Create Mobile Apps Using PHP With Zend Studio Now In Beta

The newest version of Zend Studio has been released in beta, extending the platform’s ability to support mobile app development for PHP developers by including support for Cordova, Ionic, AngularJS and by offering a fully customizable mobile application with source code. 

Zend Studio 12 also provides new debugging capabilities of its IDE by leveraging the new Z-Ray and Z-Ray Live!, for real-time, and in-context visibility inside the applications’ code and performance. The new version also includes support for PHP 5.6, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the leading Eclipse 4 Luna development platform. 

Zend Studio simplifies mobile application development on top of existing PHP applications and server back-ends by managing the “behind the scenes” development communication process. The IDE communicates with all layers of the stack while a server platform enables collaboration, reporting and debugging, all while a framework facilitates a RESTful server-based API.

To extend to mobile, Zend Studio 12 offers PHP developers a fully working and customizable sample mobile application with source code. The application uses Zend Framework and Apigility, an open-source API builder, as a foundation. The mobile app uses Zend Server WebAPI for full reportability, performance and stability. Developers can build upon the sample mobile app as a start for their own projects.

- Integration with Cordova and Ionic to create and emulate mobile apps directly from within the IDE

- Enhanced Z-Ray support plus Z-Ray Live! integration for real-time visibility inside the app performance during the application development process

- High productivity tools such as Bower integration to manage packages effectively plus increased UI experience with Dark theme, multi-cursor, split editor capabilities

- Enhanced AWS support for easy deployment of applications on Zend Server and the Zend product stack

- Fully working and customizable sample mobile application with source code

- Support for PHP 5.6

- Access to Eclipse 4 Luna development platform functionalities (TCF Terminal for command line, many EGit enhancements, improved HTML5 support)

- XMLService Toolkit built-in library for IBM i developers, extending PHP code to access IBM i resources

Zend Studio 12 Beta is available today for free download through the Early Access Program.

Zend has also released the developer-centric Zend Server 8, the company’s newest integrated application platform for mobile and web applications. This latest version includes the new Z-Ray insight into several popular applications as well as introducing Z-Ray Live!, which broadens the scope and reach of Z-Ray to include mobile and web services API debugging. 

Z-Ray gives real-time, in-context visibility inside apps, showing exactly what happens to construct each page. The result is the ability for developers to catch PHP code errors early, allowing them to inspect, debug and optimize their pages early in the development process, long before production.

Key Features and Benefits of Zend Server 8:

- Z-Ray’s real-time vision inside PHP requests has been extended to include specific detailed data for several common applications and frameworks including Magento, WordPress, Drupal, Zend Framework, Symfony, and IBM i.

- Z-Ray’s extensibility API allows developers to add new functionality to Z-Ray, displaying the data they care about.

- Z-Ray Live! provides the visibility of Z-Ray for requests coming from mobile and web services API calls, letting developers see into the server-side execution of mobile app requests.

- URL Insight identifies the worst-performing pages in an application and provides Z-Ray insight into the causes.

- New platform support includes Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, PHP 5.6, and Linux running on IBM Power8.

Zend Server 8 will be generally available in December 2014.