New PhpStorm user - how to set up with existing project

Question

Problem:

The intro videos (and marketing) for PhpStorm suggest that the big advantage to an IDE is that it looks at a project as a whole – so it 'knows' about the variables, functions and methods in the project (I normally use Sublime Text).

But after creating a project from an existing one (which uses the concrete5 CMS), the first thing I've noticed is that PhpStorm thinks that variables are undefined?

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The answers I've found suggest:

• This is a bug
• That unless a variable is defined in the file being viewed, PhpStorm can't figure it out
• You have to create the variables in PhpStorm first, then it knows about them
• You have to load includes/partials in a generic way
• Just turn the warnings off (then what's the point?)

Obviously I'm missing something super basic.

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Questions:

• Would it be possible for someone to give me a high-level overview that includes the reality of setting up an IDE so you can use all it's features?

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Skill level:

• Front-end development with php limited to configuring and customising CMSs
• Looking to use an IDE to refactor php and to better trace errors
• Normally use Sublime Text

Any help or pointers in the right direction would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Answer 1

IDEs are only so smart, if you try and use PHPStorm with concrete5.6.* you aren't going to get all the nice autocompletion and such, if you are using 5.7.* on the other hand, you can have auto completion. If you go to the Github Repo for 5.7 it has the build steps for the development environment. One of the grunt tasks is generate-symbols which will make it so that PHPStorm knows where stuff is.