code-diesel

One of the important factors in developing a successful software product is the application of coding standards. And by successful I mean a product that is easy to develop, modify and maintain. Every developer likes to code in a particular style: in the way he declares variables or function blocks, the number of indentation spaces, commenting style etc. Giving every developer in a team complete freedom to use whatever style he likes will very likely result in a code that is hard to understand, modify and maintain. Even though every coding standard has its good points and bad; the important thing is to try to adhere to a particular one.

A coding standard basically tells developers in what style they must write their code. If programmers work in a team than a coding standard ensures that each will be able to read the others code without any effort. New programmers drafted in the team will be quick to pick the coding style and continue the work rather than waste time deciphering each persons individual style.

But writing a coding standard document and making your team or yourself (if you are a individual programmer) stick to it is a completely different matter. Most programmers usually slip into their own style of coding after some time. A tool which scans your source code and checks it against a standard would be quite a help. PHP_CodeSniffer is one such tool.

PHP_CodeSniffer is a PHP5 script that “sniffs” PHP, JavaScript and CSS files to detect violations of a defined coding standard.

1. Installing PHP_Codesniffer
The easy way to install is with the PEAR installer.

c:\>pear install PHP_Codesniffer

By default a number of coding standards are installed against which you can check your code. You can find the installed standards by:

c:\>phpcs -i
The installed coding standards are MySource, PEAR, PHPCS, Squiz and Zend

2. Checking source file or directory
You can check a source file or directory against a particular standard. By default PHP_Codesniffer will use the PEAR coding standard. We will run the script on the following code using the default PEAR standard.

<?php
/* Hello.php */
function hello() {
    return "Hello World!";
}
 
echo hello();
 
?>

c:\localhost\test>phpcs hello.php

Which will return the following report.

FILE: c:\localhost\test\hello.php
--------------------------------------------------------------
FOUND 3 ERROR(S) AND 0 WARNING(S) AFFECTING 2 LINE(S)
--------------------------------------------------------------
 2 | ERROR | Missing file doc comment
 3 | ERROR | Missing function doc comment
 3 | ERROR | Opening brace should be on a new line
--------------------------------------------------------------

Using the Zend standard on the same code will return the following.

c:\localhost\test>phpcs --standard=zend hello.php

FILE: c:\localhost\test\hello.php
-------------------------------------------------------------------
FOUND 1 ERROR(S) AND 1 WARNING(S) AFFECTING 2 LINE(S)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
 3 | WARNING | Consider putting global function "hello" in a static class
 9 | ERROR   | A closing tag is not permitted at the end of a PHP file
--------------------------------------------------------------------

You can run the script on a directory as below with a summary report option.

c:\localhost\test>phpcs --report=summary ./ds

 
PHP CODE SNIFFER REPORT SUMMARY
----------------------------------------------------------------
FILE                                        ERRORS  WARNINGS
----------------------------------------------------------------
c:\localhost\test\ds\link_list.php             8       4
c:\localhost\test\ds\linklist.class.php        64      30
c:\localhost\test\ds\LinkListTest.php          7       0
c:\localhost\test\ds\hello.php                 3       0
----------------------------------------------------------------
A TOTAL OF 82 ERROR(S) AND 34 WARNING(S) WERE FOUND IN 4 FILE(S)
----------------------------------------------------------------

3. Your own coding standards
You can even create your own custom coding standards and add it to PHP_Codesniffer. Coding standard files in PHP_CodeSniffer are a collection of sniff files. Each sniff file checks one particular part of a coding standard only. The Coding Standard Tutorial explains it in quite a detail.

4. Subversion integration
PHP_Codesniffer also integrates with Subversion, which ensures that developers do not commit code that violates the coding standard. Instead developers are presented with the list of errors they need to correct before committing to a repository.