PHP Sniffer

Uses PHP_CodeSniffer to format and lint (mainly) PHP code.

Features

• Runs phpcs to lint code.
• Runs phpcbf to format fixable code validation errors, using the built-in commands "Format Document" or "Format Selection" (PHP only).
  • One may need to set this extension as the default language formatter for some languages. The following snippet is an example for PHP that can be added in a settings.json:

    {
      "[php]": {
        "editor.defaultFormatter": "wongjn.php-sniffer"
      }
    }
    

Requirements

• PHP
• PHP_Codesniffer

Extension Settings

Quick Setup

settings.json:

{
  "phpSniffer.autoDetect": true
}

And if your projects look like this:

workspace-folder/
  vendor/
    bin/
      phpcs
      phpcbf
  .phpcs.xml

Validation and formatting will work (see below for alternative filenames for .phpcs.xml).

In Depth

This extension contributes the following settings:

• phpSniffer.run: When to run phpcs (the linter). Can be onSave, onType or never.
• phpSniffer.onTypeDelay: When phpSniffer.run is onType, this sets the amount of milliseconds the validator will wait after typing has stopped before it will run. The validator will also cancel an older run if the run is on the same file.
• phpSniffer.extraFiles: Glob patterns of extra files to match that this extension should run on. Useful for standards that don't just validate PHP files. This extension will always run on PHP files — be sure to have your files.associations setting correctly setup for PHP files.
• phpSniffer.executablesFolder: The folder where both phpcs and phpcbf executables are. Use this to specify a different executable if it is not in your global PATH, such as when using PHP_Codesniffer as a project-scoped dependency. Can be absolute, or relative to the workspace folder.
• phpSniffer.autoDetect: Set to true for the extension to auto-detect phpSniffer.executablesFolder as ./vendor/bin/ per workspace folder (applies only if phpSniffer.executablesFolder is empty).
• phpSniffer.standard: The standards to check against. This is passed to the phpcbf and phpcs executables as the value for --standard. Can be absolute, or relative to the workspace folder. If not set, PHP_CodeSniffer will attempt to find a file to use, at the root of the currently open file's workspace folder in the following order:
  1. .phpcs.xml
  2. phpcs.xml
  3. .phpcs.xml.dist
  4. phpcs.xml.dist
• phpSniffer.snippetExcludeSniffs: Sniffs to exclude when formatting a PHP code snippet (such as when formatting on paste or on the command format on selection). This is passed to the phpcbf command as the value for --exclude when not formatting a whole file.
• phpSniffer.disableWhenDebugging: Disable sniffing when any debug session is active.

Known Issues

Windows Hanging PHP Process

When phpcs encounters a malformed array declaration, it can sometimes hang from an error. This is exacerbated by the fact that we do not have access to the spawned php process in the extension code and cannot kill php.exe directly. This causes many non-exiting PHP processes on Windows machines which can really slow down the machine. The fix for this is to update squizlabs/PHP_Codesniffer in use to >=3.4.2.