Through understanding this version of the NetBeans integrated development environment, I think this upgraded and updated version for PHP is worthy of our in-depth understanding to see what it provides for PHP, the most popular development language today. support.
You can download NetBeans IDE 6.1 Early Access for PHP separately through the NetBeans official website. For developers, there is an advantage to this version being separated from any previously existing versions, so that you can use it safely. Without worrying about breaking any existing production development environment.
Installing this version of NetBeans on the major platforms it supports (such as Windows, Linux and Mac OS You need to install and run a PHP 5.
If you are already developing in PHP, these prerequisites may already be met; if not, then you need to deploy and debug these required environments first. For those who find it troublesome, you can try installing a separate software package that integrates all of these, such as XAMPP for Windows or Linux.
List of advantages
After these environments are ready, creating a PHP project is a very easy thing. All you need to do is select File > New Project, or click the New Project button on the toolbar. From the New Project dialog box you can enter the directory for your source files (such as PHP, XHTML, and CSS), the directory where you want to deploy these files on the server, and the hyperlink URL for your application. You can also choose to create an index.php file as the default document for your application.
Here you can get all the functions needed for an integrated development environment, such as PHP syntax highlighting, code auto-completion, help tips, error identification, etc.
Code completion is intellisense, so if you enter $ in the PHP directive section, it will give you access to runtime variables (such as $_SERVER); but anywhere else on the page, $ is just A common symbol. You can drag and drop any HTML element, such as tables and forms. In addition, it also has common PHP editor functions such as code folding, formatting, and easy-to-use navigation.
But writing an application is more than just a bunch of code. On the database and server side, this version of NetBeans also has a lot of nifty features. Although NetBeans includes support for many different servers and databases, the best support is MySQL. This is not surprising at all. After all, MySQL is Sun's own product. In this development environment you can easily connect to a MySQL database server so that you can interact with the database directly within your PHP application.
You can also create a .sql file (but for some reason, Sun does not provide a menu option to create a SQL file) and use it to query or modify the database. For those who are used to Rails' set-up/tear down way of working, it is equally easy to use these text files to define your database during the development process. Also, while you're debugging, you can even manually run a specific query and see the data returned.
Other supported file types include CSS, XHTML, XML, JavaScript, etc. You can also use common editor support features, such as different code colors. In terms of CSS support, it also has a style generator that supports preview, allowing you to more intuitively check the style effect of your application. This version of NetBeans is also very easy to use in terms of JavaScript, supporting dynamic languages and script languages. After all, this is a key component of NetBeans.
Another powerful feature available for free is version control, which supports CVS, Subversion and now Mercurial version control systems.
Flaws in the ointment
Having said so many advantages, let’s take a look at its shortcomings. After all, we can’t forget that this is an early preview version. In this version, some of the fancier features are missing, making it a bit rough. One of the manifestations is the control of the browser, which should be more complete. Your application now runs using the browser you set as default, but for those who want to test different browsers in the integrated development environment, it is better to let them choose the browser to use. type. In addition, this version has very few features in terms of support for refactoring, which is something we hope to see added in the final version.
However, overall, the new version of NetBeans has made considerable progress, and it is gradually becoming one of the best integrated development environments for dynamic language and script programming. Although it faces strong challenges at the same time, considering its strong support for Ruby, JavaScript and now PHP, and the fact that it has begun to consider improving support for Jython, we have reason to believe that NetBeans has a better future.
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