PhpStorm Overview 2022
Do you want to get to know PhpStorm? Maybe you have a colleague or friend who wants to know why you love this IDE? We’ve made a five-minute video about PhpStorm for you. We’ll highlight some of its core features: a to-the-point summary of why PhpStorm is a great choice for all PHP developers out there.
If you’ve got 5 minutes to spare, make sure you check it out! Leave a comment and like, and of course, share it with your colleagues and friends!
Also, here’s the full transcript if you’d like to read it:
This is PhpStorm. It’s an integrated development environment — an IDE — for PHP developers. It also has support for SQL and databases, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, version control, quality tools, frameworks, and so much more.
Today I want to show you PhpStorm in action, and why it’s a great choice for PHP developers. Let’s begin!
We’ll start with PhpStorm’s core business: PHP code.
There’s extensive code completion: from classes to functions, from arguments to variables, and anything else you can think of, PhpStorm will always have suggestions for you.
There’s error detection: from syntax errors to deprecation notices, PhpStorm will tell you what’s wrong.
It has a deep understanding of PHP’s type system; and on top of that, we have full built-in support for Composer, allowing you to manage dependencies all from within PhpStorm.
We go to great lengths to ensure that you have the best possible coding experience.
I already mentioned autocompletion, but there’s also code generation: no more manual setup for classes, traits, enums, interfaces or tests. PhpStorm will generate all the boilerplate code for you, including namespaces, method definitions, getters, setters, and so on.
And when you’re writing code and want to import a class or function, PhpStorm will not only suggest the right class, but it will also import that class for you automatically.
When you combine all of these features, it makes your entire coding process much easier, from start to finish.
Now let’s take a look at some of the more complex functionality. Refactorings are one example.
PhpStorm will automate work that might take minutes or even hours, and do it for you in seconds.
Refactorings like renaming classes, moving directories, and extracting methods are never more than a couple of clicks away.
Did you make a mistake? Just hit undo and PhpStorm will revert changes to potentially hundreds of files in the blink of an eye.
We take care of code formatting, too. First and foremost, while you’re writing code, and second in bulk, for whole files at once. Just hit the code format hotkey on your keyboard, and PhpStorm will change the code style exactly to your liking.
There’s one small menu in PhpStorm that might seem insignificant at first, but almost all of our users know it by heart.
It’s the context actions menu. Alt, Enter. No matter where you are in your code, you’re only two keystrokes away from all the powerful insights and features of PhpStorm: importing classes, fixing typos, cleaning up code, fixing errors, and so much more.
Let’s talk about code navigation – because you and I know that being a developer is so much more than just writing code. A significant part of our job involves code diving – understanding code that others have written.
PhpStorm has this mental image that helps you navigate all throughout your codebase. You can easily move around your codebase and understand the relations between classes and functions. On top of that, we have a handy “go back” shortcut that allows you to trace back your steps.
We also have a powerful search menu where you can search for file names, classes, symbols (like method definitions), or just “search everything”.
Of course we support fuzzy search everywhere, so that you don’t have to worry about writing the exact query you’re looking for.
Let’s look at testing for a minute. We have built-in support for tests: from generating test classes, to running tests and showing test results, PhpStorm has everything you need, all within your IDE.
We have built-in support for all the major testing frameworks, and there are additional community plugins available as well.
And then there’s debugging: a complex but powerful skill for developers to learn. PhpStorm provides a simple and user-friendly UI for xDebug, bundled with a lot of very powerful debugging tools. From step-by-step debugging to conditional and scripted breakpoints, PhpStorm has everything you need.
Finally, let’s take a look at some of the tools that come bundled with PhpStorm.
First up is our version control integration. We have a complete interface built on top of the most popular version control tools: GIT, SVN, and Mercurial.
You can browse your version history, compare changes, and commit and push from within the IDE.
We even have a GitHub integration for managing pull requests and issues.
Then there’s our HTTP client. You can use it to send and mock HTTP requests.
All the functionality of DataGrip, our database IDE, is integrated within PhpStorm. You can browse databases and tables, manage connections and data – everything you need.
We even have cross-language integrations, so that you can write SQL queries in PHP and get autocompletion based on your database scheme.
As I mentioned earlier, we also support all major frontend technologies and frameworks. From CSS to JavaScript, from Vue to React, we support everything that’s available in WebStorm; that’s our frontend development IDE.
PhpStorm offers more than we could ever hope to cover in one video.
There is an extensive plugin community that, for example, provides Symfony, Laravel, and Drupal support.
Not to mention custom IDE themes, support for languages like Dart, Node, and Typescript, fronted frameworks like Tailwind, Vue, and React, and so much more.
If you’d like to learn more, be sure to check out the description.
I hope that you’ve got a pretty good idea of how powerful PhpStorm is. Thanks for watching, enjoy PhpStorm!
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