Phil Sturgeon

I was very pleased to find this site.I wanted to thank you for this great read!! I definitely enjoying every little bit of it and I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you post.

Nice article, Phil.

http://rhasan.com/blog/2009/09/codeigniter-auto-complete-with-netbeans/

The above works as of 6.8. I found it especially helpful when using Doctrine plugin in CI - auto_complete works across the Doctrine objects as well.

Cheers,

Just throwing it out there, since it's an IDE conversation. I've not used NB, but I've heard from enough people that if I were in the market, I'd check it out at this point.

I'm not going to make the full argument for IntelliJ IDEA as a PHP platform, primarily because it's not free. Here are the basics that is supports though: Code completion, class navigation, debugging, unit testing, refactoring. My personal favorite? Accurate syntax highlighting when HTML/PHP/JavaScript is inline. No more irritating Eclipse highlight swapping.

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/php_editor.html

Check it out if you are in the market for a new IDE and spending a few bucks for the best doesn't faze you. :)

Folks,

Nice reading the post and comments. I'm using NetBeans for Java development for more than 4 years and it is really amazing and the IDE has improved a lot over the years. Any NetBeans bashers, please try the latest NetBeans release and see it yourself. I love u NB.

Thank you for the "managing keymap profiles" tip, it's very usefull, especially for ones who are migrating from eclipse to netbeans. I've been using eclipse and netbeans for 3 years. I really love them both. I especially like netbeans for its GUI designer (Matisse) which is more sophisticated than Visual Editor plugin. I especially like Eclipse for the java code editor which is very powerful especially for code refactoring.

Last days, I've been working on netbeans because its Java SE distro is very small and suitable for educationnal purpose. Also, the support of JPA in the Java Se distro is a really powerful feature.

I really like both netbeans and eclipse and sincerly, I think that this animosity between the two communities should stop. each one of these IDE is good for a stuff and not good for another stuff.

I use Eclipse day in and day out since version 2.0. Recently I was dissatisfied with the Grails support it provided. So I gave Netbean 6.8 a try (on Linux). What a difference! From now on I'll use Netbeans over Eclipse for every Grails project out there.

I use it since version 6.1. Before I used Eclipse, but now it's imcomparable, Netbeans, it's the best.
Miss just a free UML designer, sorting method like in jindent, and drools support. Soon I hope...

A couple of weeks ago I wrote similar things about NetBeans. I've been looking for a decent PHP IDE for a while now, and NetBeans absolutely looks like the holy grail, at least for me.

If you are excited about 6.8, please, for your own sake, try the latest 6.9 Beta. It will rock your world!

I used emacs exclusively for about 20 years on Sun OS and Linux. Then I got a job where the development environment is winXP (ugh). I have a choice of using Visual Studio 2008, Eclipse or Netbeans. I decided to learn both VS and Netbeans. Netbeans is my favorite IDE.

I use Netbeans for C++, php, html and CSS. Mercurial support in Netbeans is awesome.

However, the last Linux Journal Reader's Awards picked Eclipse as the run away favorite IDE. So I intend to look at Eclipse too one day. I still use Emacs because it is a swiss army knife. I know my way around vi. Geany is a nice lightweight IDE on Linux that not many people know about.

The big question mark in my mind is why is MS Visual Studio so popular? The MS folks I know love it to death. When I ask what other IDEs they've tried the answer is either "none" or "Netbeans 5.5 and it sucked". For me VS is missing a view things that I learned to love in Netbeans, like:
- click through navigation: CTRL-left_mouse_button
- tabbed searches: all your previous search results hang around in their own tab. It helps you remember what you've already searched for and what the results were. Plus each tabbed search results has a "refine search critera" option. It is little things like this that make it really handy.
- incremental search within a file is a full class citizen, not the add on after thought in VS
- I got to hating the search dialog box in VS.
- Netbeans allows you to undock an editor window

That's all I can think of right now.

By the way - IDE stands for INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT - not INTERACTIVE. So integrating UML is no contradiction...

OK, anyone reading this blog should know that I am a PHP developer. You may also know enough about me to realize that I am wandering in to Perl and Ruby pretty slowly. NetBeans supports this through OPTIONAL downloads. I have no idea about support for Java, UML, SOA (no idea what that even means) but it has a plugin structure.

I expect Netbeans has a lovely Java plugin and probably one for UML too, but tbh why the hell are you planning UML in your IDE? You know that IDE stands for Interactive DEVELOPMENT Environment right?

I don't expect Netbeans to handle my support tickets or make my coffee, why would it handle application data-flow or structural diagrams too?

First of all, thank you for not starting your article with "X reasons why you should..." If I read another article called "10 reasons why Twitter is better than sex" I'm going to shoot someone.

Secondly, I use NetBeans and love it, but on Windows you should try CodeLobster. I came across it recently and have been really impressed. I'm not affiliated with them in any way.

I agree. NetBeans support for a variety of languages is vastly superior. True, PHPDesigner is great but can it do Grails? How about plain Java? IntelliJIdea is nice but what about it's PHP support? I really do not want to learn another IDE for every language or framework that I work in. I sometimes forced at work to use Eclipse vs. NetBeans and I can tell you - I hate it. It's a dog and I am sorely disappointed that Google chose to pretty much ignore NetBeans for GWT. Still, GWT support in NetBeans is decent. The free Java Swing Designer in NetBeans rocks. You have to shell out $300,-/seat to get the same level of functionality in Eclipse. The NetBeans team seems to have been extremely motivated in cranking out release after release. Finally some working JavaFX support as well.

Whenever I have a choice I pick NetBeans over Eclipse.

As for CodeIgniter - NetBeans Symfony support (a 'real' framework as compared to CodeIgniter but that could start a flame war) is only matched by PHPDesigner - but then again, that is a one trick pony.

I found the debugger both in PHP and Java working flawlessly. I understand the same is true for Groovy.

Hey Neotohin,

Quote:
"CTRL+SHIFT+UP/DOWN = Duplicates the Current Line
Press alt+shift then press Cursor UP/DOWN = U can drag the current line"

If you highlight a block of code these shortcuts will work as well duplicating or moving blocks of code!!! Netbeans ROCKS!!!!

I have been using it since v5. If only I knew about it earlier...lol.

I've been using NB and Eclipse together (plus some "flavored" versions of Eclipse) and everytime I may return to Netbeans is a delight... I just works so smoothly and is so nicely integrated with everything around Java Enterprise!

We've been using NB for a while now and find it to be an excellent IDE for PHP. Debugging support is great and easy to setup. Its suppose to even do javascript debugging but I've never tried this out, use firebug for JS debugging.

The NB guys are doing a fantastic job and they keep coming with new releases and adding cool features. I would recommend NB for PHP to PHP devs who are working on fairly large or fairly complex OO projects.

No. Just no. Netbeans has bean dropping support for things like SOA related technologies, UML, so just no.

NetBeans are awesome. I tried it for the first time about 4 years ago. It was really cool and I fall in love with it. Then I had to use several other IDEs. Because of Flash and ActionScript I had to use Flash develop and later Flash builder, build on Eclipse. For ActionScript and flex is eclipse the best IDE. So I tried Eclipse for java too. And then I realized, how amazing the netbeans IDE is. Foc C# is MS Visual Studio good too, but NetBeans are simply best, expecialy for java, PHP, HTML and CSS. Even there is a great support of XML tools like XML Schema, XSLT Transformation.
Andy :Talking about Notepad++ in compare with NetBeans is really silly, even for simply html and css.
PS:This article looks like advertisement for NetBeans, but the sweet about it is the fact, that it is really true.

IMHO it all depends on which technologies you use and your personal taste. The Netbeans community seem to be very vocal that their IDE is the best and I hope they will continue to push it to get even better. Netbeans is undoubtedly a very good IDE.

Thus far, I am a happy Eclipse user. Eclipse has great SVN support with Subclipse and, recently very good Mercurial support with HgEclipse. The official maven plugin from Sonatype is for Eclipse, Spring Tool Suite is Eclipse based etc, so for me the choice is clear, but then again I am a Java developer who is passionate about Spring.

I do not see why there has to be so much animosity between Netbeans and Eclipse products, as I read in some of the reactions and in the blog post. Why does it seem it is not possible to laudate Netbeans without sneering at Eclipse?

Shouldn't we be happy that we have several great IDEs for free at our fingertips (NB, Eclipse, IntelliJ community edition, ...). Having competition can only make them better :)...

Hi Phil,

I find that the PHPDesigner IDE is the most awesome, easy to use editor. I have been using it for over 4 years and I have never once considered changing. The only probblem is it only supports CVS but I prefer to use TortiseHG anyway so it's not a huge problem for me.

It also costs :(. Mind you, work pays for it so it's not a problem for me but I could see the price being a barrier for many.

Regards,
David Mann

Notepad++ is the best IDE i've ever used.
Especially when combined with DBGp plugin

I have been using netbeans , from versiyon 6.0. I have finished 5 projects with this ide. I am really satisfied of it is futures.

But just few things make me disapointed, one is when you open the ide it is searching files every time for changes, (some times it is doing this forever) , another thing is , it is java based and a bit slow.

But I have learned to live with these negatives.

it is free ide :)

I was using Eclipse for some period of time. Recently I tried to use Netbeans and... I love it. Using IDE is a must. I recommend Netbeans.

I was using pure text editor for a long time, couldn't get familiar with IDE, for unknown reason, now I see it was big f*cking misteake!

Interesting.... but the UI sucks really hard. Saludos!!

AWESOME!

as Valcapri has post his comment its really nice option you can put these all class properties in you MY_Controller and it will available to you in all of your application controllers for model also its working fine really great option, i love Netbeans since when it was only supporting only java, Big fan of java products

For CI autocomplete look at this article:
http://rhasan.com/blog/2009/09/codeigniter-auto-complete-with-netbeans/

Nice to know you liked NB, Phil! A quick tip on how to enable partial support for "CodeIgniter auto-completez" until NetBeans team adds real one:

1) Add your Codeigniter installation to "Include Path" (press CTRL+1 and you will see the option)
2) add this file somewhere inside your project - http://pastebin.org/129902
It will take care of autocompleting core classes, and sure you can add yours there too.
Here's how $this->load autocomplete works in my IDE: http://img28.imageshack.us/i/codeigniterautocomplete.jpg/

Oh, and NetBeans team have a blog here: http://blogs.sun.com/netbeansphp/
Boy, is 6.9 going to be awesome! (And you can already take your chance with devbuilds :P)

I loved netbeans but I didn't like the non-optional 'spaces cleaner' feature (right after you saved a file, all the unused spaces got deleted). Its hard to explain so I'm gonna write an example:
function some_function () {
*
if(something) {
*
..do something
*
}
*
}

Suppose you wanna add more code at any of the points marked with an asterisc. No matter where you click, the cursor will stick to the left, and you have to press tab tab tab tab etc.

What about debugging and profiling Python and PHP code in Netbeans, do you have any experience with it?

I'm pretty satisfied with Eclipse + PyDev for bigger projects, but I'm always open for trying out (better) alternatives.

I have actually used Netbeans for some light Java development in the past, but never tried it for Python and/or PHP projects.

I used NetBeans all last year and loved it. This year I've been using VIM, ya, I know, there's fear of me becoming one of "those" guys (the ones that think their cool because they know all those crazy key combos of the server native editor, lol), but it's a pretty powerful editor and if you can convince yourself to learn it, it's a very powerful editor.

Hi Phil,

I use NetBeans, too. I'm learning Java at school with NetBeans IDE.

For the auto-complete with Netbeans, you just have to place this code in a netbeans_ci.php in the nbproject in your directory.

<?
/**
* @property CI_Loader $load
* @property CI_Form_validation $form_validation
* @property CI_Input $input
* @property CI_Email $email
* @property CI_DB_active_record $db
* @property CI_DB_forge $dbforge
* @property CI_Table $table
* @property CI_Session $session
* @property CI_FTP $ftp
* ....
*/
Class Controller {
}
?>

Regards,
ValCapri.

I've been tempted to change my IDE a lot of times (still using zend studio 5.5) but my problem is always the same , inline debug...

I've tried Netbeans and it is great but debug (xdebug) is too hard to configure and I really miss zend toolbar for Firefox, that is fantastic you only need to press "Debug, Debug next page, Debug all pages or debug POST" and debug comes into action VS style.

Really useful when creating complex routines, especially when using multidimensional array sets and recursive function, witch lately I've been doing a lot :(

Can't live without it, but now I have a problem, 5.5 is getting old and does not support html5 (gives me a lot of errors in html5 tags and so on...) and version 7 of Zend sucks... dunno what to do, I've searched a lot but it looks like there are no other IDE (paid or free) with a good debugger :(

CTRL+SHIFT+UP/DOWN = Duplicates the Current Line
Press alt+shift then press Cursor UP/DOWN = U can drag the current line

I also remember reading some blogpost about a NetBeans CodeIgniter auto-complete implementation. Which is also a plus :-)

I moved from old Zend (before they'd moved to Eclipse, having used Eclipse itself a bit) & I'm just liking Netbeans more & more as I continue to use it. Damn good IDE.

Awesome post Phil! Great reading and nice to know these new tips and tricks ;)

I've been trying to find a nice way to integrate some CodeIgniter auto-completion last week and found this post very useful:
http://rhasan.com/blog/2009/09/codeigniter-auto-complete-with-netbeans/

Thought I would share it here since it may become handy for others too :)
Really looking forward to version 7 though :)