several great features including syntax highlighting, refactoring, and many more.

Pros

• It has a slick and functional UI (user interface) compared to Eclipse PDT.
• Provides help and suggestions for code completion.
• It comes with unit testing capability.
• It provides debugging support, allowing you to set breakpoints and steps throughout your code.

Cons

• It is slow in terms of autocompletion, project browsing, etc.
• In order to use advanced tools of the NetBeans IDE, you need proper training.

3. PHPStorm

PHPStorm is a Drupal friendly PHP based Integrated Development Environment and one of the best IDE with excellent support for speed and functionality. And, the best part! PhpStorm’s provides powerful Drupal support. In addition, it even offers open source collaboration tools that help to make the Drupal development and code review process easier, and conformed to Drupal’s coding standards.

Pros

• Can run PHPUnit tests from within the Integrated Development Environment.
• PHPStorm is ideal for developers seeking to use an IDE with fast performance. This is because this IDE features a fast UI and the filesystem gets refreshed automatically after a few seconds.
• Offers an easy to implement debugging solution in the form of “Listen for debug connection” button.

Cons

• One major downside to using PHPStorm is that the bugs are not yet resolved while new features gets added to it.

4. Komodo Edit

This open source IDE helps to keep Drupal coding clean via its syntax checking feature. It is a free, cross-platform IDE that comes with great features such as code-intelligence, version control, unit testing, code refactoring, adds-on and customization to name a few.

Pros

• It comes with one of the best syntax checker.
• It offers extensive auto-completion for standard PHP and Drupal functions.
• It offers much better function and variable completion tools than Eclipse PDT.
• Faster code navigation with code browser.
• It supports debugging tool Xdebug.

Cons

• Works slowly when you need to load a new file system.
• Working with Komodo Edit can be complex in comparison to other lightweight IDEs, and requires training.

5. Codelobster PHP Edition

CodeLobster PHP Edition IDE simplifies and streamlines PHP development process. Besides this, it comes with a Drupal plugin that helps in developing any type of Drupal sites and offers special abilities for Drupal. It's free.

Pros

The Drupal plugin that the Codelobster IDE offers comes with several benefits:

• It provides ability to organize files into a project that automatically installs components of the Drupal CMS (including Drupal 7).
• It provides auto-complete and tooltips for Drupal's module hooks and function theme.
• It comes with Drupal search feature.
• It contains a feature that helps you acquire all necessary information about Drupal functions and constants.

Cons

• One trouble you may face while using this IDE is that Drupal functions don't show up using the auto-complete feature.

Let's Sum It All Up!

Choosing an IDE for your PHP and Drupal development can help you significantly cut down a lot of your development time. But, picking the right IDE can be difficult. To help you out, I've compiled a list of some of the best IDEs for Drupal that comes with astounding features and capabilities. Each of the aforementioned IDEs has a few advantages and disadvantages, and so make sure to choose one that best suit your needs.

Codelobster PHP Edition is gaining wide popularity as one of the best free PHP IDEs and provides developers with more Drupal-specified features.