PhpStorm vs Eclipse PHP Development Tools

PhpStorm has two types of autocompletion: structural completion and word expansion.

Structural autocompletion makes predictions based on its understanding of PHP, while the latter tries to predict the word currently being typed based on previously typed words. Word expansion also works in comments and docstrings and it's similar to vim's omnicompletion.

Both types of autocompletion work extremely well, have little to no problems and are quite fast even when loading suggestions on the go.

Supports Symfony2 (including Twig and Doctrine), Yii frameworks, and Laravel.

PHPDoc is a documentation generator. It allows automatically generating documentation from specifically formatted comments.

Not just for PHP, HTML and JavaScript, but especially good is SQL inspection and auto-completion of tables and fields. You can see at a glance, that your DB structure is in sync with your code.

Has built in support for Xdebug including remote debugging.

Phar support allows running complete applications out of .phar files.

The database tab, while not perfect, provides all the tools you need for daily usage. You always have your DB overview on the side (you can hide it when not needed).

Ability to setup custom external commands, which is something inherited from eclipse and found lacking on netbeans.

Allows users to manage their repositories directly from the IDE with a GUI which lets you do all Git commands.

Active development work on plugins is always a plus, as it can extend the use of the IDE.

Quickly rename classes, methods, and variables used across multiple files in the project.

It allows monitoring code and sync the files that need to be changed with a remote server. This works more efficiently than libnotify and faster than vagrant auto rsync.

Lots of plugins from JetBrains and the community are available, from useful things like support for Docker, Vagrant, Angular, Vue.js and more useless (but fun) like a nyan cat progress bar.

Type codes with pleasure. Delay of visual feedback on a computer display has an important effect on typist's behavior and satisfaction, as cited here.

This allows execution of needed commands without switching to other windows. It also keeps track of what's happening right in the IDE, which is especially good with Vagrant, because you can connect to a VM in a single click.

Save time of building your own or integrating libraries for testing RESTful Web Services. PHPStorm enables you to test endpoints without leaving your workspace or disrupting your workflow . You can code your endpoints in one window and test it immediately from another window.

It recognizes Vagrantfile and allows full control from the IDE.

Supports Twig and Laravel's Blade (among others). Technically the later is part of a framework which Phpstorm supports but I've seen IDEs (e.g. Netbeans) with Laravel support but no blade support so it does deserve a notable mention.

Similar to Eclipse Mylyn: you can create tasks or retrieve them from your ticketing system, and each task keeps its own context (opened files, modifications, etc.).

PhpStorm is clearly being developed continually, which gives confidence that it will be available for some time and is not abandonware.

Especially the "find in path" feature that displays both results and file preview!

Eclipse has a huge community developing plugins that can then be found on the marketplace.

PDT is available for free on Windows, OSX and Linux.

Since Eclipse is highly modular by design, relying heavily on plugins for functionality it can be set up so that it includes only the necessary functionality and nothing else.

Each component of Eclipse can be configured separately offering fine grained control.

Eclipse PHP Development Tools (PDT) has such good syntax highlighting for PHP, CSS, HTML.

You would not be regret for having PDT as you IDE choices for PHP Development. It will help you validate your PHP code without you worry it will be wrong.

If you are running your PHP in an Docker-Container you can easily connect Xdebug remotly with Eclipse.