Install PHP coding standards fixer in a Laravel project

Code sniffer is a package to apply syntax rules to our php code to follow PSR-standards, here a guide to install and use it:

Install code sniffer

composer require friendsofphp/php-cs-fixer

Add a configuration file

touch php-cs-fixer.php

You can add your configuration rules, here a good example to use it in a laravel projects:

<?php

$finder = PhpCsFixer\Finder::create()
    ->in(__DIR__)
    ->exclude(['bootstrap', 'storage', 'vendor','docker'])
    ->name('*.php')
    ->name('_ide_helper')
    ->notName('*.blade.php')
    ->ignoreDotFiles(true)
    ->ignoreVCS(true);

return (new PhpCsFixer\Config())->setRules([
        '@PSR2' => true,
        'array_syntax' => ['syntax' => 'short'],
        'ordered_imports' => ['sort_algorithm' => 'alpha'],
        'no_unused_imports' => true,
    ])
        ->setUsingCache(false)
        ->setLineEnding(PHP_EOL)
        ->setFinder($finder);

Another more advance example could be:

<?php

$finder = Symfony\Component\Finder\Finder::create()
    ->in([
        __DIR__ . '/tests',
    ])
    ->in(__DIR__)
    ->exclude(['bootstrap', 'storage', 'vendor','docker'])
    ->name('*.php')
    ->name('_ide_helper')
    ->notName('*.blade.php')
    ->ignoreDotFiles(true)
    ->ignoreVCS(true);

return (new PhpCsFixer\Config())
    ->setRules([
        '@PSR12' => true,
        'array_syntax' => ['syntax' => 'short'],
        'ordered_imports' => ['sort_algorithm' => 'alpha'],
        'no_unused_imports' => true,
        'not_operator_with_successor_space' => true,
        'trailing_comma_in_multiline' => true,
        'phpdoc_scalar' => true,
        'unary_operator_spaces' => true,
        'binary_operator_spaces' => true,
        'blank_line_before_statement' => [
            'statements' => ['break', 'continue', 'declare', 'return', 'throw', 'try'],
        ],
        'phpdoc_single_line_var_spacing' => true,
        'phpdoc_var_without_name' => true,
        'class_attributes_separation' => [
            'elements' => [
                'method' => 'one',
            ],
        ],
        'method_argument_space' => [
            'on_multiline' => 'ensure_fully_multiline',
            'keep_multiple_spaces_after_comma' => true,
        ],
        'single_trait_insert_per_statement' => true,
    ])
    ->setFinder($finder);

Feel free to use whatever configuration that makes sense for your project.

Execute the code sniffer fixer

On terminal execute this command:

vendor/bin/php-cs-fixer fix

Or using the configuration

vendor/bin/php-cs-fixer fix --config=php-cs-fixer.php

You can add more flags to customize the behavior of the fixer, here another example:

php ./vendor/friendsofphp/php-cs-fixer/php-cs-fixer fix --config php-cs-fixer.php --allow-risky=yes --dry-run --verbose

You can install husky with npm to fire this commands on husky hooks and execute any of this commands automatically, this is all thanks for reading.

Comments

[Erik D'Ercole]

Please note that CS in PHP CS Fixer stands for Coding Standards, not for "code sniffer"