After its release, it didn’t take long for PHP to be considered as one of the most reliable open source technologies in the world. As a matter of fact, PHP stands at the forefront among companies offering open source development services. With great overall reliability and a huge community backing it, PHP is now a widely used server-side scripting language.

Complementing its many benefits is the presence of a broad range of tools – both free and premium that enable developers to get creative with the language.

In this blog, we present to you a list of a few great PHP tools that web developers would never regret using.
 

PhpStorm

 
PhpStorm is a widely popular commercial IDE for PHP that can help streamline application development considerably. It offers integration with various popular PHP tools as well as relational databases, and supports widely used PHP frameworks and CMS solutions including but not limited to WordPress, Drupal, and Magento.
 

NetBeans Bundle for PHP

 
The PHP developer community welcomed the NetBeans Bundle for PHP with open arms. The bundle includes a plethora of great features – from semantic analysis with parameter highlighting to Symfony, Zend, and Yii framework support. In addition, it also supports code debugging with xdebug and unit testing with Selenium.
 

DebugBar

 
DebugBar is a PHP testing tool capable of identifying both HTML and JavaScript bugs. In addition, the tool is also capable of monitoring network traffic, evaluating JavaScript code, and inspecting CSS elements.
 

phpDox

 
phpDox is a great solution for developers who require quick API documentation for a PHP application. The tool comes with a search feature and also offers information on code complexity and code coverage. In addition, developers can augment its functionality by adding more plugins.
 

RIPS

 
RIPS originated as an open source tool but now is one of the leading security analysis solution for PHP. It’s a premium tool that offers consistently better threat analysis without false positives. RIPS code analysis is preferred by many developers to detect unknown security issues.
 

New Relic

 
New Relic is a great alternative to the already popular Retrace. It comes with thorough applied intelligence-powered performance monitoring capabilities in addition to infrastructure monitoring and user data analysis. Developers can use it to understand app performance dependencies and bottlenecks.
 

Aptana Studio

 
Aptana Studio claims to be the world’s most powerful open source web development IDE, and it has loads of features to back that claim. What’s so great about Aptana Studio is that it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It has a built-in PHP server and debugging tool to build and test apps in one environment.
 

Sublime Text

 
Unlike most other tools in this list, Sublime Text is just a text editor. But a good one at that. The go-to-anything feature is what makes Sublime Text a winner for our developers. The text editor lets developers quickly locate lines of code, and allows simultaneous editing – change multiple code instances at once. It’s not a free tool though. But a one-time fee of $80 makes it a wallet-friendly tool for developers.
 

Selenium

 
There aren’t many developers out there who haven’t heard about Selenium. It’s a lightweight, open source testing framework compatible with the most popular browsers. Selenium allows users to create their own custom UI tests in any language and can also automate certain web-based administration tasks. It’s also a favorite for many companies offering Agile software development services.
 

Conclusion

 
There seems to be an abundance of open source PHP solutions that developers can choose from. We know that this list above is not complete, and requires quite a few other mentions. We simply wanted to keep things short and mention the ones that we personally know are worthwhile. We are sure the tools mentioned in this blog can aid any software development company specializing in PHP development.

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Technology plays a critical role in web stacks. Web stacks have always evolved in parallel with technology, over the years. We will be discussing LAMP stack and MEAN stack today.

LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Python/Perl.

MEAN is an acronym for MongoDB, Express.js, Angular.js, and Node.js

There still seems to be a confusion when faced with a choice of MEAN or LAMP stacks for web development. The backend languages, server environment and databases are different for both.

Let’s discuss the pros and cons of MEAN and LAMP stacks with respect to 3 key areas – Web server, database and operating system.
 

The Web Server

 
Apache provides the web server for LAMP stack while Node.js holds that responsibility in the MEAN stack. LAMP stack has been there for a long time. And that is also one of the reasons why Apache is considered a mature technology, where you can get new extensions when they are available.

As for Node.js, it’s a relatively new technology. While you still get quite a few active plug-ins, you will still have to write your own plug-ins to cover those areas missing necessary functionalities. Node.js is event-based and also locks codes on the web server into JavaScript. This can complicate things when you try to convert a sophisticated back-end program.
 

Database

 
LAMP uses MySQL or other relational databases while MEAN works with MongoDB, a non-relational database. If you are in a situation where you have to translate the data in an existing SQL database, you will soon find it tiresome to remove redundant object attributes, and may have to rely on a custom software for this purpose.

Relational databases are comparatively easier to work with but is on the verge of becoming outdated. MongoDB features faster data retrieval and is more scalable though.
 

The Operating System

 
LAMP stack locks the operating system to Linux and its variants. There are no such restrictions in MEAN, as you can run it in any OS compatible with Node.js. Linux isn’t your only option if you are using MEAN stack, though it is still considered to be the best OS for a server environment.

Both LAMP and MEAN have pros and cons in all 3 key areas. Let’s assess a few more facts before concluding.
It is said that you can only master MEAN stack once you have mastered JavaScript. It’s going to be a tad tedious, but worth it. However, LAMP stack works with front-end JavaScript and back-end PHP, just comfortable enough for developers to develop an application without much worries.

While MEAN stack is faster and more scalable, LAMP is a tried-and-tested web stack with a secure infrastructure and a large support community.
 

Conclusion

 
Although many developers claim that MEAN stack will eventually replace LAMP stack, there are others who still believe in the latter’s potential. LAMP is time-tested, stable and sturdy, with tons of online tutorials and support availability. Its back-end architecture allows you to do whatever you want to do on the front-end. MySQL is still one of the most widely used databases.

MEAN stack features a single language from top to bottom, in addition to flexible deployment and faster data retrieval capabilities. You are free from micromanaging schemas and migrations in the database as it uses a non-relational NoSQL database. With JavaScript gaining popularity, MEAN stack is attracting more developers every year.

Deciding between LAMP and MEAN will mostly depend on the organizations you work for and the projects under development.