Using Emacs for Web Development? (Php/mysql/javascript/css/html

Question

I'm a Web developer. I had been using a variety of editors and ide-s for web development(php, javascript,html,css) six months before I decided to learn a true editor and started using emacs. I learned all the basics, used the starter kit, practiced using buffer, windows etc..

I got a grip in 2 months. A month ago I started learning about vim and I found a lot of plugins to achieve the things I want. I'm finding to achieve the same effect in emacs you have to do a lot(for php/js/css/html editing).

Here are the list of things I'm finding hard. Note: These things are related when I'm editing php/html/css/js.

• syntax hightlighting(php/smarty). -- the php major mode is too old and it always highlights html/smarty inside the php code incorrectly.

• I love ido-mode but i couldn't find how to define a project and fuzzy match files inside the predefined directory

• I can setup nerdtree plugin to get a quick overview pane on the left with the files I'm working on with vim. But configuring speedbar and source code browser in emacs is bit difficult.

• Context aware completion I really don't know how to do that. I have seen something like that in clojure mode where it shows the definition of a method in the messages area.

• Tags-generation: The tags generated with excrebant-ctags does not always work with php. In vim it is easy I can open a file containing the definition right under the cursor.

• Manual lookup I want to lookup the manual for a particular word under the cursor without opening the browser (in the messages area(mini-buffer)).

---

I love ido mode and switching b/w files in tramp,buffers,local files using ido-mode.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? Do you use emacs for same kind of editing I do? What is your work flow?.

Answer 1

• syntax hightlighting(php/smarty). -- the php major mode is too old and it always highlights html/smarty inside the php code incorrectly.

The simplest and best way to manage mixed languages in one single buffer is to clone the window showing it with C-x 4 c and use different major modes for each window showing this single buffer, for example, one window with the php-mode, one window with the nxhtml-mode to correctly highlight the HTML syntax.

Answer 2

I like Emacs for small projects and quick editing.

There are things like C-x ( to make a repeat-macro, delete-matching-lines, describe-function (...), apropos, the quick C-x 2 to split window, the warnings (text was edited elsewhere do you really want...) and the quick Lisp fix in .emacs that make me having an Emacs open at all times.

But for bigger projects, when you want to hover a keyword and have its definition, the call hierarchy, the updated syntax highlighting etc... Emacs is not enough for me. I use Eclipse (which is slow and not perfect anyway for C C++).

Answer 3

Manual lookup I want to lookup the manual for a particular word
under the cursor without opening the browser. (in the messages area (mini-buffer))

It sounds like you are after eldoc-mode support for PHP? (enable it on a lisp file to see example)

;; Major modes for other languages may use ElDoc by defining an
;; appropriate function as the buffer-local value of
;; `eldoc-documentation-function'.

A search for eldoc-documentation-function and PHP turns up this: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/php-doc.el

Answer 4

nxthml-mode is the ultimate mode for web development.

You can easily define a project in terms of its VCS or .dir-locals.el with find-file-in-project.

Fuzzy matching is called flex matching in ido. You can enable it with:

(setq ido-enable-flex-matching t)

I've never had any problems with ctags, manual lookup is trivial to implement...