Maarten Balliauw has a new post to his site showing how you can work with a Azure SQL database directly from the UI of the popular PHP IDE, phpStorm.

PhpStorm provides us the possibility to connect to Windows Azure SQL Database right from within the IDE. In this post, we'll explore several options that are available for working with Windows Azure SQL Database: Setting up a database connection, creating a table, inserting and updating data, using the database console, generating a database diagram and database refactoring.

He includes the instructions and several screenshots showing each step of the above mentioned steps. The database diagram gives you a good overall view of your database structure and allows you to show a visualization of how the tables relate to each other. Note that, though this particular example shows it connecting to an Azure SQL database, the same setup can be used with lots of popular RDBMS out there.

Maarten Balliauw has a new post today showing you how to work with your Azure site from inside the popular PHP IDE phpStorm.

Working with Windows Azure and my new toy (PhpStorm), I wanted to have support for doing specific actions like creating a new web site or a new database in the IDE. Since I'm not a Java guy, writing a plugin was not an option. Fortunately, PhpStorm (or WebStorm for that matter) provide support for issuing commands from the IDE. Which led me to think that it may be possible to hook up the Windows Azure Command Line Tools in my IDE.

He shows how to add a new "framework" to the IDE for the Azure CLI tools and how to get to a command line from inside the editor. From there you can execute any of the Azure CLI calls just as you would outside of the IDE (like his example, creating a new site called "GroovyBaby").

Joshua Thijssen has a recent post for all the PHPStorm users out there (or maybe investigating a new IDE) and are looking for a way to debug your PHP apps easily with XDebug. Well, he's come up with a step-by-step guide to help you get it all set up and working, complete with screenshots. He helps you debug command-line applications, but the setup will work for your web apps too.

Even in these days, with full-featured PHP IDEs around, I still see PHP developers using var_dump() and die() to debug their code. Not only is this a very bad way of "debugging", it has other dangers as well [...]. We've probably all been there,.. But we don't have to. Debugging your code properly through an IDE is quite easy, but one of the major problems is debugging CLI code. Since many frameworks like Zend, Symfony and micro-frameworks like Cilex can be used to create command-line apps, cronjobs and even "deamons", so how do we easily debug this kind of code?

He starts with the setup of a development instance (he recommends a clone-able virtual machine environment) and shows how o configure both XDebug and PHPStorm to work together happily. He shows what configuration options and steps you'll need to take to be able to debug the CLI apps too, including a command-line option to specify the IP to report the debugging into back into.

Danne Lundqvist has a new post today showing you how to install and use XDebug with MAMP, the popular all-in-one LAMP package for OS X.

MAMP is a full local server environment including Apache, PHP and MySQL in one package. Anyone feeling at home in *nix systems should feel at home using both OS X and MAMP. [...] As I have helped a few collegues setup Xdebug in MAMP I have discovered that a lot of developers don't do this as they don't know how simple it is. Even seasoned PHP developers use the old echo/die debugging techniques.

He includes all the changes you'll need to make to configuration files and makes a simple script you can use to test out that things are working. As his IDE of choice is PHPStorm, he shows how to set up the remote debugging to work and reply back as the script is executed.

On PHPMaster.com today there's a new article posted that has a review of PHPStorm, an IDE from JetBrains that focuses on providing a great experience for PHP developers and tons of features.

It's said the tool doesn't make the craft - a carpenter can drive a nail into a wooden plank using a hammer, a rock, another plank, or his forehead, but he'll rarely choose anything other than the hammer. [...] I'm talking about using a text editor versus using a full-fledged PHP-dedicated project-oriented IDE for PHP application development. Both will get the job done, but productivity-wise, one is obviously a better choice than the other.

Bruno Skvorc goes through a brief summary of what the editor is about and talks about some of the more notable features including:

• Being built on Java (good and bad)
• The IDE being strictly project-oriented
• Supports the latest PHP version, including 5.4
• Smart refactoring
• Good intellisense support

He also mentions the plugin architecture that's included with the product and a few of the more handy plugins available. They're also running a giveaway in collaboration with the PHPStorm folks and are giving out IDE licenses and copies of SitePoint's "PHPMaster: Create Cutting Edge Code" book (rules are included in the article).

James Fuller has posted some of his thoughts about the state of IDEs for PHP (text editors too!) and some of his recent experiences trying to find one that fits his needs.

I think the first "IDE" I ever used for web development would have to be Adobe Dreamweaver (nee Macromedia). Ok, so maybe it was Microsoft FrontPage, but that shouldn't really count. [...] This post is about my experience moving away from the oft-maligned program and some lessons learned in my quest for the perfect IDE.

He tried out several options including Netbeans, Eclipse (PDT), Sublime Text 2 and one he found the most appealing, PHPStorm.

Looking back I realize that IDE's have been a constant annoyance and yet have prompted so much growth and development in my skill level. [...] I also think that the problems I have ran into with IDE's are true about software in general. We search for better solutions and always fall short.

In a new post to his blog Joshua Thijssen gives a guide to how he usually sets up his development environments when working in PHP. It includes working with virtual machines, configuring DNS and setting up his tools to work with it all.

Doing development on multiple projects can be a burden from time to time. One project would be running on PHP 5.3, while another still needs 5.1. Sometimes you need a MySQL server, while on other occasions, you need a NoSQL solution like couchDB or MongoDB together with all kind of gearman functionality. This article shows you how I've setup such a development platform that allows you to quickly create new projects, and still maintain flexibility when you need it.

He uses VirtualBox with either a Debian or CentOS installation as a base platform. He uses Vagrant to set up and configure the machines to make setup almost automatic. He still has to go in and configure a few things like the VirtualHost and DNS settings for the site/application he's working on. Next up is setting up the tools he uses, specifically XDebug and setting up his editor of choice (PHPStorm) for remote debugging.

Hasin Haydertalks about "getting comfy with PHPStorm" a relatively recent addition to the IDE ranks for PHP.

I am a big time fan of Netbeans and I left it a few days after it's release of 6.7. It was so good, heavenly, yummy but I had to leave this old pal because of it's extreme hunger to the available resources. [...] I left Netbeans and started using PhpStorm. I have a company license and I am glad that I made this move. I am not going to preach PhpStorm in rest of this article, but what I will do is sharing my experience with PhpStorm.

He goes through a list of his favorite things about the IDE - its speed it operates at overall, great Javascript/HTML intellisense, version control integration, less resource intensive and that it costs less overall (and comes from a "developer friendly" company).

If you're interested in trying out PHPStorm for yourself, you can find a demo at http://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm.

A few days ago Kevin Schroeder showed how to connect the Zend cloud services with the Zend Studio IDE. In this new post he shows how to connect another popular IDE - PHPStorm.

Just because you want to use the Zend Developer Cloud at phpcloud.com doesn't mean that you necessarily use Zend Studio. While I may wonder why you don't use Zend Studio ( :-) ) I know there are a lot of other good IDE's on the market and an IDE like PHPStorm might suit how you do your development.

He walks you through the whole process, complete with screenshots - creating the project on phpcloud, cloning your git repo there, configure PHPStorm for deployment (via SFTP) and set up a little path mapping.

Karsten Dambekalns has a new post to his blog today about how he was able to get the PHP IDE PHPStorm and XDebug working together to do some debugging in his application.

PhpStorm had it's share of trouble as well [with debugging], but yesterday I experienced a working debug session. Just like that, deep variable inspection and stepping through the code just worked. Today I looked into CLI debugging because Robert needed that for some complicated FLOW3 task. Also works, although it requires one step that should not be needed.

He points out the environment he's using and the two methods/setups he has for debugging - working through the browser and debugging command line scripts with the same tool. Some screenshots are included to help you be sure you're in the right place to change the settings.