Development tools

Use these development tools to help you create Drupal sites faster, easier, and with less effort. If you have a favorite Drupal tool that is not listed, please leave a comment with a link to the tool, we'll check it out and add it. Or become a documentation contributor and do it yourself.

Tools for Your Browser

• Microsoft Internet Explorer (Free. Proprietary. Windows only, but see below.)
• Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar
• Firebug Lite offers some Firebug functionality in a non-Firefox browser; also available as a Drupal module
• Multiple Internet Explorer versions for testing purposes. This is not supported by Microsoft. It may be wise to backup your computer before installing
• Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image, provided by Microsoft, allows the testing of multiple versions of Internet Explorer on Windows through the use of VirtualPC images. Note that the images expire after a specified date. VirtualPC is a free download, but proprietary and for Windows only.
• IETester allows you to view sites in multiple IE versions without installing all of the versions
• If you want to run IE on a non-Windows computer:
  • http://www.kronenberg.org/ies4osx/ - for OS/X
  • http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page - for Linux
  • http://wddb.wine-doors.org/node/3 - for WINE on Linux
• Mozilla Firefox (Free. Open Source. Linux, Mac, Windows and others.)
• Web Developer Extension - Adds a tool bar and menu to the browser with various web developer tools. For example, you can disable form fields; reveal hidden form elements; edit CSS in real time; and clear the browser cache and session cookies.
• An FTP plugin for Firefox is available and known as fireftp (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/684).
• Firebug - More tools for the web developer. Program CSS, HTML and JavaScript in real time; easily locate HTML elements and see what CSS is affecting them; examine a breakdown of the time components of your page download; discover errors in Javascript, CSS and XML; and explore the DOM.
• YSlow - A Firefox add-on integrated with the Firebug web development tool, YSlow analyzes a web page's performance and returns a "performance report card," calculated by determining how well the page utilizes a set of "best practice" guidelines for high performance web sites.
• There is also a Drupal for Firebug module, which includes a Firebug extension.
• How to setup a Firefox quick search for the Drupal API
• If you are a Windows Firefox user, the IE Tab Firefox extension adds the ability to display IE in a tab, or to view a particular Firefox tab in IE through the right-click menu
• Opera (Free. Proprietary. Linux, Mac, Windows and others. Versions 9.5 and above contain developer tools similar to Firebug for debugging web pages.)
  • Firebug Lite offers some Firebug functionality in a non-Firefox browser; also available as a Drupal module
• Safari (Free. Proprietary. Mac only. Contains an Error Console for debugging JavaScript, and the Webkit team is working on new and improved developer tools.)
  • Firebug Lite offers some Firebug functionality in a non-Firefox browser; also available as a Drupal module
• Google Chrome (Free. Proprietary. Windows only. Contains a JavaScript Console for debugging JavaScript.)

Tools for Editing Text & Code

Emacs and vi are historically the two most popular editors. Which is best is a matter of some debate and so before deciding which to try you may like to read this Wikipedia article. VIM is based on vi and is much more feature rich.

• Emacs (Free. Open source. Runs on Linux, Mac, Windows and others.) (Details about configuring for Drupal)
• VIM (Free. Open source. Linux, Mac, Windows and others.) -- Vim is an advanced text editor based on vi, but more powerful. The learning curve is reasonably steep and the interface can be confusing at first, but this is soon rewarded with greater editing efficiency. (Details about configuring VIM for Drupal)

Other Editors

• BBEdit (Commercial. Proprietary. Mac only.)
• Bluefish Editor (Free. Open Source. POSIX > Linux. Mac. Windows. Fast, lean multi syntax WYSIWYN editor - GTK+ based). The Windows version can be found at http://code.google.com/p/bluefish-win/
• Dreamweaver (Commercial. Proprietary. Mac and Windows.) -- A WYSIWYG HTML/XHTML, CSS, PHP, XSL/T editor, and there's a free Drupal API extension for Dreamweaver.
• jEdit (Free. Open source. Runs on Linux, Mac, Windows and others. Java based.)
• Komodo Edit (Free. Open source. Runs on Linux, Mac and Windows. Configuration guide available.)
• Notepad++ (Free. Open Source. Windows only.) - A light-weight notepad replacement with tabbing and syntax highlighting.
• Smultron (Free. Open Source. Mac only.)
• Textmate (Commercial. Proprietary. Mac only) -- A Drupal specific bundle is offered by Steven Wittens and another by Konstantin Käfer. Has a built-in DIFF bundle that speeds up the rolling and applying of patches.
• TextWrangler (Free. Proprietary. Mac only.) -- Lets you read and save via FTP/SFTP, and supports grep and Show Changes (diff).
• Coda (Proprietary. Mac only.) - Editor for web (HTML, CSS) with preview and FTP capabilities; has a Drupal plugin.

Integrated Development Environments (IDE)

IDE's expand on the ability of a simple text editor. Here is a list of IDE's that work well with PHP and Drupal.
Note: There is also a Drupal Group dedicated to setting up an IDE for Drupal development. Please visit the Drupal IDE group for starter tips, and ongoing interactive discussions.

• Bluefish Editor (Free. Open Source. Linux. Mac. Fast Lean multi syntax WYSIWYN editor - GTK+ based). A lightweight, fast, multi-syntax, IDE that supports projects, multiple documents, ftp/webDAV/sftp/http/https/samba, user custom integration with many programs like make, lint, weblint, xmllint, tidy, javac, more..., multi-language translations, etc. Just an awesome text editor on steroids.
• Netbeans cross-platform IDE with full PHP and debugging support. (Free. Open Source. Linux. Mac. Win. Solaris). Plus a Drupal plugin for developing modules! Supported by Sun Microsystems.
• Eclipse (Free. Open source. Linux, Mac, Windows and others. Java based.) Probably the most popular open source IDE. Eclipse requires plugins in order to develop PHP. The PHP editing plugins for Eclipse are listed below:
  • Aptana (Free. Open source, though some features, notably SFTP support, require a commercial license. Linux, Mac, Windows and others. Java based.) -- A full-featured Web Development IDE. A package based on the Eclipse environment that comes with the essentials right out of the box (PHP highlighting, ftp/sftp, code browser, etc).
  • PHPEclipse project is the original PHP development plugin for Eclipse.
  • PDTeclipse & Zendanother commercially supported PHP development using Eclipse from version 3.3+

  Other notes:

  • Read details of how to install and configure Eclipse for Drupal.
  • Instructions for setting up Eclipse Ganymede on 64-bit Ubuntu
  • To get a nice "all in one" package for working with PHP in Eclipse try the Easy Eclipse PHP distibution which includes PHPEclipse as well as CVS, SVN and other common plugins. Note that if you are using Easy Eclipse on Windows Vista, you are advised to change the install location to "C:\EasyEclipse for PHP 1.2.2.2", as the software will probably not work with the default install location.
• Quanta Plus (Free. Open Source. Linux - Part of the KDE environment).
• Geany (Free. Open Source. POSIX > GTk+. Linux. Mac. Windows. Fast Lean multi syntax - GTK+ based).
• Komodo (Commercial. Proprietary. Linux, Mac and Windows.)
• Zend Studio (Commercial. Proprietary. Linux, Mac and others. Java based.)
• PhpEd (Commercial. Proprietary. Windows, Linux.)
• CodeLobster (Shareware. Has a Drupal plugin. Appears to be Windows only.)
• Xcode (Commercial, free with Mac OS X. Mac only.) Here are instructions on setting up Xcode to work with Drupal.

SQL & Database tools

There is software that can aid your SQL and database needs with features ranging from queries to administration.

• phpMyAdmin - standard PHP tool for administering a MySQL database, included in most shared hosting packages (if not, find a different host!)
• MySQL GUI Tools Bundle (Free. Windows/Mac/Linux. Source available. MySQL only.) -- GUI software bundle contains MySQL Administrator, MySQL Query Browser, and MySQL Migration Toolkit.
• FlySpeed SQL Query (Free. Windows. MySQL/PostgreSQL) -- Build queries without needing deep knowledge of SQL syntax and performs data manipulations such as export and reporting.
• pgadmin (Free. Windows/Linux/Mac PostgreSQL)
• Navicat (Commercial. Windows, Linux, Mac. Versions for MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL.)
• Sequel Pro (Free. Mac. MySQL)
• SQLyog (Free Community Edition, Enterprise Edition. Windows. MySQL)

Other Tools

• PuTTY (Free. Windows only.) -- An SSH and telnet client.
• WinSCP -- WinSCP is an open source free SFTP client and FTP client for Windows.
• 7 Zip (Free. Open Source. Windows is the primary platform, with ports listed on the download page.) -- Extract archived and compacted files (such as tarballs).
• Cygwin (Free. Open Source. Windows only.) -- Allows Windows users to use a Unix like shell. This is particularly useful for interfacing with CVS and patching files... read more
• Filezilla (Free. Open Source. Windows, Mac, and Linux.) -- Graphical FTP client
• IE Net Renderer - Check your site on IE 6 & 7 without Windows!
• UnxUtils (Free. Open Source. Windows only.) -- a lightweight option for adding some Unix command line utilities such as patch and grep to Windows, for those not wishing to download Cygwin.
• Drupal Module Builder Gem (Free, runs on Ruby).
• Realtime CSS Viewer Gem (Free, runs on Ruby) - This is a CSS viewer that monitors your changes as you edit in any text editor.