PhpStorm is a popular IDE that many developers depend on to code more efficiently, debug applications, and run unit tests with integrated version control and command-line tools. The upcoming version 8 will add official support for WordPress.
According to a recent survey conducted by SitePoint, PhpStorm is by far the most favored IDE among PHP developers in 2014. It captured the vote of nearly 40% surveyed, followed by Sublime Text (18.5%) and NetBeans (15.6%). PhpStorm was the clear all-around winner for both business and personal use, due to its speed, strong community, and support for a wide variety of languages and frameworks.
PhpStorm has supported Drupal and other PHP frameworks for a couple of years and is now finally adding WordPress-specific development features. Version 8 will include:
- WordPress integration in PhpStorm for new plugins (with plugin skeleton) and existing projects
- WordPress code style
- Development environment configuration for WordPress
- Hooks support (Completion for registration functions parameters; Navigation from hook registration functions to hook invocation; Callbacks from hook registration; and other hooks-related features)
- Search on WordPress.org right from the editor
- WordPress command line tool WP-CLI integration
If you want to give it a test run, version 8 is currently available via the PhpStorm Early Access Program. New users will appreciate the full tutorial for configuring your development environment for WordPress projects. It will walk you through creating a new plugin and also has instructions for enabling WordPress integration for existing PhpStorm projects.
Adding a boilerplate template for a plugin would strengthen this release even more.