New and Enhanced IDE Features

Form Designer
The Form Designer has been enhanced to provide smoother movement, guidelines and better hint support

HTML Designer
The HTML designer provides visual capabilities to edit basic HTML files plus the ability to drag and drop HTML elements such as HTML labels, HTML Drop Down and HTML button controls from the Tool Palette.

Templated Form Designer
The new Templated Form Designer is an extension of the HTML designer which adds the ability to work with PHP components. When working on a templated form, PHP components can be dropped inside the HTML designer, and behave like any other HTML element.

Visual Designer Guidelines
Guidelines appear as you move UI elements to make it easier to align multiple items.

Tool Palette
The Tool Palette contains default VCL for PHP visual and non-visual components you can add to a form. You can also create custom components based on the VCL for PHP components and install them on the palette for future use in your application development.

The Tool Palette also now includes filtering capabilities. Just click the funnel and start typing to filter the component list and quickly find the component you’re looking for.

File Browser
Use this Windows-style File Browser to view files and directories and to perform simple operations on files while you are running the IDE. The File Browser supports standard Windows context menu options and the user can drag and drop PHP, text and other files from the file browser to the editor window and the file will be opened in the editor.

Object Inspector
Use the "Object Inspector" to set the properties and events for the currently selected object. The Object Inspector has been rewritten in version 2.0 and now features subproperties, references and is much faster

Multilanguage Support
This feature allows the IDE interface to be shown in different languages using translations provided by the Delphi for PHP community. Select a language from a drop-down menu under Tools|Options and restart the IDE to have the IDE interface appear in a different language. Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, German and Japanese localizations are included. (Note that this localization is for the IDE interface only; the IDE help file and VCL for PHP help file are available in English only)

Status Bar
The status bar at the bottom of the editor/designer window provides access to a variety of information and tools including the macro toolbar, cursor position, insert/overwrite and tabs for switching between code view, design view for visual modules and template code for templated forms. The status bar has also been redesigned to provide better visualization

Adding Folder Contents to a Project
This option allows you to add, in a single action, several source files to your project, right click on a project and select Add Folder to Project..., a dialog will popup requesting the folder to add.

Profiler
The profiler lists the lines of code that have been executed, the times have been hit and the time spent on each hit.

New and Enhanced Editor Features

Error Insight
This new feature provides syntax checking as you type, so you can easily fix syntax errors before running your scripts. Clicking the error message takes you to the line of code where the error was identified.

Code Insight
CodeInsight displays a list of symbols that are valid at the cursor location as you type or when you press Ctrl+Space. Just arrow down and press Enter or double click to insert the highlighted item into your code. Lot of improvements on this feature to allow you browse through your application code and to get more information using PHPDoc comments. Plus faster performance.

Code Folding
Source code is structured in blocks according to open and closed braces {} and each block can be collapsed using the plus marks (+) at the left side of the editor, just at the right of the gutter.

Sync Edit
Using this new feature, you can modify common parts of your code at the same time. A sync range is a selection of the text that can be edited in a special way, if there is more than one identifier/word that is repeated on the range, a change in any of them will change the rest of them. To create a sync range, select a portion of text and click on the button in the gutter, you will be able to write on the blocks of the code, changing all identifiers at once.

Tracking Band
This band, located in the left margin of the code editor window, allows you to check which lines you have modified/added and which ones were modified on the last save operation. Modified lines are set to yellow. When you save the file, these lines turn to green so you see what was modified.

Macro Recording and Playback
You can record a specific set of actions in the code editor and repeat them later, you can use the mouse and click on the bottom of the code editor to start/stop/play a macro, or you can use the Shift+Ctrl+R (start/stop) or Shift+Ctrl+P (play).

This feature has been completely reworked to work better in version 2.0.

Syntax check
Syntax Check performs a lint on the active file. Results are shown in the Messages window at the bottom of the screen.

Source Formatter
The source code formatter allows you to format a PHP source code using a configurable set of options. Source code formatting is useful to improve consistency and readability of code.

New and Enhanced Database App Development Features

Data Explorer
Use the Data Explorer to add a new connection, modify, delete, or rename your database connections. You can browse database server-specific schema objects including tables, fields, stored procedure definitions, triggers, and indexes. Additionally, you can drag and drop data from a data source to a project to build your database application quickly.

Also added is support for DB2, Oracle, Informix, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase, SQL Anywhere and PostgreSQL in addition to the support for InterBase and MySQL that were available in the previous version.

Drag and Drop Database App Development
Delphi for PHP makes it easy to build database applications via drag-and-drop. For example, drag a table name from the Data Explorer to the visual designer to automatically create an application to browse the table data. All your connections are set up automatically. Then click the Run button to run your app in a browser. You get an AJAX-enabled, editable grid display of your database table in the browser with zero lines of handwritten code.

Data Viewer
The Data Viewer Data tab shows a DBGrid browsing the dataset selected in the Data Explorer. Use the Data Viewer SQL tab to execute a SQL query against the dataset selected in the Data Explorer and display the results

New and Enhanced VCL for PHP Features

Native Components for Oracle
An assortment of components for building applications that access the Oracle database including database, table, query and stored procedure.

Zend Framework Components
Components that encapsulate portions of the Zend Framework including Zend ACL ancestor class, ZAuth for authentication, ZAuthDB, and ZAuthDigest.

New and Enhanced Documentation Features

Context sensitive online help
Online help for the development environment is available via F1 in the IDE

Documentation wiki
A new documentation wiki is accessible via the online help to provide the latest doc updates.

VCL for PHP class library documentation
Enhanced for version 2.0 to include better navigation, more information, and code examples. Tab through the help window to see information on available Properties, Events and more.

Sample programs
Delphi for PHP 2.0 includes even more sample programs that demonstrate usage for a wide variety of the VCL for PHP components and serve as a great starting point for building your own applications or better understanding how to build real world applications.

PHP Reference Guide
New in Delphi for PHP 2.0, you can choose to install PHP Reference Guide in your choice of languages including English, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese.