Porphyrins have planar and conjugated structures, good optical properties, and other special functional properties. Owing to these excellent properties, in recent years, porphyrins and their analogues have emerged as a multifunctional platform for chemical sensors. The rich chemistry of these molecules offers many possibilities for metal ions detection. This review mainly discusses two types of molecular porphyrin and porphyrin composite sensors for metal ions detection, because porphyrins can be functionalized to improve their functional properties, which can introduce more chemical and functional sites. According to the different application materials, the section of porphyrin composite sensors is divided into five sub-categories: (1) porphyrin film, (2) porphyrin metal complex, (3) metal–organic frameworks, (4) graphene materials, and (5) other materials, respectively.

Anion zinc-based metal-organic framework [HDMA]2n[Zn2n(DMA)2n(1,4-BDC)3n]•2nDMF•6nH2O (1, DMF = N,N-dimethylformamide, 1,4-H2BDC = 1,4-benzenedicarboxylic acid, DMA = dimethylamine) with open-channels has been used as a luminescence sensor for Cd2+detection, which was obtained...