PHP Editor and Testing Environment

mpar612

I'm relatively new to PHP and MySQL development and just programming in general. I have been using Dreamweaver 8 and uploading the files to my server for testing in my browser. I did some searching on the forums and it turns out that there are tools available that can I can write my code in and also test and help debug the code without my having to upload it to my server for testing. Am I understanding this correctly?

I am looking for a tool that will help me eliminate the need to write code, upload it to the server, check it in the browser, if there's an error change the code to print variables, etc..., reupload and recheck in the browser and on and on and on.

I see that Komodo, Zend Studio and PHP Designer 2006 are pretty popular here on the forum.

Does anyone have any thoughts or guidance on techniques or tools on this?

Thanks!

MarkR

The most obvious solution is to have a local development server on your PC.

However, it's not advisable to develop on a different OS than you're deploying on, so unless your desktop is running the same OS as your production server, you may wish to get another machine.

You should also take care that the versions of PHP, MySQL, etc are the same, ideally the same builds as your production server.

You can then edit the files directly on your dev server, and upload into production once it's working and tested.

Of course you still need to test in a browser but you can use the host name of the local dev server, which will be a lot faster than going to the remote production (or dev) box.

Personally I'd shun Dreamweaver's dodgy upload facility, and just have it work directly on the files.

Mark