Matthew Weir O'Phinney has posted a few handy tips for PHP developers fond of working in one of the most powerful command-line editors, Vim.

I use Vim for all my editing needs -- TODO lists, email, presentation outlines, coding in any language... everything. So, I thought I'd start sharing some of my vim habits and tools with others, particularly those that pertain to using Vim with PHP.

He includes tips for things like mapping keystrokes (to the PHP interpreter and linter), using the Project plugin to make setting up projects easier and a mention (again) of ctags.

Pierre-Alain Joye has posted an example of one way to use the XDebug software - to debug the symfony framework or any other script (with the help of vim).

Xdebug is one of the best debugger and profiler for php (maybe the only good one in open source :). The only problem is its lack of dedicated client. The only problem is its lack of dedicated client, however there is many plugins for many IDE or editors like Eclipse PDT or weaverslave and even for my favourite editor, Vim.

He quickyl runs through the installation of XDebug in your installation and the script needed to set up the debugging in vim. All that's left is to add the "XDEBUG_SESSION_START=1" flag to the end of your script name and letting the information flow in.

Curt Zirzow has pointed out a cool article on the Box.net website about debugging your PHP applications with a combination of Vim and XDebug (on linux).

Here's how it works. You're coding away in vim. You hit F5; Vim waits for a connection from the PHP server. You refresh the PHP page you're working on. It attempts to contact Vim - connection successful. You are launched into a debugging session right inside Vim. You can step into, over, and out of statements, eval statements, get all variables in context, get and set properties, remove and set breakpoints, all on the fly. Finally, some real programming tools.

Included are the steps to set up the vim environment , set up the client debugger (DGBp) and link it all to the XDebug functionality on your remote machine.

From the PHP in Action blog today, there's a new post that (briefly) shows how to run your tests directly from a popular unix text editor - vim.

I created my own test runner to run tests inside Vim, I can't remember how long ago. Must be a year or two. I never shared it with the world. It was too primitive for anyone else to use. Then, recently, I decided to try re-implementing it in a more serious way.

The "more serious way" meant using Vim script to its full potential, including the ability to work with objects and already has its own testing framework. He includes a screenshot but no download just yet. It looks promising and makes running tests as simple as hitting F11 and watching it go.

Continuing on from some previous posts on the topic, Tobias Schlitt shares even more tips for working with PHP in the vi editor, specifically with the FTPlugin for VIM.

I recently added 2 new functions to my PHP FTPlugin for VIM, which I wanted to implement for a longer time and recently needed quite often. [...] The PhpAlign() function takes it from you and aligns the array declaration properly. [...] PhpUnComment() simply comments a line which is not commented and un-comments a line that is commented.

Both function descriptions include a few examples of their use and he links to his subversion repository to make grabbing the latest version of the plugin simple.

In a new post, Matthew Weir O'Phinney sharing a handy new tool that he discovered - exuberant ctags - that lets you magically click on a class of function name and move to its declaration.

I found exuberant ctags, a library which can be used to generate an index file mapping language objects to source files and the line in the source file where they are declared. Contrary to its name, it's not just for the C language; it currently supports 33 different programming languages, including PHP.

He also includes a usage example in the post, specifically for getting the tool up and working in your Vim installation (via a bash script). Then it's just a matter of issuing a :set command to point at the correct file and you're one keystroke away from the function/class declaration of your choice.

In this new post to his blog, Tobias Schlitt shares some VIM tips with the PHP community, specifically about PHP Documentor integration functionality. He's gone back and documented the functionality now to make it that much easier to use.

Because I had a talk about how to use VIM in respect to PHP source code editing, I took the time during the week, to write some extensive documentation for PDV, the PHP Documentor plugin for VIM.

He's also documented the VIM file type plugin as well, and both are available through his SVN of PDV. There's also to updates mentioned - one about splitting up the .vimrc and file type plugin and added the repository to the official SVNServe list making it easy to check out.

For those PHPers out there that use the vi editor for their coding travels, Bjarte Karlsen has posted something that might help you out - two configuration files that he uses to work with PHP files in vim.

In a recent chat on #phpc we started discussing vim and talking about vim setups. Surripui posted a blog entry about this asking for setups. I promised that i would post my setup so here it is.

The two files are his:

• .vimrc
• .vim/ftpplugin/php.vim

Between the two of these, the editor is able to correctly handle PHP files, syntax check files and tab complete function names. There's also a mention of using gsnippets for working with code templates.

Tobias Schlitt has picked by up his "comfortable PHP editing in VIM" series today with this lengthy post with loads of helpful VIM tips to share with PHP developers everywhere.

More than a half year after my last "Comfortable PHP editing with VIM" post, I take up this series again, although I decided to let it die in January. Sadly I did not find any time by now, to extend PDV (the PHP Documentor for VIM plugin) further than it's version 1.0.1, which is available through vim.org and on my SVN. Anyway, I collected a lot of (at least for me) helpful VIM tips, which I'd like to share here

The post contains tons of tips on subjects such as:

• Find matching brace
• Indenting and unindeting
• Emergency help
• Macros

and many more. For each subject, there's an explaination of a situation you might need it in and, of course, the tip itself. He also links to the earlier parts of the series (one through four) for those wanting to catch up.