In short, an IDE provides a one-stop shop for your coding work. An IDE contains an editor in which you can edit the code, debug the code, view your code in a browser (often embedded), and check in and out of source code control. To support that functionality, an IDE has a set of features you don't find in a basic editor, such as Notepad or Vim. Again, you can extend editors to do a lot of these things, but IDEs have all this functionality in one tidy package -- typically preconfigured:
Projects
A key distinguishing feature of an IDE is that it looks at a PHP application as a project, not just a set of files. That containing concept -- the project -- maintains extra information, such as the configuration of the source code control, the database settings for debugging purposes, and the location of certain key directories.
Debugging
Another handy feature is integrated debugging. With this functionality, you can set breakpoints in the editor at which the PHP interpreter stops during execution of the script. From there, you can inspect the values of local variables to diagnose issues in the code. It's a healthy alternative to sprinkling echo statements through your code to check values or using the error log to get the values of variables.
Projects
A key distinguishing feature of an IDE is that it looks at a PHP application as a project, not just a set of files. That containing concept -- the project -- maintains extra information, such as the configuration of the source code control, the database settings for debugging purposes, and the location of certain key directories.
Debugging
Another handy feature is integrated debugging. With this functionality, you can set breakpoints in the editor at which the PHP interpreter stops during execution of the script. From there, you can inspect the values of local variables to diagnose issues in the code. It's a healthy alternative to sprinkling echo statements through your code to check values or using the error log to get the values of variables.
