No doubt PHP is one of the most popular languages amongst developers and aids them in creating innovative and dynamic web applications. PHP developers keep looking for useful and handy php tools which they can use to make their workflow and web related tasks easier, faster, and better. There are scads of php tools available over the internet for php developers, but finding an appropriate php tool is quite an arduous task and demands effort and time.
For saving your precious time and endeavors, I have gathered some of the best php tools for developers that would help you with your development tasks and let you create innovative and useful web applications.
If you like the article you might be interested in our other article on 8 New PHP Tools and Applications for Developers .
1. DebugBar
DebugBar is a free and open source app that can integrate into any PHP project and collect + present profiling data. It has no dependencies, supports Ajax requests and includes generic data collectors and collectors for well known libraries. The bar is 100% JavaScript that sits in the footer (like Dev. Tools). New collectors and views can be added with ease and it is possible to save/re-run previous requests.
2. Monsta FTP
Monsta FTP is an open source PHP/Ajax cloudware that puts FTP file management right in your browser, anywhere, any time. You can drag & drop files into your browser and watch them upload, like magic. It supports on-screen file editing. There is multi-language support as well. It has been tested on Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. It is released under GNU General Public License. You can download for free and install it on your own server.
3. Phalcon PHP
Phalcon PHP is a web framework delivered as a C extension providing high performance and lower resource consumption. Phalcon PHP is written in C with platform independence in mind. As a result, Phalcon PHP is available on Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, You can either download a binary package for the system of your choice or build it from sources.
4. Pinba
Pinba is a MySQL storage engine that acts as a realtime monitoring/statistics server for PHP using MySQL as a read-only interface. It accumulates and processes data sent over UDP by multiple PHP processes and displays statistics in a nice human-readable form of simple “reports”, also providing read-only interface to the raw data in order to make possible generation of more sophisticated reports and stats.
5. CaseBox
CaseBox is an open source and PHP/MySQL-powered web application forstoring + managing records, tasks and files. It has a desktop-like interface where we can create an unlimited-level of directories and store stuff in the structure preferred. Tasks with deadlines can be created, assigned to users and the progress can be tracked easily. We can store the information of clients and any number of files there as well. The contents of the files are indexed so that locating a PDF/Word.. file with its contents is pretty quick.
6. Munee
Munee is an all-in-one library that handles many things related to optimization and manipulation of website assets. The library has a powerful caching feature that can cache resources in both server and client-side. It integrates well with the PHP image manipulation library: Imagine for resizing or cropping images (and caching them afterwards). Munee can automatically compile LESS, SCSS and CoffeeScript. And, it can combine CSS + JS files into a single request. Also, these CSS-JS files can be minified for a better performance.
7. PHPImageWorkshop
PHPImageWorkshop is an open source class using the GD library that helps you to manage images with PHP. This class is thought like photo editing software like Photoshop and GIMP: you can superpose many layers or even layer groups, each layer having a background image.
The class was thought to be the most flexible possible: superimposing an infinity of images (to add watermark), rotating (and not just 45 / 90°), resizing, cropping (thumbnail). An ImageWorkshop object is a layer AND a group at the same time. It has got a background image and a stack of sublayers on the top of its background.
8. Sylius
Sylius is an open source and free e-commerce solution for PHP (and based on Symfony2). It is capable of managing stores of any size and having complex products + categories. Products can have different tax rates, many shipping methods are supported and it is integrated with Omnipay (multi-gateway payment processing library).
9. Pico
Pico is an open source CMS application that is capable of very few things, which is the main point. It uses flat-files as the database and built with PHP. Simply, there is no setup and the app works instantly. The contents are stored in .md files, markdown formatting is used and they can be edited in your favorite text editor. For the designs/theming, Pico makes use of the Twig templating engine and it is documented well.
10. phpMyFAQ
phpMyFAQ is a pretty stable and open source PHP F.A.Q. application that has many features for building a good F.A.Q. system. A powerful admin interface exists for managing the categories, entries, users and also viewing the stats. It is possible to enable users to ask or answer questions and comment to them or keep it admins-only. There is an advanced search system empowering users to locate the related answers with ease. The F.A.Q. page has some ready-to-use modules like “most popular, latest or sticky questions”. Its look and feel can be customized with HTML-CSS, interface has multi-language support and all questions-answers can be exported as a PDF (with automated table of contents).
