NetBeans 6.7 and PHP/Symfony – a perfect couple

Do you know the feeling when you look at your screen waiting for the project to build its workspace for hours or when you have to search the whole project in order to find a simple function ? If you do I recommend trying NetBeans as your primary IDE.

netbeansAlthough NetBeans has a wide range of supported languages ( Java, Ruby, C/C++, PHP) it comes in a simple and compact enviorment. If you’re interested only in one of the mentioned technologies then it’s not a problem to download a NetBeans dedicated version for only that solution. netbeans phpAs a PHP developer I found NetBeans very helpful from the moment they included PHP support in it. Now as the NetBeans 6.7 has seen the light of day I am more than satisfied with the improvement of my working process thanks to NetBeans.

So what are the benefits ?

  • Speed (!) – first of all NetBeans has an amazing speed for a big IDE. The indexing of a big PHP project  (~400 MB) took me about 5 minutes whereas for Eclipse it was about an hour with fingers crossed that it won’t crash.
  • code completion, code completion, code completion ( a little bit too Steve Ballmer there ) – this is probably the highlight of NetBeans for PHP. The code completion is really outstanding, covers all the constructors’ suggestions and hints. It includes the latest declared variables in a newly created constructor or function call. Try it out yourself !
  • The Memory – back in the time I was very disappointed with Eclipse IDE because it started getting slower and slower with each and every project I did. This was a big issue for me and  probably still is for the majority of PHP developers out there. So when I switched to NetBeans I was positivly shocked how it doesn’t slow down even after months of usage.
  • NetBeans 6.7 provides many crucial benefits that make it stand out in the field of PHP IDE. Just to name a few, it’s got SQL code completion, marking returns, parameter info, getter and setter generator, code coverage, PHP path mapping, Selenium for testing your applications and many, many more.
Besides, NetBeans is simply great to work with. It has a nice glossy and shiny look which is important as well to to make you feel  comfortable and motivated. It supports MySQL servers and Bugzilla which you can manage from the IDE. At GOYELLO we work mostly with Symfony framework and NetBeans handles it very well ( e.g. support for YAML files, not to mention the code completion, again ) so this is a perfect solution for all you symfonians out there. If you’re a social networks freek you’ll be delighted to find that this IDE has many built in drag-and-drop features from most of the network services API e.g. Twitter. Download it today for free and have fun developing PHP applications.
Karol Sójko
Software developer, Open Source enthusiast, Linux lover and student at Gdańsk University Of Technology. Feel free to check me out on Twitter @karolsojko
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  • http://www.kumda.blogspot.com/ kumda

    Realmente bueno viejo, a mi modo de ver, netbeans es la mejor herramienta para el desarrollo de software.

  • http://ksojkotech.wordpress.com/ Zoja

    Could you write that in english please? :)

  • http://www.facebook.pl/people/Karol-Sojko/1764056198 Karol Sójko

    Could you write that in English please :) ?

  • http://en-gb.facebook.com/people/Khan-Nafee-M-Sadh/712365431 Khan Nafee M Sadh

    Nice Work netbeans team!
    nice writting, Karol Sójko.
    every one, keep up coding with the only editor u will ever need
    :-)

  • http://ksojkotech.wordpress.com/ Karol Sójko

    Thanks for the reply, I'm glad you liked it :)

  • Andre

    For those who can not understand spanish, he (she) said: “Really good man, in my opinion, NetBeans is the best tool for software development.”

    PS: Netbeans is really a great software development tool!

  • Szymon

    Have you really used it for php/html coding?
    I used it for a day, and went back to the old good Zend Studio 5.5
    Too many bugs, it can't be used for production yet. It got released to early.

  • Andre

    I do use since 6.7 beta 2 and I find it fantastic! No great bugs for me, SVN integration is very good, PHP completion is very mature, and YAML files support is the top for me! Xdebug and selenium debug support are very good, but they could be improved.
    I would love support for all the Symfony tasks and Symfony PHP project, but it still is a great IDE for PHP programming.

  • http://ksojkotech.wordpress.com/ Karol Sójko

    Ofcourse I'm using it, all the time with all my Symfony projects that I'm working on. It's great for me, haven't met any serious bugs, the speed is outsanding and the code completion as well. That's a really powerful IDE. I don't think that Zend Studio 5.5 is any serious competion for NetBeans 6.7. Besides c'mon , judging and testing an IDE just for a day is definitely too short to get to know it. I presume that you make you opinion based only on the fact that you're using Zend Studio as your primary IDE and don't want to try anything new at the moment. Can you write what bugs did you get ?

  • http://www.facebook.pl/people/Karol-Sojko/1764056198 Karol Sójko

    Andre I agree with you totally :)

  • http://twitter.com/zoja87 Karol Sójko

    Andre I agree with you totally :)

  • http://ksojkotech.wordpress.com/ Karol Sójko

    Andre I agree with you totally :)

  • Marian

    Hi all, we (NetBeans team) are working on Symfony framework support, that will be available for NetBeans 6.8 – planned Nov-Dec 2009.
    http://wiki.netbeans.org/PHPDevelopmentPlanNB68

  • Samitha Sathyajith

    ah..thats coooool…I like it…

  • http://www.binaryweb.com.br/ Elias de A. Rodrigues

    Translating that message above:
    Very good man, in my opinion, NetBeans is the best tool for software development.

  • http://www.twitter.com/karolsojko Karol Sójko

    Can't wait for the 6.8 release as well :)

  • Pingback: Symfony Support in NetBeans 6.8 Announced | blog.seric.at()

  • http://covac-software.com/ Christian Sciberras

    NetBeans is a great IDE for PHP/website projects, I would recommend it to anyone in this area.

    However, it may have improved memory consumption after v5, but still it is not enough.

    Standing idle after 10 minutes with only one open file, memory usage increased up to 200MBs, from the initial 20Mb. I think something wrong is going on. Looks like a memory bug/leak to me.

    Back to the above post, it may have improved, but it is not the best IDE out there when it comes to memory.

    Kind regards,
    Chris.

  • Marian

    Christian,
    thanks for your feedback. We(NB team) are working on performance improvements and hopefully we would be able to address it in next(6.8) release. What would really help us is if you (our users) will report those issues directly into our bugtracking system and follow with our developers to help them reproduce and after fixing verify that it's really working as you expected. So for those not familiar with our bagtracking system, please report all problems you might have with PHP support in NetBeans on
    http://www.netbeans.org/issues/enter_bug.cgi?co…

    If your IDE is idle, please attach also thread-dump into the issue
    http://wiki.netbeans.org/GenerateThreadDump

    And if you can share your project with us (it will be privately hands by NetBeans QE & Dev team) it will be definitely beneficial to both sides, so we can address problems you are facing while working with your projects.

    Anyway thanks for your feedback and any help you'll provide.

  • vicarkangel

    Hola a todos me preguntaba si me si alguien me podria ayudar a integrar el Symfony con el NetBeans

  • darkredz

    I am a great NetBeans fan and the IDE have been working really well with DooPHP framework with all the autocomplete and code hinting.
    Kudos to Netbeans!

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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Stas-Ustimenko/100000400932904 Stas Ustimenko

    I use Codelobster PHP Edition (http://www.codelobster.com) with special Symfony plug-in. It works best for me.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Stas-Ustimenko/100000400932904 Stas Ustimenko

    I use Codelobster PHP Edition (http://www.codelobster.com) with special Symfony plug-in. It works best for me.

  • http://www.petersopinion.com PetersOpinion

    Hi Stas, thanks for your reply and your additional tip!

  • Neil Connolly

    Are you still using Netbeans for Symfony2 ?
    I am currently undecided between Titanium and Netbeans. Titanium is simpler and I dont have the XDebug problems that come with Netbeans (I have been trying to modify INI file all day and failing… badly!).
    Which would you suggest today?