Book Image

Expert PHP 5 Tools

By : Dirk Merkel
Book Image

Expert PHP 5 Tools

By: Dirk Merkel

Overview of this book

Even if you find writing PHP code easy, writing code that is efficient and easy to maintain and reuse is not so straightforward. Self-taught PHP developers and programmers transitioning from other languages often lack the knowledge to work with PHP on an enterprise level. They need to take their PHP development skills to that level by learning the skills and tools necessary to write maintainable and efficient code.This book will enable you to take your PHP development skills to an enterprise level by teaching you the skills and tools necessary to write maintainable and efficient code. You will learn how to perform activities such as unit testing, enforcing coding standards, automating deployment, and interactive debugging using tools created for PHP developers – all the information in one place. Your code will be more maintainable, efficient, and self-documented.From the design phase to actually deploying the application, you will learn concepts and apply them using the best-of-breed tools available in PHP.Experienced developers looking for expertise in PHP development will learn how to follow best practices within the world of PHP. The book contains many well-documented code samples and recipes that can be used as a starting point for producing quality code.Specifically, you will learn to design an application with UML, code it in Eclipse with PDT, document it with phpDocumentor, debug it interactively with Xdebug, test it by writing PHPUnit tests, manage source code in Subversion, speed up development and increase stability by using Zend Framework, pull everything together using continuous integration, and deploy the application automatically with Phing – all in one book. The author's experience in PHP development enables him to share insights on using enterprise tools, in a clear and friendly way.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Expert PHP 5 Tools
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface

Zend Studio for Eclipse


Zend has a commercial IDE offering that builds on PDT. I don't necessarily want to drum up sales for Zend, but their IDE offers a lot of added features for the professional PHP developer. As I have mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Eclipse isn't the only game in town. Other development environments offer feature sets that compete with both Eclipse/PDT and Zend Studio. However, having looked at Eclipse and PDT in detail, it is a natural progression to at least mention Zend Studio because it directly leverages and expands the PDT features we have discussed thus far.

You can download and purchase Zend Studio for Eclipse from zend.com. The download comes with a 30 day free trial after which you have to purchase a license to continue using the product. However, 30 days should be enough to evaluate the product and make a buying decision. At the time of this writing, a license for Zend Studio for Eclipse ranges from $399 to $717, depending on how many years of...