PrettyPHP for Visual Studio Code

The opinionated formatter for modern, expressive PHP

This extension integrates the latest release of PrettyPHP, a code formatter inspired by Black, with Visual Studio Code.

Like Black, PrettyPHP runs with sensible defaults and doesn't need to be configured. It's also deterministic (with some pragmatic exceptions), so no matter how the input is formatted, it produces the same output.

PrettyPHP's default output is unlikely to change significantly before version 1.0.0 is released, but if you're already using it in production, pinning lkrms/pretty-php to a specific version is recommended.

Requirements

PrettyPHP requires PHP 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, or 8.2 with a CLI runtime and the phar and mbstring extensions.

The json and tokenizer extensions are also required, but they are usually enabled by default.

FAQ

How is PrettyPHP different to other formatters?

It's opinionated

• No configuration is required
• Formatting options are deliberately limited
• Readable code, small diffs, and high throughput are the main priorities

It's a formatter, not a fixer

• Previous formatting is ignored
• Whitespace is changed, code is not
• Entire files are formatted in place

(Some pragmatic exceptions are made.)

It's CI-friendly

• Installs via composer require --dev lkrms/pretty-php
• Runs on Linux, macOS and Windows
• MIT-licensed

It's safe

• Written in PHP
• Uses PHP's tokenizer to parse input and validate output
• Checks formatted and original code for equivalence by comparing language tokens returned by PhpToken::tokenize().

It's optionally compatible with coding standards

PrettyPHP has partial support for PSR-12. An upcoming release will offer full support.

Why are there so many options?

Because PrettyPHP is in initial development, PHP formatting is complicated, and testing is easier when settings can be changed at runtime.

Over time, PrettyPHP will become more opinionated and have fewer options, so reliance on formatting options is discouraged.