NYCPHP Meetup

[David Krings]

(Margaret) Michele Waldman wrote:
> I already use print statements.
> 
> I've been programming php for about 1 1/2-2 years without a debugger.
> 
> I can do it.  I'm just hoping to speed up my development.
> 
> I can't think of any other ways to cut corners.

Yes, there are debuggers for Windows. One of the popular ones is dbg, but 
there is also xdebug. They are usually included in an IDE, but as far as I 
know they can also be run on the command line, but I have no idea how that works.

I use NuSphere PHPEd which comes with the commercial version of dbg. Other 
IDEs that use the free versions of dbg are Luckasoft's EngInSite Editor for 
PHP (www.enginsite.com) and PHPEdit from Waterproof (www.waterproof.fr). 
Waterproof gives out free licenses when you ask them for one and explain to 
them that you only want to use it for private projects. You can get 
Luckasoft's IDE for free as well if you translate the GUI strings and help 
file for them to a language currently not listed, otherwise you need to buy a 
license for a fair price. Luckasoft often bundles other apps in such as their 
MySQL client, which is the best MySQL client I have seen. And then there is 
Zend, Eclipse (you need to puzzle it together yourself, your mileage may vary, 
I had no mileage at all), Maguma, plugins for Microsoft VisualStudio, and 
others. Some even have both dbg and xdebug available, but most implement it in 
a way that is obstrusive to efficient development as they force a stop at 
start of each script file. So if you develop as I do and segment the entire 
project into individual script files that each include a logical module then 
stopping at every corner gets old really fast.
NuSphere costs money, but not as much as Zend and unless you are hooked on all 
the Zend stuff I am convinced that NuSphere's IDE does the trick. I did some 
development in VB some years ago and got acustomed to the excellent IDEs from 
Microsoft (probably the only area where Microsoft is actually good at). 
NuSphere is not a VisualStudio clone, but provides the same level of luxury 
and all the features. And it has the debugger implemented in such a way that 
it does not need to stop at the start of each file, but can run through a 
dozen files and then stop at a break point in the 13th file. NuSphere's IDE 
also comes with its own web server so you don't need to fork around in the 
Apache config file to get the debugger dll loaded and working (although, that 
is quite easy with Apache). NuSphere has also internal browsers and you can 
switch between IE and Mozilla engines, but you can also use an external 
browser and still have the full debugging capabilities. And that will allow 
for example to add additional debuggers to Firefox so that you can debug 
client side scripts (which is why I doubt that there is an all inclusive 
debugger as PHP is server side and ECMAScript is client side).
If you are interested in NuSphere's IDE, I have version 5.0 that I would pass 
on for a small compensation. It allows getting the upgrade to the current 5.5 
for 39$. I think that is dirt cheap, even the other pricing isn't as 
ridiculous as that from Zend, but Zend gives you everything and two kitchen 
sinks. It depends on what you need. I used a trial of Zend Studio for a few 
days and then gave up. I just couldn't figure anything out. IMHO Zend Studio 
is the opposite of "intuitive".
What is interesting is that several tests have shown that the performance of 
the XAMPP stack on Windows is better than on Linux, so developing PHP on 
Windows isn't that off the mark as some may claim. I use the XAMPP from 
apachefriends.org as 'production' server, there are other providers of XAMPP 
stacks, but I found the one from apachefriends to be the best.

HTH,

David