I recently got the chance to actually try out the product. Here's a brief tour of Delphi for PHP, which I hope will help you bootstrap yourself into the environment. Because many regular readers are already familiar with Visual Studio, and because I am extremely familiar with it, I will be making many comparisons between Delphi for PHP and Visual Studio. Also, I won't spend time discussing the PHP language itself, but I will show how the work in the IDE affects the PHP code underneath.

He includes descriptions of some of the features included in the tool and sprinkles in a few screenshots to help give a better idea of how its all laid out. HE likes it overall but thinks that there might be some PHP developers out there that feel a bit constrained by it since it lacks some features that most editors come bundled with natively.

What I miss in the feedback I got from my previous post was people acually using VCL/PHP for enterprise applications and how that is working. From what I can tell the usage of Exceptions is still limited to the 3rd party libs such as Zend Framework which are included with VCL/PHP. That's a bit interesting.

He mentions one big issue that several people pointed out with the VLC implementation - the class name prefixing (or lack there of) and the problems it could cause in the future. Prado uses naming conventions that keep its classes out of the move generally named realm. He also touches on the quality of the code behind the VLC implementation, noting that while it might work well for smaller projects, there's more of a potential for failure on enterprise-level usage.

A new version of Delphi for PHP IDE was released this year. It is a follow-up of Delphi for PHP 1.0 released for the first time in 2007.

Manuel already reviewed a previous version of the software, so he only really focuses on the differences. He spends time reintroducing what Delphi is and how it plays a role in a PHP developers experience before getting into the new functionality. New features like third-party library support, how to run the software on other platforms (like Linux or OS X) and several of the updates to the user interface itself.

CodeGear is looking for additional beta testers for the next major version of Delphi for PHP.

Those interested should check out this page and fill in the application to become a tester (just name, email address, experience using PHP tools and how much time you could devote to testing).

This kind of tool is something that ASP.net has had for a long time (ie Visual Studio.net). Not only does it make the development process easier when it comes to building applications, but it also handles setup of applications, default configs etc. [...] My impression is that most PHP developers (at least above hobby level) works on Linux based workstations, so I imagine getting a strong user base could prove to be difficult.

That said, he has his reasons for why Prado should have been the framework of choice including the exception handling gap between the two (Prado on top), validation controls, how they use global variables and the rendering of HTML/XHTML by each.

According to the International PHP Magazine site:

The second Delphi update for PHP includes improved documentation, updated VCL for PHP, and fixes. [...] Delphi for PHP Update 2 includes an updated version on the VCL for PHP, updated InterBase client library, improved documentation, and many bug fixes. Update 2 includes new component packages, if you have a previously installed version of Delphi for PHP, those packages won't be installed automatically and you may want to use them.

You can find out more about this software package from its page over on the CodeGear.com website including a link to download a trial.

D4PHP is CodeGear's first attempt at bringing visual rapid application development to PHP. To be honest my first impression was fear. Here I am, 10+ years into PHP and used to developing raw PHP in vi and Zend Studio, with a couple of forays into Eclipse, staring at a PHP RAD tool without the first clue where to begin.

His experience has been mostly with the usual crowd of PHP IDEs, so things were a bit foreign to him. Eventually, though, (after following the tutorial) he was able to make and compile a simple PHP script.

I have to confess that being a simple procedural kind of guy that thinks OO is mostly hype, D4PHP is a huge concept for me to grapple with. But I think I might just enjoy it.

He (Manuel Lemos) comes into the review not having dealt with Delphi before and having not created desktop applications before and found things a little overwhelming. He goes through the functionality of the application, including the structure of the applications you create (made up of "units" of PHP scripts). He gives a pretty comprehensive overview of what you can expect from the interface and a bit on some of the external functionality too - like the debugging.

For a first version of this PHP IDE, I think Borland/CodeGear did very well, but there is plenty of room for improvement. If you have been a big fan of Delphi for Windows desktop applications, you will certainly love Delphi for PHP.

Even if you dislike the choices that were made when it comes to the generated code or the library packages, Delphi for PHP may still be very useful for developers that need to quickly create a prototype of a PHP application and show how it looks to potential or current customers.

You can get more information, including features and pricing information from the official page on the CodeGear website.

From the official announcement:

CodeGear, a leader in developer tools, today announced that Delphi® for PHP '" an integrated visual Rapid Application Development (RAD) environment for the popular PHP Web development language '" is now shipping worldwide.

Delphi for PHP brings the RAD productivity benefits that Delphi users have enjoyed for years to PHP Web developers. PHP, designed to allow Web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly, is the most prominent dynamic Web language today and has become one of the top 10 programming languages overall.

Features of this new tool include VCL for PHP, an open-source PHP 5 visual component library with more than 50 reusable components and seamless AJAX integration, an integrated PHP debugger, and a code editor with Code Insight, Code Explorer, and Code Templates.

Check out the main site for the software or one of the videos showing it in action:

• Using VCL for PHP to build database application and data dictionary in Delphi for PHP
• Delphi for PHP Simple Application

Many web developers today use PHP to develop portal frameworks, forums, and web applications because PHP allows them to create dynamic web applications with solid database connectivity. However, PHP web development has been stymied by the lack of a powerful RAD visual development environment. The existence of an active and vital open source PHP ecosystem with myriad of open source components and options makes the need for an integrated RAD development environment even more critical.

You can check out this new software and all of its features on the CodeGear website.