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JetBrains IntelliJ-based PhpStorm Release Adds Support for PHP 8

• By John K. Waters
• December 7, 2020

Software development toolmaker JetBrains released a new version of PhpStorm web app dev tool this week with new support for the newly released PHP 8.

PhpStorm 2020.3 is a popular cross-platform IDE for PHP on Windows, Linux, and macOS. It's based on the company's IntelliJ IDEA IDE, and it's designed specifically for developers who want to build web apps with PHP. This release supports PHP 8 for all language features, even open-source Custom Attributes.

It's list of capabilities includes code refactoring, auto-completion, on-the-fly error prevention, zero-configuration debugging, an extended HTML, CSS, and JavaScript editor. The tool also includes all the features of the recently released WebStorm 2020.3, an IDE designed for JavaScript, including support for TypeScript, Angular, React and Vue.js languages with Databases/SQL support added on top.

PhpStorm 2020.3 provides live editing support for such front-end technologies as CSS, HTML5, and JavaScript. I supports PHPStan, Psalm static analyzers, and Tailwind CSS. And with this release, PhpStorm becomes compatible with the Code With Me tool, which enables collaborative development and pair programming within the PhpStorm IDE.

"At JetBrains, we always try to listen to our community and develop the tools in the direction that solves the real issues of the developers," said Roman Pronskiy, product marketing manager in JetBrains' PhpStorm group, in a statement. "PhpStorm 2020.3, the [last] release of this year fully reflects our position: we've implemented most of what our users have asked for, with lots of other improvements coming soon." 

PhpStorm competes with the likes of Zend Studio, NetBeans, and Cloud 9 in the PHP dev space. Currently, JetBrains claims more than 600.000 companies are regularly using PhpStorm, including Trivago, Yahoo, Visa, Wikipedia, Valve, Expedia and Salesforce. PhpStorm can natively support Symfony, Laravel, Drupal, WordPress, Zend Framework, Magento, Joomla!, CakePHP, Yii and many other mainstream technologies, the company said.

JetBrains has been cranking out product upgrades during Q3 and Q4. The Prague-based creator of the Kotlin programming language has an extended product portfolio that includes IntelliJ IDEA, IntelliJ Scala Plugin, PyCharm, CLion, the EduTools Plugin, GoLand 2020.2, IntelliJ Rust, the Space Beta, and TeamCity. Version 2020.2 of PhpStorm was among them.