BEST TOOLS FOR PHP DEVELOPERS

There's no denying the immense popularity that PHP enjoys among developers/programmers across the globe. The server-side scripting language initially designed for web development has gone on to make rapid strides as a general-purpose programming language. Here are 10 amazing PHP tools that increase its productivity.

1.Xdebug

Xdebug is a PHP extension which provides debugging and profiling capabilities. It uses the DBGp debugging protocol. Xdebug also provides profiling information for PHP scripts and code coverage analysis among others.

2.PHPUnit

PHPUnit is a programmer-oriented testing framework for PHP. It is an instance of the xUnit architecture for unit testing frameworks.

3.phpDocumentor

phpDocumentor 2 is a tool with which it is possible to generate documentation from your PHP source code. With this you can provide your consumers with more information regarding the functionality embedded within your source and not just what is usable to them from your user interface.

4.Securimage

Securimage is an open-source free PHP CAPTCHA script for generating complex images and CAPTCHA codes to protect forms from spam and abuse. It can be easily added into existing forms on your website to provide protection from spam bots. It can run on most any webserver as long as you have PHP installed, and GD support within PHP.

5.pChart

pChart is a PHP class oriented framework designed to create aliased charts. Data can be retrieved from SQL queries, CSV files, or manually provided. Focus has been put on rendering quality introducing an aliasing algorithm to draw eye candy graphics.

6.PHP_Beautifier

This program reformats and beautifies PHP 4 and PHP 5 source code files automatically. The program is Open Source and distributed under the terms of PHP Licence. It is written in PHP 5 and has a command line tool.

7.Phing

It's a PHP project build system or build tool based on Apache Ant. You can do anything with it that you could do with a traditional build system like GNU make, and its use of simple XML build files and extensible PHP "task" classes make it an easy-to-use and highly flexible build framework.

8.SimplePie

SimplePie is a very fast and easy-to-use feed parser, written in PHP, that puts the 'simple' back into 'really simple syndication'. Flexible enough to suit beginners and veterans alike, SimplePie is focused on speed, ease of use, compatibility and standards compliance.

9.phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is a free software tool written in PHP, intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web. phpMyAdmin supports a wide range of operations on MySQL, MariaDB and Drizzle. Frequently used operations (managing databases, tables, columns, relations, indexes, users, permissions, etc) can be performed via the user interface, while you still have the ability to directly execute any SQL statement.

10.PHP Object Generator

PHP Object Generator, (POG) is an open source PHP code generator which automatically generates clean and tested Object Oriented code for your PHP4/PHP5 application. By generating PHP objects with integrated CRUD methods, POG gives you a head start in any project.

Saurabh Singh, EFYTIMES News Network