Magento and its latest version, Magento 2 is undeniably one of the most powerful platforms to create eCommerce web apps. 

It is also one of the most complex platforms out there and can be difficult to master especially without the proper tools. In this article, I’d like to go over the list of my personal favorite Magento 2 development tools. There is definitely a plethora of tools available to cover the needs of any project or level. The tools that I’ll present here are some of my favorite and, in my opinion, essential Magento 2 tools to develop with.

Let’s dig in! 🔥

1. PHPStorm IDE + Magento 2 plugin 

No surprises there, right? PHPStorm is one of the most popular PHP IDE on the market and it helps to efficiently categorize and manage large projects. The PHPStorm Magento 2 plugin is the perfect choice to auto-complete and generate code, as well as browse and navigate easily through the imposing Magento 2 codebase. It offers a good amount of features, including GraphQL navigation line marker, class methods generation, and declaration inspection.

PHPStorm Live Templates feature provides also a good benefit when you need to repeat the same code structure at different places.

Obviously, choosing an IDE to work with is a matter of habit and it remains a personal choice, but PHPStorm fits pretty well with Magento in general.

2. n98-magerun2 

This tool is very accurately described as the Swiss army knife of Magento development. n98-magerun, the first version of the tool, has been widely used by Magento 1 developers. Its Magento 2 version offers new features for Magento 2 development alongside a bunch of already well-known commands from its previous version.

We can specifically mention the very useful Stripped Database Dump command, which quickly allows dumping any database without specific and sensitive data on it, crucial to being GDPR-compliant even during the development phase. Use the n98-magerun2.phar list command to have a look at all the available commands.

3. Mage2Gen

Mage2Gen is an online module generator for Magento 2 that generates a great number of code parts, including controllers, models, blocks, template files, and much more. One of the fea­tures that make this tool one of my favorites, is the ability to save all generated modules once you log in. This is a game-changer. If you forgot to generate a part when you first created the module, this feature allows you to go back to that module and generate the part you forgot. The support and features coverage is also really well-maintained over time, which definitely makes it an accurate and time-saving tool.

4. Magento 2 coding standard 

This tool offers a set of Magento 2 rules for PHP_CodeSniffer. Magento 2 coding standard helps detect non-conform pieces of code and produce high-quality Magento 2 code, following best practices and standards defined.

Magento often offers different ways of developing the same functionality and the ideal practice can also change as things progress. Keeping the Magento 2 coding standard package always up to date, and pushing your dev team to use it is the key to making your application more standardized and, ultimately, cost less on maintenance and upgrades operation over time.

5. Magento 2 Cache Clean

Magento 2 Cache Clean is a tool you can use during development, to clean your app’s cache automati­cally and on the fly as soon as you write code. 

Keeping in mind that developing without any cache activated on Magento 2 can be too slow and affect productivity, I believe this tool is a must-have. You do not have to worry about flushing cache every time you introduce a new piece of code—every change is detected, and caches are automatically cleared accordingly.

To sum up

The list presented here is by no means exhaustive. As I mentioned, these are my personal favorite Magento 2 development tools that I use on a daily basis for Artifakt, as well as personal projects.

You can check out plenty of other useful resources to work with Magento 2 from this other incredible list.

I hope you found my list helpful and if you are looking for more Magento 2 guides, make sure to check out my ultimate Magento 2 built and deploy commands workflow.