PHP Development Suite Software?

I've been coding for years now and always just either worked on a shell on the server, or worked with Editplus and FTP'd it to the server. Is there a software "suite" out there that allows me to edit files with a code editor on my local computer and auto-syncs with the server?
Thanks

Anwered 2010-03-08 10:01:06 by Gathering of Coders

Adobe Dreamweaver

Anwered 2010-03-08 10:02:32 by praveen

Adobe Dreamweaver

Anwered 2010-03-08 10:30:30 by Yasser Almohammad

http://www.eclipse.org/pdt/
Eclipse for PHP.

http://netbeans.org/
then from the plugins, install PHP addons

there is also http://www.zend.com/en/ which have a free php coding suite (the same as in Eclipse, but wih different default debugger)

with the previous suites, you can code php websites and debug them (see the value of a certain variables in real time as the page is running on the server, set break points and so on), the debugging features must be enabled from within the server for instance, check this page out too see how to enable the debug features in XAMPP server:
http://unitstep.net/blog/2009/01/26/getting-xdebug-to-work-with-apachexampp-to-debug-php/

all the previous IDEs will allow you to set up the debug server settings with the appropriate ports (usually the default ports will work just fine, between XDebug and Eclipse-Netbeans)

you will be amazed how strong the debug feature are and how they will help you build better and faster websites (instead of filling your page with ECHO commands and such....)


Dreamweaver is used to design and edit php pages, but i dont believe it has any debugging features preinstalled(last time i checked at least few years back) (so i guess you need to install an extension to enable such feature).