

One of the plugins you will probably see in any list of Intellij plugins ever – Rainbow Brackets – is as essential as it seems. IdeaVim supports many Vim features including normal / insert / visual modes, motion keys, deletion / changing, marks, registers, some Ex commands, Vim regexps, configuration via ~/.ideavimrc, macros, window commands, and more. If you’re a fan of the Vim editor using PhpStorm, worry not! Vim emulation plug-in for Intellij IDEs is the plugin you need. PHP Toolbox also improves some PhpStorm Core functionality and provides better auto-completion for several libraries like PHPUnit, Behat, Doctrine and Twig.

This essential plugin provides “Method References” and “Type Provider” extracted from the Symfony Plugin (see below). We say just give it a shot and install it on PhPStorm, or any other IDE for that matter. Some say it knows what they’re thinking before they do. In case you still haven’t heard about Tabnine, Tabnine is a GPT-2, that’s Open.ai’s machine learning model, based autocomplete solution. But only because we, and a few hundred thousand other developers, really love Tabnine and are still amazed by what it can it. The PHP Annotations plugin analyses the classes that can be used as annotations, and provides code-completing when writing annotations. That said, our chart of top plugins and extensions for PhpStorm includes the plugins essential to effective and productive use of PhpStorm specifically. Since PhpStorm is a flavor of Intellij IDEA, many of our recommended plugins are compatible with other flavors of the IDE as well. However, much like most other IDEs and code editors, PhpStorm can be customized and its functionality can be extended through the use of downloadable community plugins. PhpStorm includes all you need to develop in PHP right out of the box. Though if you ask JetBrains themselves, they will tell you it’s the most popular IDE for PHP developers in 2020, with 59% of all PHP developers choosing PhpStorm for their PHP development projects. One of the most popular PHP-centric IDEs to live up to these demands is PhpStorm by JetBrains. It also helps if said IDE has extensive plugin support and a lively user community, along with a positive track record with community mavens and experts.

Beginners can usually get by with basic code editors, but the best practice is to pick an IDE to serve your developing needs over time. There’s no shortage of IDE solutions for PHP developers out there.
