Using Atom.io for PHP development

Atom is the so called “Hackable text editor for the 21st century” developed by GitHub. You can download it or find more info about it in https://atom.io/.

At the end of the day, choosing a text editor it’s a matter of taste. There are plenty of options that fit the different tastes. I have tried lot’s of them but currently Atom is the one I use on a daily basis.

Most of the development I do it’s PHP. And I mean really large applications, with an huge codebase. In these cases, you will need more than a simple editor if you want to get the most of your work.

So here’s the list of my favorite PHP extensions for Atom. Please notice that I don’t include any of the Core packages. I’m only listing things that you need to install as an extra.

The list

php-integrator-base (https://github.com/Gert-dev/php-integrator-base)

This package is needed to run most of the PHP packages I will talk next.

php-integrator-autocomplete-plus (https://atom.io/packages/php-integrator-autocomplete-plus)

Provides auto complete for you PHP code but also for the functions and methods that are part of PHP.

php-integrator-navigation (https://github.com/Gert-dev/php-integrator-navigation)

Allows you to navigate through your classes and methods with alt+click.

php-cs-fixer (https://github.com/pfefferle/atom-php-cs-fixer)

Works with SensioLabs PHP Coding Standards Fixer to make your code psr-2 compliant.

php-debug (https://github.com/gwomacks/php-debug)

Brings Xdebug to Atom.

If you use git for version control here’s some extras

git-time-machine (https://github.com/littlebee/git-time-machine))

Navigate through commit history for a file.

merge-conflicts (https://atom.io/packages/merge-conflicts)

Visually fix merge conflicts.

git-blame (https://github.com/josa42/atom-blame)

A fancy git blame.

Hope the may be helpful for someone. If you know any other good extensions for PHP please leave your comment.