The world has seen it's share of PHP IDEs during the past years. All the time we had to envy the Java folks for their really well-working IDEs and the support they provided while coding.

Then came along JetBrains and produced something called PhpStorm. I frowned upon the mixed-case use of Php but gave it a try. I liked it. Then the JetBrains people gave a free license to the core developer team of the TYPO3 project. That's when other also started to adopt it. By now I have the feeling that most people around me use it.

As with all powerful tools some customization is needed to make it work the way you need. So here goes a list of things you should customize to get the best out of PhpStorm when developing on and with FLOW3. This post deals with overall settings - another post on setting up a custom project to deal with FLOW3 specifics will follow.

If you want to read this post but do not want to do all the clicks yourself, you can import (selectively) from my exported settings file. Just use the Import Settings… menu item in PhpStorm.

Basics

First some settings that are not really related to FLOW3.

IDE Settings

If you are on a Mac, the first thing should be the selection of the Mac OS X 10.5+ keymap in IDE Settings > Keymap. Otherwise you'll probably be very puzzled about a number of shortcuts.

Then you might want to fill in your GitHub credentials in the IDE Settings > GitHub.

The next thing I recommend is to switch off Save files on frame deactivation in IDE Settings > General. I often change some code and then go to check something on the web or do something in my shell window. If you then have a half-done change saved to disk, that can be very puzzling.

Next up is the IDE Settings > Editor section. Here are some things that I consider basic as well. Strip trailing spaces on Save should always be set to All. Allow placement of caret after end of line on the other hand never came in handy for me. But very useful are Highlight current scope and Highlight usages of element at caret.

We continue in the IDE Settings > Editor > Smart Keys section. The Use "CamelHumps" words makes the movement in camelcased words easier. What you choose for Reformat on paste is up to you, play around with it to find your personal favorite.

In the IDE Settings > Editor > Appearance section you should switch on Show line numbers, Show method separators and Show whitespaces. It will make you a better and faster coder. :)

IDE Settings > Editor > Editor Tabs has the very useful Show directory in editor tabs for non-unique filenames setting. I love that. As well as Mark modified tabs with asterisk.

I like to see all the code I work on, so in the IDE Settings > Editor > Code Folding section I leave folding enabled but disable all default folding.

Why IDE Settings > Diagrams has all the PHP Class Diagrams disabled by default is greek to me.

Template Project Settings

Hint: make sure no project is open before you call up the PhpStorm preferences, so you actually have access to the Template Project Settings.

In Template Project Settings > PHP you should now set up your PHP Interpreter. This involves adding one or more interpreters first by clicking the small button with the dots.

Then for good measure check that Template Project Settings > File Encodings has the IDE Encoding set to UTF-8.