PHP is a server sided scripting language which is generally used for web development purposes but also can serve as a general purpose language. It is one of the most used languages and has a record of 240 million website using this PHP programming for their web designing purposes. Every month the web is flooded with free PHP tools. These tools come really handy for any PHP developer and have a wide range of uses.

There are many basic as well as higher end tools but it is quite a hard job to search for the perfect resource for your use. Too much of resources in the internet make it harder to choose the right one for use. It has become quite a necessary attribute for a programmer to have basic knowledge of PHP.PHP comprises of the basic web developer’s skill nowadays. PHP is an amazing platform for designing a new website and it enhances the quality of the website design. If you are a web developer and looking for some fresh PHP development tools then you are at the right place.

Here in this article we will take you through a list of the best PHP development tools available in the internet for free. This list includes some of the basic tools which are very useful for beginners and also includes high end tools with specific functions which are needed by the professional PHP developers. The great PHP development tools are as follows:

1) PHP CPP

The PHP-CPP library is a C++ library for developing PHP extensions. It offers a collection of well documented and easy-to-use classes that can be used and extended to build native extensions for PHP.

2) SubLimeText

SublimeText is one of the most popular code editors for developers. Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose. You’ll love the slick user interface, extraordinary features and amazing performance.

3) Plates PHP

Plates is a native PHP template system that’s fast, easy to use and easy to extend. Plates is designed for developers who prefer to use native PHP templates over compiled template languages, such as Twig or Smarty.

4) Hoa

Hoa is another popular PHP libraries that help to create bridge between industrial and research worlds.

5) xSanisty

SlimStarter is perfect solution for bootstrapping small-to-middle web application, provide HMVC environment in small footprint, with only around ~4MB in file size. Built on the top of well established Slim Framework, powered by Eloquent ORM on database layer, and Twig template engine on presentation layer.

6) Parsedown

Better Markdown Parser in PHP.

7) Prettifier

The Prettifier provides code formatting and syntax highlighting for common programming languages and file formats including JSON, CSS, HTML, XML, SQL, PHP, Perl, Apache Config, and JavaScript, where editing often takes place outside of an IDE.

8) ForP

forp is a lightweight PHP extension which provides PHP profile datas.

Summary of features :
– measurement of time and allocated memory for each function
– CPU usage
– file and line number of the function call
– output as Google’s Trace Event format
– caption of functions
– grouping of functions
– aliases of functions (useful for anonymous functions)

forp is non intrusive, it provides PHP annotations to do its work.

9) Geocoder

Geocoder is a PHP library which helps you build geo-aware applications by providing a powerful abstraction layer for geocoding manipulations.

10) Twig

Twig is fast, secure, flexible and modern templates engine for PHP.  This allows the developer to define its own custom tags and filters, and create its own DSL.

11) Requests for PHP

Requests is a HTTP library written in PHP, for human beings. It is roughly based on the API from the excellent Requests Python library.

12) Guzzle PHP

Guzzle is a PHP HTTP client that makes it easy to send HTTP requests and trivial to integrate with web services.

13) Belt

Belt is A handful of tools for PHP developers.

14) Faker

Faker is a PHP library that generates fake data for you. Whether you need to bootstrap your database, create good-looking XML documents, fill-in your persistence to stress test it, or anonymize data taken from a production service, Faker is for you.

15) Mink

One of the most important parts in the web is a browser. Browser is the window through which web users interact with web applications and other users. Users are always talking with web applications through browsers.